Make it mini not just in name, but also in nature. I’ll tell you how I’d like it to be improved: Stick it on a USB stick you can pop into the back of a TV or monitor and control with a wireless mouse/keyboard. What’s the point of it? How can Apple improve it? What do people want from it?

Most every other task you might once have invested in Apple’s smallest Mac to achieve can now be transacted on your phone, tablet, or even watch (particularly as a media server). What does it do well? Nothing, other than some use as a server.

Do you think he cares about the Mac mini? It doesn’t matter Ultimately, one dollar in every 20 it raises in profit is now owned by Warren Buffett.

The fact that it didn’t do any of those things says that if a product pays peanuts, Apple isn’t interested. Why else has it decided to return such a huge chunk of its contentiously taxed foreign earnings to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividends?Ĭould it not have used some of this gigantic cash hoard in some more positive for the planet way, such as the creation of an Apple-funded cancer research facility, low-cost housing for the people of San Francisco, or even more research into renewable energy and climate change? Or perhaps just given the workers at the low-end of its supply chain (the ones who actually make its profitable products) a life-changing bonus? It wants to make products that “ improve the world,” sure, but it also wants to make sure it’s making oodles of profit for its shareholders while it does. This means the company really isn’t focused on utilitarianism, but on meeting (and creating) more aspirational needs. It doesn’t want to sell the most (though it often does), but it does want to sell the best - and likes to shove a healthy 30 percent-plus margin on every single one of the unique products it does sell. Apple’s whole business plan is built around a high-value, high-technology proposition. Like any person, you don’t judge a company by its words, but by its actions. It was a Mac designed to exploit the huge interest in Apple’s products generated by the hugely successful iPod, a Mac for PC switchers. In use, the fact is that Apple’s most affordable Mac betrays how little the company cares for value-conscious customers - even though the little device helped it grab a nice chunk of PC market share when it was originally introduced.

What is the mac mini capable of