- Maximum memory for mac mini 2012 update#
- Maximum memory for mac mini 2012 upgrade#
- Maximum memory for mac mini 2012 portable#
Maximum memory for mac mini 2012 update#
Several rumors that circulated in the months before the mini’s 2014 update offer some ideas of what exactly “something big” means.
Maximum memory for mac mini 2012 upgrade#
Sensing customer frustration, and the embarrassment to the company of keeping a two-year-old computer on the market, Apple hastily threw together a component upgrade at as little cost as possible. More exciting, higher profile, and higher margin products, like the new iMac with Retina 5K Display, are more worthy of the company’s finite attention.īut there’s another possible theory: Apple is working on something big for the Mac mini, and it just couldn’t pull it together in time for a release this year. It’s unlikely that the company will abandon the Mac any time soon, but it’s also unlikely that it will choose to expend resources on a tiny part of a relatively small segment of its business. The mini’s fans, myself included, are a vocal minority and fond of its versatility, but Apple is becoming increasingly consumed with gadgets, consumer electronics, wearables, and even fashion. The first, and likely correct, theory is that the Mac mini is simply not a priority for Apple. So, why did it take so long to produce an arguably mediocre product? Apple waited almost two years - 723 days - to update the Mac mini, and there are no fundamental changes to to the product that justify the delay. But questions over the new model’s underpowered components and the timing of its release remain. Some users may indeed value the 2014 Mac mini’s advantages over the 2012 model, even if those advantages are relatively minor. So, yeah, militant environmentalists will appreciate the efficiency improvements, but for everyone else, such improvements are only a small bonus that’s likely to go unnoticed. Assuming the absolute highest cost of 36 cents per kilowatt hour, you’re still only looking at $10.48 worth of energy for the entire year. With an average energy cost in the United States of about 12 cents per kilowatt hour, the 2014 Mac mini’s 5 watts of savings at idle equates to about $3.49 per year. To put energy efficiency in perspective with a best-case scenario, let’s say that your future Mac mini will idle for 16 hours per day, which is not an unrealistic figure considering that the system will have periods in an idle state even while you’re using it. Of course, the 2012 model was already idling at an impressive 10 watts, so the roughly 5 watt idle usage from the 2014 model suddenly appears less significant.
The exact numbers vary wildly depending on the task, but you can expect the Intel HD 5000 or Iris 5100 GPUs in the 2014 Mac mini to beat the Intel HD 4000 GPU in the 2012 model by between 15 and 80 percent.Įnergy Efficiency: As mentioned earlier, this isn’t a huge deal for most users, but the 2014 Mac mini uses half the power at idle compared to the 2012 model. Graphics: If you plan to use your Mac mini for any kind of gaming or computational work that leverages the GPU, the 2014 mini will offer a bit more performance.
Okay, so I’ve been pretty hard on the 2014 Mac mini so far, and while I think it’s a terrible deal for most users, there are still a few reasons that a new 2014 model makes sense over a used 2012-era mini. Is such a drastic loss of performance worth saving just a few watts at idle? Who Would Buy This Thing? Even with a reduction in idle power usage (which I’ll touch on in a moment), the 2012 Mac mini was already one of the most efficient desktop computers on the market.
Maximum memory for mac mini 2012 portable#
In fact, Apple has made great strides in terms of battery life on the company’s MacBook line, with new models occasionally slower than their predecessors over the years.īut the Mac mini is a desktop, and power consumption is nowhere near the same level of importance compared to a portable device. Of course, there are occasions when a reduction in performance from one model to the next is not necessarily a bad thing, and the trade-off between performance and battery life is a perfect example.
0 kommentar(er)
