Mac mini 2016
Mac mini 2016 was a concept render produced in the spring of 2016, when the Mac mini had been sitting on a 2014 update for nearly two years with no sign of a refresh. The 2014 model had been a controversial release — faster in some respects, slower in others, and missing the quad-core option from 2012.
The Mac mini in 2016 was in a holding pattern. Intel's Skylake chips had shipped and would have been a natural upgrade path, but Apple showed no public sign of moving. The community of Mac mini users — a genuinely devoted group, largely because the mini is the cheapest way into a Mac desktop — was getting increasingly vocal about the neglect.
The concept didn't try to reinvent the form factor. The Mac mini's enclosure had been essentially the same since 2010 and it works — small, quiet, gets out of the way. The render focused on what a Skylake refresh might look like with modest updates: USB-C alongside USB-A, a slightly revised port arrangement on the back, and the removal of the optical drive cutout that had become a vestigial scar on the enclosure.
What happened instead
Apple didn't update the Mac mini in 2016 or 2017. The next update came in October 2018, four years after the previous one — a significant redesign with a much faster CPU and a dramatic price increase. The base model went from $499 to $799. Apple brought back quad-core and added Thunderbolt 3. Most people who had been asking for a mini update were happy, but the price increase stung.
Covered by
- MacRumors
- Mac Observer
- AppleInsider