There is zero justification for the pricing. It needs to be starting around $399. Apple is still working the privileged pricing model. Considering it has year old processor and 8GB RAM. For $800 an i5 and 16GB should be standard. I can forgive that 128GB SSD but not the CPU or RAM.
Side note, why is a computer only for games, streaming, and mining bitcoin? It that what the end user experience is limited to?
There is a justification for the pricing, but you probably won't like it: More than enough people will buy the product at a high margin price to make up for the price-sensitive people who won't buy it.
Fair enough, but it "values" the Mac Mini at $799 with a year-old i3 and 8GB of RAM? It valued the last one at $499 and it was 5 years old. I guess what the market will bear is really true...for Apple.
The customer will not get $799 of value out of a Mac Mini. It will be made obsolete by Apple before that happens. Especially if Apple takes another 4 years to release the next one.
Keep in mind that the old Mini, priced at $499, only had a Laptop Dual Core i5 CPU. The new ones all have Desktop grade Quadcore CPUs in them. This isn't a totally justifiable reason for the price increase, but it is seemingly a large performance increase.
>> I can forgive that 128GB SSD but not the CPU or RAM.
I had the curse of having to use a 2017 MacBook Pro 13” with a 128GB SSD...it’s not forgivable, it’s not usable.
By the time I put xCode in there as well as Office, et cetera, and project files, I was left with 20-30GB left, and anytime I dipped below...20? it bombarded me, literally, continually, with a message ‘you are low on disk space.’
You know what is never forgivable? Soldering a hard drive to the motherboard on a $1500 device.
Side note, why is a computer only for games, streaming, and mining bitcoin? It that what the end user experience is limited to?