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It would appear they are just offering what Intel has available. I'm guess the Intel I5-4260U as it's 1.4GHz w/ Intel 5000 Graphics. It doesn't look like Intel even offers a mobile version of i5 with 4 cores and I couldn't find a mobile i7 with 4 cores and intel 5000+ graphics. This is one area A10 APUs that AMD really has Intel beat.



Intel does offer quad-core mobile chips with Intel 5000+ graphics. Apple's even shipping them in the 15" retina MacBook Pro. Here's the mid-tier chip:

http://ark.intel.com/products/83504/Intel-Core-i7-4870HQ-Pro...

The issue with using these in the Mac mini, as mentioned in the article, is that they require a different socket than the dual-core i5 chips. If Apple wanted to offer both dual and quad-core chips in the Mac mini, they'd need to design and ship two different boards.

It might have been more costly to do so, but I think that Apple's doing their customers a great disservice by not offering something between a dual-core i5 with soldered RAM and the $3K Mac Pro.


ah Thank you for pointing that out. I think the rMBP is actually a great middle of the road option. It supports multiple monitors with 2xthunderbolt,1xhdmi. I've seen lots of companies opting for these over mac minis and just having employees dock them in clamshell mode.


Gigabyte makes a mini system with i7-4770R, which is 4 core, Iris pro 5200 graphics, similar size to the mac mini: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4888#...

It is a bit noisy thought, I'm not sure the design of the mac mini could dissipate this much heat.




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