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.
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.