[Heavy]

Hi. With a redesign on the mini almost six months ago, would it be wise to wait a bit for an updated one before buying? How often does Apple do that with their products?

[-Q-]

This will give you an idea of how frequently the product lines get refreshed:

Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone

Based on that, you're right in the middle of the lifecycle. If you need it, buy it now.

[ajprice]

Mac mini with an i3 or i5 will hopefully be the next update. It's getting close to Christmas now though so I'd think it would be early next year.

[Phoible]

It has only been like 4 months. Considering that the Mac mini was completely redesigned last refresh and isn't that hot of a seller, I wouldn't hold your breath for another refresh.

It definitely won't receive the i3 or i5 before the 13" Macbook/MBP receives them, since it's based on the same motherboard (and always seems to trail the notebooks). Space constraints/bus license issues prevent using a faster processor without going to slower integrated graphics, and Steve Jobs said that he wouldn't do this with the notebooks.

The Geforce 320M (graphics chip in Mac Mini and 13" MB/P) was designed specifically for Apple, so I would think that they have committed to buy a year's worth, or something like that.

My guess is that the 13" MBPs will go to Sandy Bridge (Intel's upcoming platform) early next year, as it is the first Intel Chipset with decent integrated graphics. This will allow Apple to put in i3s and/or i5s without making the system any larger (by adding a discrete graphics chip). The 13" MB will receive the update a month or two later, and the Mac mini will get updated about mid-year (or when they run out of the old model).

[P]

I'd say a Sandy Bridge mini by summer 2011 is quite optimistic. We only know that Sandy Bridge production starts in Q4 2010 - we don't know that all the chips are available by then. The dualcores are 32nm and quite frankly don't need an update - Apple is the only manufacturer who didn't accept the graphics performance for their base computers. The 45nm quads (Lynnfield and Clarksfield) do need an update, because they're big and expensive to produce, and the only engineering samples that have leaked are quads. The only thing we know about the duals are the names and specs. It could very well be that the duals are on a later schedule and only start shipping by the end of Q1 2011, and we'll see the MBP update in early April by the earliest and the MB the usual two months after that. Summer 2011 is likely to be the absolute earliest for a mini update.

[Big Mac]

I concur: Buy the mini now if that's what you want.

[Heavy]

Thanks much for the replies.