Replacement of Mac mini

[gmgraves]

What's the matter with the current "crop" of Mac Minis? The "New" ones (which are just a rumor anyway) will likely be more expensive, especially the rumored Mac Mini "Pro" series that they are launching. I'm guessing about this, but look at the prices for the iMacPro's - over US$5K! So, my guess is not without precedent. I would suspect (to continue my educated guess) that the Mac Mini Pro-line will use the new Intel I9 for the highest end model, and the i7s for the rest. The current Mini with an i7 and 1TB and 8 GB RAM is already $1200, So I suspect that top of the line i9 model will probably top out at about US$1600-$2000.

OTOH, if you're just going to use the Mini as a music server (as opposed to a general purpose computer) the $500 entry level Mini will be more than satisfactory. In fact, I use a 2008 vintage MacBook Pro with a 2.3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, a half-terrabyte solid state hard disk, and 8 Gigs of memory, and it's perfect as a music server feeding my Schiit Yggdrasil. Your Mac air should be just fine as it is (unless you need more music storage).