What are the chances of the Mac mini being updated to support 2018 specifications this year? Is anyone hopeful like me?
Hopeful, not really, but I do have a small stash of cash put aside if one comes out, I really could use a dedicated build server and a new Mac mini would be one of the best platforms to do that on, or I would take (official) VM support for macOS
I’m running a 2012 with the quad core i7 and 16 GB of RAM, so it would have to be a pretty big leap for me to want to jump on it right away - but I do hope they update the line, because it’s my favorite Mac. 
I’m hopeful but not optimistic. I think it’s crazy that Apple won’t do something so easy that would let people give them money, but that’s true of the Mac Pro, too.
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I’d certainly love to see an update (especially since my mid-2011 mini won’t support Mojave). Unfortunately I don’t think it’s likely. We haven’t really heard any rumors of a refreshed mini and I think the laptop line and the forthcoming Mac Pro would be a much higher priority for Apple.
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So I develop mobile applications in a language called nativescript, it compiles down to android APK and iOS ipa files. At the moment all our production builds happen on my machine, so I want a Mac mini so that I can setup Jenkins to automate a CI/CD pipeline.
I could use any old Mac for this but a mini would be nice as they can be rack mounted in our server room, I could also use a refurbished one but on my top of the line MacBook Pro takes 10 minutes to compile and I shudder to think how long that will take the older CPU.
When I say VM support I mean, that I have a copy of macOS running in virtual box, but it can be unstable and without offical apple support I can’t use it as a production ready solution.
Here is a screenshot of my macOS VM running on windows 10
I think he was talking about virtual machine support for MacOS, period.
If I have a Windows box that’s running VMWare, it can virtualize anything out there except macOS. Being able to run macOS in a VMWare window on a nicely-specced Windows machine would be a nice touch.
I’d love a new Mac mini but I also want a form factor update. Imagine something utilising the MacBook adorable internals but without the need for a battery. It could be truly tiny.
I could see a smaller form factor without any accomodation for spinning disks. The MacBook Adorable innards are pretty limiting though. I don’t really see much need to go that small (or completely fanless). MacBook Escape level parts would be a pretty solid basis for a new mini.