The launch of the first Mac mini in 2005 came in response to the question of whether Apple would ever build a cheap Macintosh computer. During a quarterly conference call with financial analysts the previous October, Apple executives, asked that question, said that Apple doesn’t build junk.

At $499, the first Mac mini, with a PowerPC, was decidedly minimalist, and surely not a junk computer. It sported the guts of the cheapest PowerBook of the time, and was shipped without keyboard, mouse or display. The assumption was that you might just use what you had with your PC, since this was a neat way to switch. Or just buy some low-cost accessories.

The Mac mini was redesigned for Intel processors, and went through other changes. The original configuration was user hostile if you wanted to upgrade RAM. You needed a putty knife or some other tool to open it, and there was the ever-present risk of damage to the case. Some folks designed custom versions of this tool that may or may not have been easier to use.

Later generations of Mac mini were trimmer and actually had an easy-to-open bottom cover that made RAM replacement simple. It was trickier to swap a hard drive, but it was possible.

Until 2014, the last or most recent version.

Apple cut the price by $100, restored to the original $499 level. It was a case of severe cost-cutting, however, because you could no longer swap RAM, since it was, as with more and more Macs, soldered to the logic board. Apple also stopped offering a Mac mini with quad-core processors, even as options.

Indeed, the Mac mini had become popular for use as a low-cost home server, or even for hosting web sites. Some were installed in datacenters, but when it was essentially made slower by the lack of quad-core CPUs, the older ones were generally kept in service.

So it stands. After over 1,000 days, the future of the Mac mini is murky. The 2014 model is still being sold. But Apple made a positive comment or two about it at the April tech reporter roundtable. It was mentioned that some users of the cheapest Mac were pros, and Apple made the point of emphasizing the fact that they just loved pros.

That was the last we heard of the Mac mini.

But if Apple likes it so much, why not invest a small sum in outfitting it with more recent processors and other components? Why let it stagnate?

Some weeks back, columnist and podcaster Kirk McElhearn decided to replace his Mac mini with a Hackintosh as a home server. As most of you know, a Hackintosh is a home-brewed macOS clone, using off-the-shelf PC components. As Kirk and others have learned, however, you may be able to install macOS with some simple hoop-jumping, but the rest of the process requires lots of babysitting if you want to activate features that are taken for granted on a regular Mac. Even messaging may be a problem.

In June, Apple updated most Macs. Even the neglected MacBook Air, the 13-inch model, received a very slight processor update. Apple demonstrated an iMac Pro, a $4,999 workstation-class version of the regular iMac, scheduled to arrive in December. A new Mac Pro was promised for 2018, along with a brand new display.

The Mac mini? Good question.

There has certainly been speculation about what Apple might do. As I said, a simple refresh could have been released by now. What is Apple waiting for? If the mini is going away, would Apple have even bothered to make positive comments about it at that roundtable, or was that just a holding pattern until they decided what to do next?

While some Apple journalists continue to praise the mini, it’s hard to know how many are still being sold. The Mac Pro may sell in the tens of thousands, but it’s an expensive, high-profit prestige product that reaches an audience that Apple finds important, even though that audience was neglected for a while.

Now it may be that the Mac mini will be overhauled, with something that caters to the entry level and maybe to higher-end needs. Don’t forget that HP has a Mac mini knockoff of sorts, the Z2 Mini workstation, which is a little larger and heavier than the smallest Mac, but the influences are clear.

However, the HP can be optioned to become a budget workstation with the right parts. Would that at all be a possible solution for Apple? Remember, a portion of mini users are pros. Apple said so, and made a point of it. So I suppose it’s possible that Apple is rejiggering the internals of the Mac mini to accommodate more powerful — and hotter running — components. If that’s the case, maybe it has a future, and we’ll see the result this fall.

Now I actually spent a couple of months running all of my sites on a Mac mini, hosted by a company that installs bunches of them in datacenter cabinets. I had to use a “hypervisor” to allow me to run Linux as a virtual machine, along with a Linux control panel used for web sites, known as cPanel. I was able to transfer all of my sites in hours, and performance was virtually indistinguishable from the standard Supermicro server our host uses. I didn’t keep that setup, because our sustained demands, particularly on the days when our shows are broadcast, would probably overwhelm the Mac mini.

It was a worthwhile experiment, however, and I wonder if Apple has any interest in seeing the Mac mini continue to serve duty as an entry-level computer, a home server, a small office server, and perhaps some basic datacenter needs. Or maybe even a low-cost solution for people who cannot afford a Mac Pro.

Regardless of the solution, I do hope we’ll have Apple’s answer before the end of 2017.

Over the years, there has been a perception that Tim Cook is not quite the master of innovation Steve Jobs was and thus not suited to lead Apple. After all, it was Jobs who, after his return to Apple in late 1996,  shepherded the introduction of the iMac, the iPod, the iPad, and, of course, the iPhone. And let’s not forget the Mac and the original Apple computers during the early years.

A seasoned CEO would be lucky to manage even one of these achievements, let alone all of them. His very appearance at an Apple event, or during a keynote address, signaled insanely great. He had this aura about him that some regarded as a “reality distortion field,” meaning he was such a talented salesperson that he could make you believe just about anything.

Legend has it that all or most of these products only exist because of Jobs’ uniqueness, that no other CEO could possibly have done as well. Forgotten was the fact that he had his failures, too. So, although NeXT is remembered for its innovative, Unix-based operating system that formed the basis of today’s macOS, the company failed at selling hardware, and was otherwise reduced to niche status before Apple acquired the company in 1996.

During his reign at Apple, Jobs had a few failures too, such as the Power Macintosh G4 Cube. Not everything he did was a smashing success. But none of it would have happened if Apple didn’t have a talented design team for Jobs to browbeat into submission.

So the usual perception is that Tim Cook may seem like the more proper CEO what with the way he’s handled investor issues, such as granting dividends, engaging in buybacks and other actions. His keynotes may not be quite as speculator as a Steve Jobs event, but he clearly rates higher than other CEOs.

But he’s also regarded as the behind-the-scenes geek, managing Apple’s supply chain and making it possible for all these products to be assembled efficiently and with a pretty high record of reliability.

That seems to be the case until you check out a report about the rating he’s achieved courtesy of a supercomputer from, believe it or not, IBM. So according to a published report at CNET, IBM Watson’s Personality Insights has delivered results that credit Tim Cook with being Silicon Valley’s “most imaginative” leader.

Now this is not an all-inclusive conclusion based on a large base of executives. Indeed, it only consists of 11, based on data from Paysa, a job search company. The sampling included the CEOs from Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. The so-called Personality Insights report was based on “speeches, essays, books, transcripts of interviews and other forms of communication.”

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was the runner-up.

Now I suppose, if you compare Cook to the heads of the largest tech companies, this survey may be right. But it’s still a pretty narrow sampling. That means that some quite extraordinary company leaders might never rate inclusion in this computerized analysis despite their future prospects.

The long and short of it is that, perhaps, among a select group of CEOs, Cook rates really high. Perhaps that Watson conclusion is essentially correct. But you’d never believe a Gallup poll with such a small sampling.

While I have no doubt that Cook is highly imaginative, and he’s certainly become a more confident performer as he continues to make public appearances, that doesn’t mean he’s the best of the breed. But it’s also clear that Apple has done incredibly well under his leadership. You can argue that another executive might have had a sharper vision for our tech future. You might argue that Cook may have given too much power to the likes of Sir Jonathan Ive, and thus allowed him too many indulgences, such as a penchant for thinner and lighter above all else.

Or perhaps none of that is true. After all, Jobs basically made Ive a star. But since few know what Apple is actually doing behind the scenes, except what they tell us and what some former employees might be revealing (if true), most of the conclusions about the company’s design process are little more than fake news. Or maybe corporate spin.

What is true is that Apple became the number one company on the planet, by market cap, under Cook. He took a smartphone and sold it to hundreds of millions of people in the years after Steve Jobs said he’d be happy if the iPhone had a market share of one percent.

As much as I’m skeptical about this computerized analysis, I’m just as skeptical of the people who claim Cook was the wrong choice to succeed Jobs at Apple because he’s not a product person. So far, at least, he’s done pretty well, and has become the most popular CEO on the planet. You can’t complain about that, and you don’t need a questionable computer survey to confirm that view.

By fall, many of you will have an iPhone (or perhaps an Android smartphone) that is at least three years old. That’s virtually forever in the mobile business, so you’ve just got to think about what to buy next.

That doesn’t mean you should, of course. It may well be that what you have is perfectly suited to your needs, and you really don’t care about the extra features and the snappier performance. After all, an iPhone 6, for example, has a camera that was state of the art just a few years ago. Touch ID, which might have been a tad laggy on the iPhone 5s, works pretty well. It will also run iOS 11 (but the same can be said for the previous model).

All right, if you have an iPhone 5 or iPhone 5c, iOS 11 will pass you buy. That may not make a difference either. Mrs. Steinberg only uses the latter for phone calls. Her mobile device of choice is an iPad, and it’ll be compatible with the next OS upgrade. But she really doesn’t care about those fineries. She focuses mostly on email and Facebook, plus an assortment of fashion-related sites. They’ll continue to work regardless of which iOS she uses.

But speculation has it that record numbers of potential customers are out there waiting to buy what Apple is going to offer next. If it all goes as rumored, it’s about the usual mid-term iPhone refresh, perhaps a better iPhone SE, plus the premium model still referred to as the iPhone 8.

For months, you’ve read stories, unconfirmed as usual, that Apple has run into serious trouble putting some new features on its flagship smartphone. Touch ID, essential for products and services from Apple and other companies, may not even work. Or it’ll be put in the rear because Apple, like Samsung, couldn’t figure out a way to embed it in the new OLED display. I won’t make a huge deal over the fact that Apple, having acquired fingerprint sensor technology in its purchase of AuthenTec, isn’t using the same IP as other companies. So don’t assume Apple is constrained by the same limitations.

Ignoring the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S8 has a flawed facial sensor, there are stories that the iPhone 8 will have a 3D facial recognition system, only it may not work right away. As with Portrait Mode on the iPhone 7 Plus, it may require a future software update. If it’s not the primary biometric, that may not be a critical shortcoming. Or the rumor may not even be true. It’s out there to convey the illusion that Apple is poised to release a flawed product.

You mean like Samsung?

So the Galaxy S8 has facial recognition and iris sensors that can be defeated by photos. So much for bragging rights. Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant, reportedly developed by some of the people responsible for Siri, is presently limited to “early preview” access by a small number of customers. Or maybe Samsung’s servers can’t handle the load, so they are rolling it out incrementally.

Or maybe Samsung is hoping that you’ll forget about it, and it’s now busy working on next year’s Galaxy series, where it will be fully functional, take it to the bank. Or not.

And don’t forget that Siri debuted on the iPhone 4s in 2011. It was a beta, labeled as such. It was buggy, but it was made available to anyone who lived in a country in which Siri was conversant.

Long and short is that it is certainly possible that Apple may not have all of the features enabled on the alleged iPhone 8. But I suspect it won’t be near as bad as the critics claim, and it might be resolved well before the holiday buying season begins.

This comes before the stories that Apple won’t be able to keep up with initial demand. There’s even a report that Apple may only have five million iPhone 8 copies to ship at the start, but that pronouncement may also be meant to make customers doubt they can get what they want. So maybe they’ll buy something else from a different company? Dream on!

Then there’s the price. Initial reports put it above $1,000, which sounds like a lot, but it might fall $100 above an iPhone 7 Plus, which would probably make sense. But now there’s a published report claiming it’ll be closer to the mid-$900 range. Perhaps Apple plans to be more aggressive on pricing, and even lower the cost of the mainstream iPhones. It’s not that Apple can’t afford to cut prices yet still maintain high profit margins.

After all, Apple has been earning around 90% of the profits of the entire smartphone industry. Years and years of building hundreds of millions of units have surely shown Apple the way to reduce component and assembly costs. Considering that Apple got attacked for higher price points for the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, this would be a refreshing change.

True, a possible $100 price reduction might seem like a lot, but it’s only a few dollars a month on the usual smartphone purchase plan. But it’ll sound significant, and don’t forget Apple cut prices on the Apple Watch, and even the 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display had its price reductions with the 2015 refresh.

By the time a real iPhone 8 comes out, I might just be too bored to care.

Most of you know about this, but it doesn’t make the policy any easier to tolerate. So Mrs. Steinberg and I were looking for something to watch Saturday night. Most of our favorite TV shows are on their summer hiatus, and there are a handful of summer shows, from SyFy and other channels, which only occupy a few hours of our time each week.

So we went hunting on iTunes for something worth watching, and there wasn’t much to see in terms of recent action and sci-fi fare. A couple of weeks back, we ran across “Doctor Strange,” the movie about the Marvel magical super hero, on Netflix. We’re currently catching up with Iron Fist, yet another Marvel super hero.

We returned to iTunes, and ran across a recent Tom Cruise film, “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.” It’s about a former military investigator turned vigilante who has a penchant for beating up bad people and performing impossible stunts. To be fair, it’s what might be called a “B” grade action movie, and Cruise’s age is starting to show.

But at 99 cents, it was a decent way to spend a couple of hours, until, of course, the clock got in the way.

You see, when you rent a movie from iTunes, you have 30 days to start watching it, after which it expires and you have to rent it again. But once you start the movie, you better finish it in 24 hours or it self-destructs. Considering that Cruise also stars in the Mission Impossible franchise, that sounds appropriate.

Well, you know what happened next. We stopped the movie halfway through and expected to finish the next evening. Unfortunately, we sat down for dinner an hour or two later than usual, and thus, when we tried to pick up where we left off, the movie had expired. We had to rent it again.

At 99 cents, it was no big deal. But when you rent a movie for $4.99 or $5.99, the usual price for current HD fare, having to rent a second time gets a little silly. This is particularly true with many movies available for sale at $14.99 to $19.99.

Or maybe that’s what the movie studios prefer.

Now if I lived in another country, I would have 48 hours to watch the movie, and I wonder why U.S. citizens receive second-class treatment.

In case you’re wondering, I checked out the policy for Amazon Prime Video and, yes, it’s the same. It’s fair to assume this policy is set by the movie companies, not by the individual streaming services.

Now I realize the entertainment industry wants to protect itself from movie piracy. As much as you probably don’t care if Tom Cruise earns another $53 million from acting (that’s the estimate for his 2016 paycheck), there are tens of thousands of journeyman actors and production people that struggle to earn enough money to carve out a middle class existence. People should be paid for their labor, regardless of the amount. It’s only fair.

But does it make sense to inconvenience customers because of draconian rental licensing policies? How does that make you feel warm and fuzzy about renting a movie? In our situation, it was just a matter of timing. Normally when we rent a movie, there’s plenty of time to finish it. But imagine a family with several kids and the difficulty of coordinating the right time for everyone to sit together to share such an experience. More often than not, the 24 hour window is just too discouraging.

Now in the old days, when you’d rent physical DVDs from Netflix, you could keep and watch one as long as you want, and after it was returned, you’d get another disc. At the local video store, you’d normally keep your rented movies a week or a weekend before it had to be returned. Nobody forced you to watch it all within 24 ours or lose access.

Of course, this is also the price of somewhat early access. After a few months, maybe the movie will show up free on cable TV, or on Netflix. Still, the 24 hour requirement just doesn’t make sense from any logical point of view beyond greed and paranoia.

So can Apple and Amazon do something to change the state of affairs? It doesn’t seem as if it’s terribly high on their agendas. Don’t expect statements from Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos that customers deserve the right to possess a movie rental for more than 24 hours after they start to watch it.

But what about Vudu, Walmart’s video rental service? Any extra benefits? Not at all. It’s the same policy, the same 30 days to start watching and the same 24 hour window to finish before you have to pay to rent it again.

Now the tech industry no doubt has more important issues to consider. Apple has to get the next generation iPhones out on time — and I’m skeptical about the claims about production delays. Amazon is, no doubt, working on a new Echo with better quality speakers, and a version of Amazon Prime Video for the Apple TV.

They don’t care about movie rental limits. Or maybe they would, if one of those high-profile tech pundits actually asked them if they were going to do something about it.