Live data from Hacker News

My Next Mac Mini

rustyshelf.org

151–160 of 361 posts

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgot to mention - fanless.

Well, I've checked the current offerings and I can't find any that doesn't have "19 V DC" as the power supply description. I guess I'm statistically irrelevant in their market.

Digging around behind the tv and it's a oversize plug and thin wire rather than a laptop style plug-cable-transformer-cable-computer set up. Not quite the mains-to-box set up you're after.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy this argument. Developers will work on platforms that have users with money to spend, even if the development hardware is poor value. In this sense, Apple has us hostage!

I have no data, but I'd wager that iOS developers who sell directly to end users are rare nowadays. Most of us are paid good money to build apps for bigger companies that make their money outside of the App Store. Often we don't even use our own Mac for that, so as a first step, we might use a Mac at work and Windows/Linux at home. If we left the ecosystem, the cost of native iOS development would increase, and compa…

Paid apps are essentially dead on iOS and Android, thanks to both of their terrible policies. Both search algorithms for each platform place way to much weight on volume (downloads, ratings, reviews) over other attributes which they could track (like user retention.)

This means a well polished, but expensive app can be easily ousted out of a top search result spot by a rushed clone at a lower price point, even if people end up deleting the crappy one after a day or two anyways. Basically both modern app stores place a ton of value on "new" things but don't care about software built to last. So as a dev you are incentivized to abandon your old projects and just stick out new ones every few months. And on iOS it gets even worse with paid search ads which can be targeted at competitor app names.

Couple that with a 30% revenue cut, no access to your users (So you have no ability to refund them or discount future purchases), and the stores having the ability to oust you at any time and it becomes obvious that the only sustainable business is continuous crap-ware or SaaS with your main business outside the App Store. Just look at the Top Grossing chart, there isn't a single paid app till around 80 and even then the app is Minecraft.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#153
I remember going to the Apple Store the week they released the 2014 Mac Mini, taking one look, and going back to my campus bookstore and buying the last of the 2012 Mac Minis. Still very happy with that purchase.

Not sure about the rationale behind most of Apple's design decisions the last couple years...

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#154

I had the same experience as the OP. My Mac Mini was getting old, and the fan was making a worrisome noise. I wasn't going to buy the "latest" Mini, since it is very stale, hard to upgrade and expensive for what it is. Funnily enough I was already running Windows on that Mini anyway, so my next computer didn't have to be a Mac. But I did enjoy the small footprint, and I have to say that the Mac is probably the easies…

There are brands that build absolutely awesome fanless cases on top of Intel NUC boards. I recommend those:

http://www.aleutia.com/computers/

http://www.cirrus7.com/produkte

Intel is a bit lazy. Many manufacturers are selling cheap fanless devices for a lot less money. Their Core m3 is a fanless CPU. They should release a fanless NUC themselves.

I love NUCs because their hardware just works on Linux and they are relatively affordable. Fanless cooling would make them perfect.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#155

I had the same experience as the OP. My Mac Mini was getting old, and the fan was making a worrisome noise. I wasn't going to buy the "latest" Mini, since it is very stale, hard to upgrade and expensive for what it is. Funnily enough I was already running Windows on that Mini anyway, so my next computer didn't have to be a Mac. But I did enjoy the small footprint, and I have to say that the Mac is probably the easies…

I believe NUCs are targeted towards businesses to be honest. I have a couple of them, and they are very boring, but high quality. Plenty of different configurations, but Intel isnt really trying to sell pre-built windows boxes (unless you buy a bunch of them consistently)

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#156

Nowadays, I kind of enjoy seeing posts about people abandoning Apple ecosystem. Although it's painful, I myself have been yet another avid fan of pretty much Apple offered, it feels like this is not going to last forever. When they do the math, iPhone might seem the most lucrative (they seem not to care about anything else) but since they are killing the ecosystem with no Mac Pro, no Mac Mini and with so called pro M…

I'm still disappointed by no Cinema Display and Apple leaving the display business. I'm baffled by this. Touchbar is innovative to some degree, but I usually connect my Macbook Pro to a bigger display and close it—making touchbar useless. So disappointed by Apple lately...

The touchbar also increases security so it's not useless even if you close the laptop.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#157
Someone here needs to explain it to me because I just don't understand.

We have the largest computer company in the world, a shit load of people work there, supposedly smart people. Yet they can't put together a refresh of many of their desktop machines. Why the fuck not? What do all those people getting paid all that money do all day? I can only imagine the conversations, "it takes years it has to be super innovative". No it fucking doesn't not on the PC, just put the latest processors and tech in it. You don't have to innovate every fucking time, not on the desktop PC. We see this all the time with Apple devices and I can't understand it.

I mean I don't understand what do they do all day every day for 800 days that they can't refresh this simple Machine. Maybe I'm being nieve here or I'm missing something.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#159
post #12
post #3

Apple's attitude to the Mac mini truly confuses me. Many years ago I was interested in getting one for eithet iPhone development or as a media pc but every time I looked they kept seeming to jack the price or downgrade the spec (relatively speaking).

TBH I've never understood what Apple gets out of selling the Mac Mini. It cannibalizes their own low-end laptops/desktops, and at the same time must be quite a marginal product mainly sold to a small number of hackers who probably put Linux on them.

Quite a while ago (~2007) I bought a Mac Mini which I used as my main machine for quite some time (until 2011 or so, I think). I did a lot of programming on it. It was a very good machine and frankly, if Apple were to upgrade it to a decent spec (for 2017), I'd buy one on the spot.

I don't need a laptop and, consequently, I don't want to pay a single penny for portability.

My previous monitor was almost ten years old when I gave it away, and I'd have kept on using it if I hadn't had to buy a larger one (tl;dr small desk, got a big 1080p monitor and hung it on the wall behind the desk for extra space). Unless an iMac is going to last me 10-12 years, there's no point in paying a single penny for a monitor that I'm going to stop using when the computer it's glued to goes obsolete. Sexy design, stupid engineering.

That leaves me to choose between a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro. I don't need a Xeon machine, but a three year-old dual-core i5 machine with a crawling hard disk isn't quite on-par with what I need, either.

My current machine is a five year-old quad-core i7 that's running just fine. My only beef with it is that between 2012 and 2017, a bunch of things happened on Linux and now I'd really, really rather use OS X (hell, I'd rather use Windows if it didn't shove ads down my throat...).

An up-to-date Mac Mini would be exactly what I need -- small, runs OS X, doesn't come with a bunch of hardware that I don't need, can run Emacs, compile C programs, run Perl/Python/whatever scripts, plays music and ssh-es into other boxes (my current machine does all that, too, except its OS keeps breaking)

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#160
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Differences in hardware matter in subtle ways too with new versions of MacOS. For example, AirDrop or Handoff work seamlessly on the latest hardware, but frustratingly work one day then not the next at random on older hardware. The difference is Bluetooth versions 2.0 compared to 4 or 4.2, but one wouldn't likely even realize what version of Bluetooth a computer has. The NUC he describes sounds perfect for what he wa…

> Furthermore I don't think there is any Mac that has HDMI 2.0 ... MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2016) and late-2016 MacBook Pro models support 60Hz refresh rates over HDMI when used with a supported HDMI 2.0 display, an HDMI Premium Certified cable, and a supported USB-C to HDMI 2.0 adapter. Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587

I think the keyword is "when used with a supported display" here. I have yet to find a 4K display for my mac pro that actually works at 60hz.
Post reply on HN