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2018 Mac Mini Review

marco.org

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#71

Post by veidr »

bo0tzz wrote: post #48

"...cost $2499 (much of which is the SSD)" The cheapest SSD I can find goes for €129.47, and it doesn't seem to get up to much more for consumer SSDs. Unless this SSD has some crazy specs that I'm missing, it seems seriously overpriced to me.

Apple charges +$600 (USD) for a 0.25 → 1TB SSD upgrade.

I heard some complaints, but was all like "Yeah, but modern Apple SSDs are 3GB/sec, that is pretty good, bros..."

My coworker clued me in, though:

    1TB samsung 970Pro M.2 (3GB/s) 
    was as low as AUD$304 here just
    yesterday.   Thats ~USD$215.  I
    don't usually mind paying the 
    _AppleTax_ but that is ridiculously 
    overpriced.
I buy all sorts of overpriced Apple shit, but that is so overpriced it's kinda offensive.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#72

Post by xuki »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #20
jpkeisala wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't say there was too much criticism on this review.

Well, you know, we waited years for a new Mac mini replacement, and we got one that is very disappointing on the low end, very expensive on the high end, no clear future support, missing features from previous iterations, but hey, it’s amazing machine because Apple finally graced us with it and I got it for free, so let me overlook that 2500$ price tag.

Those units are not given out for free. Apple get them back after the review period. It would be a massive conflict of interest otherwise.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#73

Post by tomduncalf »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #52

Ugh, all the comments about how it's overpriced in this thread. "This is crazy! You can just build your own for half the price!" Snooze. You could have made this comment about most of Apple's products for decades. Some people apparently just don't get it, so here it is from my perspective: As long as Apple does what I need, I'm not going to buy anything else. I'm definitely not going to build my own PC to save a few…

100% this, but for people who don't make money from using the computer I can see how the high prices are a real problem

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#74

Post by logifail »

winuser wrote: post #34
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you know, we waited years for a new Mac mini replacement, and we got one that is very disappointing on the low end, very expensive on the high end, no clear future support, missing features from previous iterations, but hey, it’s amazing machine because Apple finally graced us with it and I got it for free, so let me overlook that 2500$ price tag.

I really wish that devs out there, including the HN community, give PCs and Windows another chance. The PC specs are amazing, value for your money is excellent, the OS is beautiful - the biggest obstacle now is so much open source documentation explains how to install or build on a linux based machine, ignoring the Windows users and making them feel like sh*t for working on a Windows box. If more dev's offered docs a…

Pity that it's so hard to source W10 Enterprise LTSC (previously LTSB), you can bypass pretty much all Windows Update woes that way, miss out completely on Cortana and Edge, and avoid having "features" no-one asked for rammed down your throat every few months.

Despite Microsoft's FUD[0] ("The Long Term Servicing Channel, which is designed to be used only for specialized devices (which typically don't run Office) such as those that control medical equipment or ATM machines"), it also appears to run Just Fine[tm] on the latest desktop hardware[1]

It's the only version of W10 I'll go near.

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w... [1] I've had W10 LTSB 2016 running for months on two home-built Ryzen boxes (1x 2700X + 1x 2400G)

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#75

Post by jemurray »

winuser wrote: post #18
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #10

Apple’s new strategy seems to be, instead of having products that sell themselves for their clear benefits, just flood either YouTube casuals or Twitter “celebrities” (depending on target segment) with the highest end config machine and expect praise.

That has always been Apple's MO. Ever since their "Think Different" marketing campaign, where they realized they can convince the sheep to follow if they associate with the brightest minds and celebrities (e.g., put an Apple logo next to Einstein, next to an astronaut, etc.) without actually offering a better product. It's always been a fashion statement to own an Apple product... What bothers me is how the technical…

Since I am part of this aforementioned technical community, I will spend a few extra dollars in order to get: 1) high resolution screen, 2) large track pad that works well, 3) native "unix like" shell, 4) sleep that works 100% reliably when I close the lid.

I don't consider it a fashion statement, I just want it to work. After 20+ years I don't like to tinker with my desktop anymore. I would go back to Gnu/Linux for desktop, but finding the right hardware with the above specs is a challenge if not impossible (I have yet to find a track pad driver that works as well as Apples).

I have not reevaluated in 2018, If there is anything better I would like to hear specific examples of hardware and OS combinations?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#76

Post by frou_dh »

winuser wrote: post #18
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #10

Apple’s new strategy seems to be, instead of having products that sell themselves for their clear benefits, just flood either YouTube casuals or Twitter “celebrities” (depending on target segment) with the highest end config machine and expect praise.

That has always been Apple's MO. Ever since their "Think Different" marketing campaign, where they realized they can convince the sheep to follow if they associate with the brightest minds and celebrities (e.g., put an Apple logo next to Einstein, next to an astronaut, etc.) without actually offering a better product. It's always been a fashion statement to own an Apple product... What bothers me is how the technical…

Most people I've heard this rant from, when further questioned, have barely touched a Mac and don't know anything about macOS to be able to substantively trash it.

Approximately how many cumulative weeks have you spent in OS X / macOS?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#77

Post by dancsi »

veidr wrote: post #49
blinkingled wrote: post #12

The pricing is not really justifiable especially given the most use cases of the Mac mini (Home Theater, NAS, Backup etc.) are better handled by other OSes. The NUC8 with comparable specs (sans 6 core CPU) comes at under half the price! If you needed the 6 cores sure but given most workloads other than encoding don't - it's questionable. Even then the 6C processor doesn't cost enough to make up for the difference.

What OSes are better for a "Home Theater" TV computer?? That's a serious question; I recently replaced a creaking old Mac Mini (that couldn't do 4K) with a new Dell, after going a little bicurious with respect to Windows 10 (for software development work)... and, surprisingly, it's a complete and utter shitshow. I was astonished, actually; I had assumed Windows would be better than macOS as a TV computer, other than…

Have you tried Kodi (kodi.tv)?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#78

Post by rangibaby »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #66
rangibaby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advantages does Windows offer over Linux other than gaming?

Software and drivers that consistently work without the need for fiddling. Every year I give Linux a chance, and every year I quickly sober up.

I have dual booted Ubuntu for ~3 years on my MacBook Pro (13” late 2013 model) and used it as my main OS.

I had to install a webcam driver but other than that everything just worked(TM)

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#79

Post by lucideer »

veidr wrote: post #49
blinkingled wrote: post #12

The pricing is not really justifiable especially given the most use cases of the Mac mini (Home Theater, NAS, Backup etc.) are better handled by other OSes. The NUC8 with comparable specs (sans 6 core CPU) comes at under half the price! If you needed the 6 cores sure but given most workloads other than encoding don't - it's questionable. Even then the 6C processor doesn't cost enough to make up for the difference.

What OSes are better for a "Home Theater" TV computer?? That's a serious question; I recently replaced a creaking old Mac Mini (that couldn't do 4K) with a new Dell, after going a little bicurious with respect to Windows 10 (for software development work)... and, surprisingly, it's a complete and utter shitshow. I was astonished, actually; I had assumed Windows would be better than macOS as a TV computer, other than…

Since the gp also mentioned NAS and backup, I would presume they're definitely talking about some ∗nix, yes.

I'm not sure if Linux would make for a play-for-play better home theatre OS than MacOS, but it would certainly be both better than Windows, and better value than a Mac.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#80

Post by makomk »

akfanta wrote: post #56
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> much of which is the SSD A 1 TB SSD is on the order of $150.

Not saying the price is not outrageous but I found it ironic that you spec maniacs can’t tell the difference between a sata ssd vs pcie ssd. You will be hard pressed to find retail ssd that’s remotely close to the performance in these new macs.

For users that care, a 1TB PCIe SSD currently costs a mere $230 (for the Samsung 970 EVO on Newegg, which has pretty impressive performance). Sure, that's slightly more expensive, but it's nowhere near the premium Apple are charging. On the other hand, users who don't need the extra performance still have to pay through the nose for it - and arguably the difference between SSD and HDD is more important from a user experience perspective than the difference between SATA and PCIe.
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