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2018 Mac Mini Review

marco.org

131–140 of 653 posts

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#131
post #92
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No! Looks very interesting, thanks! (^_^) Will give it a shot.

Bung Kodi on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ - You'll be pleasantly surprised I think. Downside is... 99% of raspberry pi cases are really ugly :(

It may be better with III but with a Raspberry Pie II XBMC/Kodi is quite slow and a bit laggy.

Personally, I switch to an Intel NUC with a fanless akasa case, and aside from the occasional Lodi crash it works relatively well.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#132
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a 2016 13" MBP to use it on an external display. It only works well on 2.5K. Always consider the GPU nowadays.

That's strange. I use an early 2015 13" model which happily drives two external 4k displays simultaneously. I'm not running them high-DPI though – the performance there is noticeably worse.

On scaling other than 2x, it's unusable, while the MBP mobile Radeon Pro is good enough. They should have included that at least.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#133
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used Linux Mint on a Lenovo Thinkcentre micro-PC for a while, at 2x scaling on a 1080p TV. Now I've changed over to KDE Neon (because the KDE UI is more flexible) at around 2.5x scaling, and it's a bit more comfortable. The main input device is a Logitech wireless keyboard with a touchpad. I mostly play videos through SMPlayer/VLC, so it doesn't need anything fancy.

A dedicated 10-foot UI would maybe work better, but as a low-cost low-effort solution, this works great. I got the PC for free (somebody was throwing it out at work) and the keyboard plus a DP to HDMI cable was $35 total. It plays 1080p x265 just fine.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#134
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tired meme, Windows drivers are the only ones you have to "fiddle" with out of band, I can't even think of another OS where going to a third-party website to download an executable is how you install drivers for the machine. (Not OSX, not BSD, not Linux). Buy any desktop in any supermarket in the world and it's going to work out of the box with the latest Ubuntu. This has been the case for 5 years now. If you have so…

What meme? I was speaking about personal experience. > but for instance I "I" being the key word there. On the other hand, I have had issues with Linux drivers every year.

What distro, what type of machine? Because I’ve been prolific in my purchase of brand new hardware and I have had only the most minute of issues.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#135
post #104

A $2500 desktop computer with integrated graphics? Honestly, it feels like a bit of a joke.

A huge chunk of that is the SSD. It's actually very reasonably priced, especially considering that you get a Mac ecosystem along with the computer.

The price for those SSD upgrade are more than double of the current Retail Pro Level SSD at same capacity and similar speed. Which Apple saves on SSD Controller, better NAND pricing, no retail and distributor margin. Even though I expected the Apple SSD upgrade were to be expensive, those upgrade price levels are simply ridiculous.

The DRAM too but at least I could upgrade that myself to 64GB.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#136
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is still massive conflict of interest. They want to continue getting these review units, and Apple is known for "being offended" and blacklisting people from media events and review units. None of the reviews I've seen from "general public" "reviewers", in the year or so Apple has been doing it, have provided real criticism. It's always "fine", always "great", big issues are glossed upon. At the very least, App…

If you listened to Marcos podcasts, you'd know that he has been very critical of the most of the Macs that have come out in recent years. He remains critical of most of their laptops. That doesn't mean there is not still a conflict of interest in principle. But in practice, I would say he has a track record that proves, that he is not afraid to bite the hand that feeds him.[1] With or without conflicts of interest, there's really no substitute for getting to know a reviewer to find out if you generally share that person's sense of what is valuable and not.

[1] Maybe it really isn't the hand that feeds him. Marco's primary gig is his podcast player for iOS.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#137

I bought a mac mini ten years ago (for about E400?). It still lives on today as my parent's desktop. I passed to them many years ago and not one problem. Fantastic machine. However I cannot justify the prices they're asking for these ones. I'm looking for a new machine for myself now, but no way will these be considered.

Let me get this straight: You would not consider paying a premium for a machine even though your experience tells you, that it has a useful life of 10+ years?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#138
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's strange. I use an early 2015 13" model which happily drives two external 4k displays simultaneously. I'm not running them high-DPI though – the performance there is noticeably worse.

I have a 2017 13" and while it was working with a single 4k screen at 60 Hz, it simply isn't fun working on it since everything is laggy and stuttering.

I guess that high dpi then as well?

I found that wasn’t really nice to use because of the stuttering, but native 4K was much better. You need good eyesight though :)

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#139
post #9

The review doesnt tell you that you cannot upgrade or replace your SSD.

Which also means the entire thing has to be thrown out when the SSD eventually dies. Sure it's going to take a while, but it will happen. Yay consumerism, I guess.
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