2018 Mac Mini Review • Hacker News Board

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#151

Post by dev_north_east » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

adamlett wrote: post #137

dev_north_east wrote: post #17

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?

1 - it wouldn't be suitable for me now (nor for the past few years).

2 - I remember there being a big differential in equivalently priced machines back then. One of my current work Dell workstations is a much cheaper option than this Mac, much better specced and I've had no issues with it for over two years.

3 - It's £800 for the thing, seems way out of line with inflation compared to what I bought then.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#152

Post by garblegarble » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 1:55 PM UTC

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.

>The NUC8 with comparable specs (sans 6 core CPU) comes at under half the price!

I'm actually very interested in these - could you point me at some? I've been interested in getting a NUC8 machine, but the cheapest I can find one for (granted, in the UK) is £750 before RAM & SSD... and I have been seriously considering the new Mac Mini as a result because the final price doesn't seem like it'll be much different.

edit: found some on SimplyNUC.co.uk starting at £650 (inc VAT), 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD, awesome! https://simplynuc.co.uk/8i7beh-full/

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#153

Post by dbcooper » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

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…

Windows 10 with MadVR for video rendering with GPU upscaling, and a 3D LUT for colour correction.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#154

Post by nsnick » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #149

someguydave wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use optical audio in a mac mini as a home theater TV driver. No thanks.

Now that I think about it, axing the optical audio ports was probably a deliberate move by Apple to nudge home TV users of mac minis into using Apple TVs, where they have way more control over the interface and content. edit: apparently Apple TV doesn't have optical audio either.

The AppleTV doesn't have optical audio either.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#155

Post by someguydave » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

nsnick wrote: post #154

someguydave wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I think about it, axing the optical audio ports was probably a deliberate move by Apple to nudge home TV users of mac minis into using Apple TVs, where they have way more control over the interface and content. edit: apparently Apple TV doesn't have optical audio either.

The AppleTV doesn't have optical audio either.

Ok well I guess that's even dumber than I thought. I hope apple takes that $2 per device savings in optical audio parts laughing to the bank.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#156

Post by throwaway9d0291 » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #143

lucideer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Unless you used optical audio, audio input, or the SD-card reader" Craftily hidden in a footnote for that paragraph.

I use optical audio in a mac mini as a home theater TV driver. No thanks.

These days optical audio is dying when it comes to home theater systems, primarily due to its lack of codec support. You can't passthrough DTS-HD over optical, you can over HDMI.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#157

Post by IkmoIkmo » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

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.

Plus I don't really see why a crazy-spec SSD is really key here. It's not going to be the bottleneck for most use cases in a Mac Mini that has an integrated graphics card (at $2.5k...) A regular SSD would do.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#158

Post by bluegreyred » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #149

someguydave wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use optical audio in a mac mini as a home theater TV driver. No thanks.

Now that I think about it, axing the optical audio ports was probably a deliberate move by Apple to nudge home TV users of mac minis into using Apple TVs, where they have way more control over the interface and content. edit: apparently Apple TV doesn't have optical audio either.

Don't judge, maybe the next version of the mac mini will be waterproof!

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#159

Post by thirdsun » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

rado wrote: post #15

In a world of 5K displays and Apple's insistence on smoothness, this GPU just won't work.

Is that really an issue with Intel's integrated GPUs? Honestly asking.

I'm considering a Mac Mini, but there's no way I'm going back to low PPI displays and the lack of affordable 5K / 27" options concerns me (in my opinion 4K/UHD at 27" is a borderline unusable combination with its effective resolution of 1080p - feel free to convince me otherwise).

If those few 5K options can't be driven smoothly by an Intel GPU, it's settled and I'm waiting for an iMac update instead. Ideally I'd like a multi monitor setup though.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#160

Post by drcongo » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

realradicalwash wrote: post #95

dTal wrote: post #35

>Number one — and this is a big one these days, especially for this product — is that it’s not any less useful or versatile than the outgoing Mac Mini, including the generous assortment of ports. If the previous one served a role for you, the new one can probably do it just as well, and probably better and faster, with minimal donglage. Wow. This is what it's come to. "It hasn't gotten worse! Yayy!"

The quote is a bit out of context. The sentence right above it: >It makes almost nothing worse and almost everything better, finally bringing the Mac Mini into the modern age. So, no, it's not "yayy" because it "hasn't gotten worse", it's "yayy", because "[it makes] almost everything better".

Anyone who owns a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will definitely be saying "yay it hasn't gotten worse!" about these.