2018 Mac Mini Review • Hacker News Board

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#161

Post by me551ah » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:05 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…

I personally use Xbox and Roku along with Plex running on a windows desktop computer which is powerful enough to do transcoding.

All of the video files reside on a local windows machine and a cheap storage VPS on the cloud(located in NL). Both of the machines run plex server and auto transcode all content to an MP4 container ( HEVC for 4k content ). I force plex on the xbox to direct play all content and it usually works pretty well.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#162

Post by berberous » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:05 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.

I doubt it -- the number of users who use a Mac Mini as an entertainment center is probably so small Apple barely thinks about them. More likely is that HDMI has superseded the optical audio port for most users, so they save money by removing a port few use these days.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#163

Post by ntsplnkv2 » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:06 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?

All of my experiences with Mac have been like this.

Got a MBP for college, 2009. Still running as my mom's laptop in 2018. Meanwhile my dad's 2 year old dell has endless problems, it's incredibly cheap, despite having better internal hardware. It's slower, needed tons of configuration out of the box, and Windows 10 is just awful. My dad's laptop constantly has issues. My mom? Never once. It just works.

I will gladly pay for a product that is like that. I don't care what an SSD costs on Amazon. I don't want to spend time looking up components and motherboards and bargain hunting. I don't care about gaming and therefore the GPU. People on here look at numbers and costs but they never consider the customer experience.

It's far more damning of Apple to have the bad keyboard on the new MBPs than have some overpriced hardware. Ask 99% of people on the street if they even know what an i7 is.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#164

Post by matt4077 » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #11

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

It starts at $800, and you can instantly save $600 even for this top-of-the-line model by installing RAM yourself (it's user-upgradable again).

The model & price reviewed here is the "let's not stop people from throwing money at us" option.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#165

Post by drej » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

Macs aside - this video clearly shows the wonderful experience you can get when an audio/video producer cares about audio quality. Spoken word recorded with clear audio is so lovely.

I listen to podcasts and audiobooks on a daily basis and I really really appreciate someone putting the effort into this. Thanks!

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#166

Post by endorphone » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:12 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.

I would say most uses of the mac mini are simply as a desktop computer. It's what I use as my primary OSX workstation -- I have an old late 2012 model, upgraded with 16GB and an external SSD that I made the primary -- and it works fantastic. I plan on getting the new model.

Two monitors. Monitors that are exactly what I want.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#167

Post by muro » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:12 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…

Why do you need a PC at all? A TV can play movies directly from a NAS.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#168

Post by basejumping » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

thirdsun wrote: post #159

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, i…

Looking to buy a 4k 27 inch external monitor for my 2018 macbook. What's the problem with it and why is it not better than a 1080p?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#169

Post by H1Supreme » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

kakwa_ wrote: post #131

Jaruzel wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not particularly great with the Pi III either. I have one, and I find it's under powered for the "media server" role. Especially, if more than one person connects. I like it for lots of other things, but this isn't one of them.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#170

Post by LeoPanthera » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #139

thresh wrote: 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.

Technically not. You can boot from an external thunderbolt SSD, which is capable of the same speeds as an internal drive. It’s mildly ugly, but not a showstopper.

But I thought that modern SSDs were supposed to last decades, even under heavy use. Is this actually a real problem?