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2018 Mac Mini Review

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#291
post #165

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!

Anyone looking for crystal clear vocals should do exactly what NPR does: Stick a Neumann U87 six inches from the mouth with the bass rolled off and use a P-pop and Bob's your uncle. Money will be an issue with the U87, so you can look for good clones; there are a few in the market.

Boy oh boy, I can't stand that sound. Must be years of being trapped in other kids' parents' cars, who were educated and listened to NPR. I just wanted to listen to Big Douche and the Boys talk over the intro to Enter Sandman, like my high school dropout parents would.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#292
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 think the GP uses the MacMini as a "hack" to be able to back up the NAS cheaply with Backblaze's unlimited personal desktop backup offering (there's no official Linux client, imho):

"Get peace of mind knowing your files are backed up securely in the cloud. Backup your Mac or PC just $5/month."

And use their GUI program on MacOS and sync that remote NAS storage folder.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I have a NUC7 (NUC7i5BNH) in a silent Akasa Newton case. It's great, I love having a completely silent computer. I tested the original case, and it was fairly noisy, like a busy laptop. I don't recommend it. You may find it slightly cheaper if you install the RAM and SSD yourself. This would be easy with the normal case. Installing the silent case was more tricky, since it requires using thermal paste to connect the…

That's very good to know, thanks!

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because it can't be made to be "just an option". Having seen teardowns of a MacBook, I'm pretty sure that one without a touchbar would be more-or-less a completely different computer - different keyboard, yes. To accomplish that, though, you'd need to also make a different housing to accommodate it, and a different motherboard, too, because this stuff's all soldered together as a single unit these days. And…

They sell a version without a touchbar. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro

A low end 2-port version, yes.

They ignored those for the 2018 MBP refresh, probably because the new Macbook Air was coming. I'd bet on the full keyboard MBP getting discontinued now that it's out, or best case having the 2017 hang around while the touchbar models continue to see updates.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#295
post #165

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!

I had a hard time watching him talk because the over dubbed audio is completely out of sync. It's really bad right around the 1 minute mark. I ended up minimizing the window and just listening. I honestly don't care for this audio, it's crystal clear and perfect for a podcast but the video is of him sitting in front of a window with a dog and the absence of any environmental noise is odd.

Agreed. It's drifting around and rarely in sync.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#296
post #97

I’m pretty sure I would rather buy an iMac than a Mac mini. An iMac at least comes with a display, and the base 4K version is competitive in price and features as far as I can tell.

I bought an iMac last year and regretted it. The performance was fine, but I ended up disliking the fact that it was an all-in-one. The fact that you can get iMac performance without a display attached is a big feature of the new Mac mini for me.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple lent me a high-end configuration for review — 6-core i7, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD The problem is that the i7 has hyper-threading, which creates a giant security hole in your system. I'd be much more interested in the i5 benchmarks, since the i5 (supposedly) does not have hyper-threading.

The "giant security hole" I assume you're referring to isn't particularly worrisome for your own hardware running trusted software. It's more of a problem in a shared environment where you don't know who else is running code.

> The "giant security hole" I assume you're referring to isn't particularly worrisome for your own hardware running trusted software.

My concern is mainly javascript or webasm running in the browser. Even if there aren't currently any unpatched exploits of this nature, that's no guarantee that there won't be in the future.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That turned out to be rubbish. You can easily disable secure boot.

From the link: > Update 2: It looks like even if disabling the Secure Boot functionality, the T2 chip is reportedly still blocking operating systems aside from macOS and Windows 10. That seems to contradict your claim, and I haven't seen that refuted elsewhere.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/11/apple-t2-chip-cant-boot-...

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, if we're giving anecdotes, I bought a Dell laptop in 2006, refurbished for something like $600. I was able to upgrade it over the years all the way to Windows 10 (I think I paid $40 for the Windows 7 upgrade at one point). The only thing that failed for me on that machine was the built-in wifi. I only ended up getting rid of it two years ago because I really had no use for it, and had long since replaced both my laptop and my desktop machines by then.

Topically - it was at one point driving my television off this old E1505 and got a 2010 Mac Mini as a Christmas present, and hooked that up instead. Netflix and Hulu chugged on the Mac Mini, which also locked up for no reason from time to time. I literally installed nothing but Flash, for playing back videos.

Hulu and Netflix ran without hiccups or lag on the 2006 Dell laptop, so we put the laptop back.

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