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2018 Mac Mini Review

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#341

Post by phaus »

crad wrote: post #247
drcongo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm pretty happy with mine, but thanks for speaking for us all with your sweeping generalization.

I work at a company where most of us use Macs. Everyone that has upgraded from a 2013-2015 MBP to the touchbar model absolutely hates it, including me. There's gotta be someone around here that actually likes it, but I haven't met them yet.

Its OK if you like it. I'm sure lots of people do, but you know damn well significantly more people have had issues with this laptop than normal, so I'm not sure why you're implying otherwise.

The keyboard is by far the worst I've ever used, and I've owned a variety of $200 Wal-Mart black friday laptops and a couple of netbooks, in addition to some high end stuff. I had a friend with an older MBP attempt to show me something using my computer and he could barely type on it without frequent mistakes. Within a minute he was getting frustrated. It just feels terrible. I never thought anything would be worse than typing on a touch-screen but Apple's engineers have accomplished a horrifying miracle. Its like they intentionally tried to design something that's as loud as a mechanical keyboard while still having worse tactile feedback than a $5.00 rubber dome keyboard.

On top of that, its not noticeably faster, after 4.5 years it still maxed out @ 16GB Ram (They fixed this in 2018 but its too late), which is not enough for my use case + it died after 3 months (Not the keyboard, it was a power issue).

This is both the most expensive and the worst computer I've ever owned. The 2013 MBP I'm using now as a loaner while I get my new one fixed is, to quote Steve Jobs "Like getting a glass of ice water in hell." It just works.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#342

Post by tlrobinson »

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 previously used a Mac Mini as an HTPC, but have switched to separate NAS running Plex server + a streaming box or stick as the client (currently a Synology but anything with Docker and maybe hardware accelerated transcoding should be good, and a Nvidia Shield as the client, but 4K Apple TV and Roku are supposedly ok too)

I like the flexibility of having them separate (upgrade separately, keep in separate rooms, etc), and having a unified “10 foot” UI I can control with a remote to access Plex, Netflix, etc.

You could easily get a 2 or 4 bay NAS + HDDs + Shield/Roku/AppleTV for less than the $800 base price of the new Mac Mini. Unless there’s a reason you need Mac OS I wouldn’t get the Mac Mini.

If you’ve already got the Dell I’d consider just using it as a server and getting a Nvidia Shield as the client.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#343

Post by maxxxxx »

minikites wrote: post #301
maxxxxx wrote: post #198

I really don't like when reviewers test the high end configuration only. This makes the review pretty useless for most of us who may be considering a lower spec.

He did test one thing to match a lower end configuration: >Interestingly, I disabled Turbo Boost to simulate the base i3 model’s thermals, and couldn’t get the fan to spin up audibly, no matter what I did. Those who prioritize silence under heavy loads should probably stick with the i3.

This is a pretty questionable methodology. I don't think it teaches us much about lower end configs.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#344

Post by ricardobeat »

saxonww wrote: post #305
kalleboo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use optical audio but it was superseded by HDMI for home theater and USB for hifi. edit: I'd be curious to see what people are using optical for today (I'm under the impression audio pros mainly use USB interfaces as well)

I'm not a pro audio guy, but I think if you want to work with any external audio device and want that connection to be noise-free, your safest bet is still optical. I have an external DAC/amp, and I had been using optical until I recently upgraded my workstation. Now I am using USB, because the new motherboard doesn't have optical; I assumed USB would be fine, so the lack of optical wasn't something I considered with…

Since it’s USB, it has to be the DAC generating the hiss. No amount of electrical interference can do anything to the digital audio going Ofer USB.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#345

Post by [deleted] »

phaus wrote: post #341
crad wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty happy with mine, but thanks for speaking for us all with your sweeping generalization.

I work at a company where most of us use Macs. Everyone that has upgraded from a 2013-2015 MBP to the touchbar model absolutely hates it, including me. There's gotta be someone around here that actually likes it, but I haven't met them yet. Its OK if you like it. I'm sure lots of people do, but you know damn well significantly more people have had issues with this laptop than normal, so I'm not sure why you're implyi…

[deleted]

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#346

Post by dawnerd »

robk wrote: post #144
veidr wrote: 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…

Buy a cheap NUC for server (run Ubuntu) and use an Nvidia Shield for front end. Works flawlesslh.

Second the nvidia shield. My original shield is still kicking all these years later and they give frequentish updates.

Although recently I’ve been using my Apple TV more, I like the interface better. Still use the shield for anything I want in proper 4K with original audio.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#347

Post by ricardobeat »

teolandon wrote: post #338
stephenr wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much graphics processing power does your text editor demand? How about your build server? Apple made it pretty clear in their keynote they're focussing this product to be attractive to the 'pro' market that gives zero fucks about a whiz-bang graphics card.

My text editor needs the processing power of my $100 ThinkPad, and that's where I'll be using my text editor. What is it that justifies the $2500 price?

6-core latest CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, plus “apple tax” (design, thermals, build/hw quality, OS, support).

You can build a similarly spec’d PC for maybe $1500, with a better GPU, but 20x as large, not silent, higher power consumption, etc. Many trade-offs, not for everyone.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#348

Post by reaperducer »

phaus wrote: post #341
crad wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty happy with mine, but thanks for speaking for us all with your sweeping generalization.

I work at a company where most of us use Macs. Everyone that has upgraded from a 2013-2015 MBP to the touchbar model absolutely hates it, including me. There's gotta be someone around here that actually likes it, but I haven't met them yet. Its OK if you like it. I'm sure lots of people do, but you know damn well significantly more people have had issues with this laptop than normal, so I'm not sure why you're implyi…

The touchbar made me realize that I have a habit of resting my fingers up there. I came to this realization because when I didn't think I was typing anything, stuff would happen. Eventually I realized I was touching virtual buttons on the touchbar.

I don't hate it, but I wish more of the tools I use took advantage of it.

I think it could be massively improved by shortening it a little on the left to make room for a physical escape key. That's about 95% of my problem with it.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#350

Post by fetus8 »

robertsd247 wrote: post #308
douglaswlance wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple uses value-based pricing, not cost-based pricing.

Fair enough, but it "values" the Mac Mini at $799 with a year-old i3 and 8GB of RAM? It valued the last one at $499 and it was 5 years old. I guess what the market will bear is really true...for Apple.

Keep in mind that the old Mini, priced at $499, only had a Laptop Dual Core i5 CPU. The new ones all have Desktop grade Quadcore CPUs in them. This isn't a totally justifiable reason for the price increase, but it is seemingly a large performance increase.
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