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2018 Mac Mini Review

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#361

Post by thirdsun »

tabs_masterrace wrote: post #322
thirdsun wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better than 1080p as it is much sharper and crisper, but 1080p at 27 inches results in rather large UI elements. An effective resolution of 2560x1440px (as seen in any iMac 27) seems like the proper resolution for a display of that size. Read more about it here: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/

I'm curios about this too, does the Mac Mini offer "scaled" options, like MacBooks do with their built-in display, when connecting to an external 4k monitor? I think it does some supersampling, resulting in higher effective resolution.

Sure, it does offer scaling, but you really want 2x scaling - I tried non-integer values on a 5k display, just to get a sense for it, and it was as disappointing as expected. Slightly blurry text, rather obvious that this wasn‘t the recommended native setting.

In my opinion 2x scaling is the only option and that leaves you with an effective resolution of 1920x1080 points - sure, it‘s sharp, but far from true 5k and more importantly the same screen real estate we used to fit into 20-24 incch displays for years. It‘s the wrong resolution for 27“.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#362

Post by douglaswlance »

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.

It's not about how much Apple values their products. Value-based pricing is based on how much value the customer gets out of the product.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#363

Post by saturdaysaint »

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.

An Audi SUV's price isn't justifiable given almost every use case for a consumer automobile, but a lot of people enjoy the experience and find it worth paying tens of thousands dollars more than a Camry. By comparison, if you work on a computer for several hours every day and prefer the ergonomics of a Mac, spending an extra $1,000 is a pretty minuscule premium.

And I say that as someone that happily switched from a Mac to a PC I built a few years ago - I like getting the maximum grunt for my money.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#364

Post by MatthewWilkes »

yreg wrote: post #310
kozak wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if the motherboard dies, all your data is gone?

You should use backups anyway. ‍️ But if the computer dies and the motherboard survives, you can connect to some thingy on the board to get the data.

You can, or Apple can for a fee?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#365

Post by pmontra »

sgt wrote: post #104
torben-friis wrote: post #11

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.

I bought a 1 TB Samsung EVO 860 one month ago for a little more than 170 Euro. The SSD could be a huge chunk of the manufacturing cost but that means that Apple enjoys a huge margin on this computer.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#366

Post by paulcole »

bitdestroyer wrote: post #201
drej wrote: 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!

There's a running joke on ATP that Marco buys just tons of mics. Not to mention he made Overcast, so he knows audio pretty well.

I think he just buys tons of everything.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#367

Post by threatofrain »

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.

drcongo is making a statement about the population, and readers can be trusted to not be so confused as to think that this is the official speech of the people.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#368

Post by rsynnott »

thirdsun wrote: post #171

Side discussion: What are everyone's thoughts when it comes to external HiDPI monitor options to use with this Mac Mini? Ideally I'd want 5K displays (I'm used to the iMac 5K) but it seems that LG's UltraFine is the only real option and the rest of the industry has settled on 4K/UHD at 27 inches, which results in a) limited screen real estate due to an effective resolution of 1080p at 2x scaling and b) slightly less…

> 4K/UHD at 27 inches, which results in a) limited screen real estate due to an effective resolution of 1080p at 2x scaling

MacOS's non-integer scaling works surprisingly well on these; I use one with an apparently resolution of 1440p with no issues.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#369

Post by tonyedgecombe »

orangecat wrote: post #309
thirdsun wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1x scaling will be too small for UHD at 27". MacOS only works probably with integer-based scaling - 1x, 2x, theoretically 3x. Everything inbetween will lead to blurry text/assets and decreased performance since the output as a whole will be scaled and downsampled by the GPU. I'm working a lot with text and a sharp/crisp display is important to me. 2x scaling is the only proper option in my opinion.

Everything inbetween will lead to blurry text/assets and decreased performance since the output as a whole will be scaled and downsampled by the GPU. I run 2 27" 4k displays off a MacBook with integrated graphics, both scaled at 1.5x to "look like" 2560x1440. It works fine; text is not quite as sharp at it would be at 2x, but it's far better than it would be on an actual 1440p display. I haven't noticed decreased per…

text is not quite as sharp at it would be at 2x

I think that would bother me.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#370

Post by thirdsun »

zaphoyd wrote: post #216
thirdsun wrote: post #171

Side discussion: What are everyone's thoughts when it comes to external HiDPI monitor options to use with this Mac Mini? Ideally I'd want 5K displays (I'm used to the iMac 5K) but it seems that LG's UltraFine is the only real option and the rest of the industry has settled on 4K/UHD at 27 inches, which results in a) limited screen real estate due to an effective resolution of 1080p at 2x scaling and b) slightly less…

I’ve been using dell P2415Qs. I run 3 at the HiDPI “looks like 2560x1440”. It’s not perfect 2x scaling, but it is close enough (185 dpi) and the price $300-400 each cant be beat. I’ve considered switching to the 21.5 inch LG ultrafines (220 dpi) but they are $700 and have very limited port choices compared to the dells. I use the dell displays with multiple other machines that don’t have USB-C graphics out. And want…

Well, at least 24“ are more reasonable for UHD or 1080p at 2x scaling. However I currently use a non-retina iMac 27 at home (which I‘m looking to replace) and an iMac 5k at work - I really want both: Screen real estate and retina-level pixel density.

Concerning the Ultrafine: Yes, it‘s too expensive and since I‘d need to connect it to another PC without Thunderbolt it‘s not an option for me.

edit: There‘s also this option: https://iiyama.com/gl_en/products/prolite-xb2779qqs-s1/ - it‘s sold for under 700€ here in europe, but the 6bit is concerning.

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