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2018 Mac Mini Review

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#431

Post by djsumdog »

lucideer wrote: post #59
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!"

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

It also doesn't look like it has a DisplayPort. If I wanted to hook it into my KVM, I'd need a USB-C to display port dongle.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#432

Post by rconti »

kalleboo wrote: post #242
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…

> What OSes are better for a "Home Theater" TV computer I use an Apple TV 4K. For non-netflix/hulu/primevideo stuff, it streams off a Synology NAS (using Plex or VLC for Apple TV) edit: it's funny how your experience pretty much mirrors mine almost 10 years ago. A Mac guy outfitting a machine for a home media center. I was used to Mac media stuff always being behind on codec support and performance so I bought some H…

I'll have to try this again. I put VLC on my AppleTV4, and I don't remember having luck playing things off my Synology. I'm using Kodi on my Android TV-equipped Sony to stream from the NAS, which works, but the UI is a disaster for adding sources. I finally got it to work, but I never want to have to change anything again.

For me, using Plex is an utter and complete nightmare. Anything with transcoding and library reindexing is a no-go. I've tried to be happy with it at least 6 times, and each try was an unmitigated disaster. I just want a thing to play files from storage.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#433

Post by Alex3917 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #422
Alex3917 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

First, that means it isn't a "giant security hole"; it's a potential security hole. Second, if an exploit is discovered just disable the extra hardware threads until it gets patched. As an aside, I don't know what your "supposedly" about the i5 is supposed to mean. The i5 has only one hardware thread per core.

> As an aside, I don't know what your "supposedly" about the i5 is supposed to mean.

The tech specs page on the Apple site doesn't give the exact part number, so there's always the chance it could be some previously unreleased chip.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#434

Post by kylec »

mijustin wrote: post #403
jillesvangurp wrote: post #83

People are missing the point about the integrated graphics. For me this is a feature not a bug because it has USB-C instead. That means that instead of hopelessly compromising thermals and power supply with some power hungry, yet limited GPU (because of the small form factor) you simply buy the CPU and memory that you need. It simplifies the job of keeping it cool. CPUs are evolving a lot slower these days. This one…

What would you recommend for a Mac-compatible eGPU these days?

The Blackmagic eGPU is designed to be plug-and-play compatible with Macs. You can even buy it directly from Apple:

https://store.apple.com/xc/product/HM8Y2VC/A

Also, one nice thing about this eGPU is that it has two Thunderbolt ports, so you can plug a Thunderbolt display like the LG UltraFine 5K directly into it.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#435

Post by rconti »

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 went through this when I built a Win7 HTPC perhaps 5 or 6 years ago. I was so happy to no longer have to use Connect360 on my xbox 360 to stream transcoded video from my Mac Pro (that I had to power on to run the whole thing). Finally I'd be able to just play files directly from my NAS into the endless world of Windows media support. No more transcoding from whatever stupid codec/container/disaster the 'scene' is using these days. It will Just Work because all of these people use Windows and it plays everything, right?

Nope. Unmitigated disaster. Same thing, navigating endless spy/mal/adware laden sites to download CCCP codec packages and plug things together, every time I installed one thing I found another thing that didn't work right. I have some weird Jockersoft thing to force some other application to keep running and restart if it fails, and even though I no longer use whatever that thing was, I can't uninstall the goddamned jockersoft thing to save my life.

Windows Media Center itself was actually a joy, though, I really enjoyed how well it worked for the things it could do out of the box which were far fewer than I had been led to believe.

I also realized that a decade+ of using OS X had left me unprepared to navigate the latest online threats in the world of not-entirely-legitimate download sites for Windows utilities. It got really bad while I was away.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#436

Post by dahauns »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #83

People are missing the point about the integrated graphics. For me this is a feature not a bug because it has USB-C instead. That means that instead of hopelessly compromising thermals and power supply with some power hungry, yet limited GPU (because of the small form factor) you simply buy the CPU and memory that you need. It simplifies the job of keeping it cool. CPUs are evolving a lot slower these days. This one…

a) You assume that at least some GPU power in SFF wouldn't

- be possible (while SFF devices like Hades Canyon et al. with e.g. Kaby Lake-G manage to do just fine without breaking thermals and noise)

- still be immensely useful for many/at least better than current integrated Intel (which is a significant step backwards with the dropping of Iris)

b) You assume to have USB-C/TB3 instead, when there's no argument against having both.

And for anyone really not needing it and arguing about the unneccessary cost - just restrict it to the more expensive SKU, done.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#437

Post by rconti »

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.

If you think the hardware and cost is overkill for "most use cases" perhaps the problem is your assumption of what "most use cases" are.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#438

Post by vbezhenar »

H1Supreme wrote: post #182
matt4077 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't upgrade the i3, or the measly 128GB hard drive they bundle with it though. For $800, nearly every other option is better.

Why you can't upgrade i3?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#439

Post by kylec »

scaasic wrote: post #386
shurcooL wrote: post #377

> Unfortunately, we still don’t have any great standalone 5K displays. (The LG UltraFine isn’t.) What’s wrong with the LG display? It gets a lot of criticism, but I find it hard to understand why. There was an interference shielding issue, but it was fixed more than a year ago. For anyone familiar with the matter, what is it that makes the LG not great?

My personal issue with it is the lack of standard inputs, which make it impossible to use with an eGPU setup (excluding the Blackmagic, but that's a whole other kind of subpar). The data ports being exclusively USB-C is probably an issue for some as well.

If your complaint about the Blackmagic eGPU being “subpar” was the power of the Radeon Pro 580, you’ll be happy to hear that one with a Vega 56 is now available:

https://store.apple.com/xc/product/HMQT2VC/A

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#440

Post by iandanforth »

iamdbtoo wrote: post #420
mijustin wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you recommend for a Mac-compatible eGPU these days?

I've been using the Razer Core X for a few months now and it's worked flawlessly.

Have you tried swapping it between machines? Could I use an eGPU with say a NUC and the Mac Mini?
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