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2018 Mac Mini Review

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#481

Post by someguydave »

rsynnott wrote: post #407
bluegreyred wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I used to go out of my way to find unbiased and honest reviews from "real" people that weren't "seeded" by manufacturers. The problem is that many others did the same, so these honest reviewers gained followers, that gave them exposure and eventually they get approached by the PR departments which would like to "lend" them top end review samples for an undisclosed amount of time. Well before the press NDA, of c…

You realise that every single thing reviewed in a paper magazine is a loaner review unit, unless it's Consumer Reports, Which?, or one of about three others? It's an industry standard.

That's why I subscribe to Consumer Reports even though it sucks in many ways.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#482

Post by saxonww »

Applejinx wrote: post #465
saxonww wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought so too, but regardless, with this same device there is no hiss when connected via optical. So if I had the option, I'd be using optical vs. USB today, which was what the GP asked.

Logically, it seems like if you had a USB-optical dongle you would have no further trouble. I don't know if there is such a thing, but I do know that in that situation all the 'it's digital, so it should be perfect' talk becomes somewhat true. You'd be converting from USB to optical, at which point you'd break the ground connection which would be where your hiss is coming from (assuming it's still noiseless when stil…

I agree, that should work. I haven't seen USB-optical devices that weren't straight media converters though. Everything that converts USB to spdif is advertised as a DAC, so I'd have two DACs.

This isn't a huge issue for me, it's just an example of where I'd prefer to use optical. If it ends up bothering me such that I need to fix something, I'll 'fix' the motherboard.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#483

Post by Fnoord »

wild_preference wrote: post #426
copperx wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you remap CapsLock to Esc, what key do you use for Control for doing Control A, Control E, Control K, Control Y, Control N, and Control P in every application?

I tried to address this in my parentheses, but Karabiner specifically lets you bind CapsLock to both: Esc when tapped alone, and Ctrl when held down in combination with other keys. And your post also answers you sibling comment: Ctrl modifier is useful outside of just Emacs. Try it out. I believe the API changed in the macOS release before Mojave, so they relaunched Karabiner under the name Karabiner Elements. This o…

I prefer Magic Trackpad 2 (or native MBP 2015 trackpad) to any other way of navigation but Vi keybinds -if available- work as well.

I currently use Karabiner for this as well, but a slightly different configuration.

The two rules I use are:

* R-Cmd + hjkl are arrows (which works great with HHKB but even on native MBP it requires less movement of hand from trackpad or typing hand than the arrow keys)

* Caps solo is Esc while Caps with another key equals Ctrl.

Is there a way to do this in Linux as well? I currently have to use Linux regularly and I rebind Caps to Ctrl however for Vim it isn't ideal. So I'd like to have the same functionality I have with Karabiner on Linux (Xorg / console).

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#485

Post by briandear »

TomVDB wrote: post #358
ap3 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse how? There are a couple of directions you can go in, just curious (price/storage)?

Probably price. $800 is pretty steep for the entry version, when you can buy a better equipped Lenonvo ThinkCentre for $200 less.

Does that Lenovo have Mac OS?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#486

Post by nik736 »

Someone wrote: post #459
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the exterior won't be as pretty There are actually plenty of nice looking small form factor PC cases that can house a full GPU - http://www.louqe.com/ - https://www.dan-cases.com/dana4.php I'd actually say this is one area of the custom PC market that's well served by nice design.

Those are 7 liters or more, or the volume of five Mac minis. So, a different class of “small”.

They are also far from nice looking.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#487

Post by [deleted] »

d35007 wrote: post #449
threatofrain wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Anyone who owns a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will definitely be saying "yay it hasn't gotten worse!" about these. If drcongo doesn't mean to speak for "Anyone who owns a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar", drcongo should refrain from using those exact words. And you should probably refrain from speaking for drcongo.

[deleted]

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#488

Post by xienze »

rconti wrote: post #432
kalleboo wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 re…

Plex sucks on the Apple TV (and likely most other devices) because unless the video fits in a very narrow band of codecs (AVC, maybe HEVC with DD audio) it's going to insist on transcoding the video.

The absolute best setup I've found is Infuse (https://firecore.com/infuse) with Plex as the backend. Infuse will ALWAYS request the raw video/audio stream and does all the decoding on the Apple TV, so your Plex machine can be very modest (it's never transcoding, after all).

You can also forego Plex and just have Infuse index all the content, but I've found that it's nice to have a single Plex backend that can be shared amongst multiple Apple TVs, iPads, etc.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#489

Post by Applejinx »

kylec wrote: post #434
mijustin wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, THAT's interesting. I've been looking at some Blackmagic stuff for streaming and camera work, that would take burden off my desktop computer. It looks like the new Mini plus this plus outboard x264 encoding (also includes ability to run a good dynamic mic into the encoding) would add up to an insanely flexible livestreaming setup that could do both GPU-needing things and camera-based things without loading the computer, and be expandable later with SDI camera inputs and the ability to do production video switching.

It… didn't occur to me that I might be thinking about running such a rig off a Mac Mini. But then it didn't occur to me that a Mac Mini would come out and be in some conditions faster than any other Mac currently made. Interesting times…

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#490

Post by Joeri »

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.

Here’s a review of the entry-level model: https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/11/06/mac-mini-2...

It outperforms every previous mac mini, and doesn’t benchmark that far below the 2018 i7 macbook pro. This is a desktop i3, the desktop-class cpu’s are a different performance class from the mobile line.

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