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2018 Mac Mini Review

marco.org

511–520 of 653 posts

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#511

A $2500 desktop computer with integrated graphics? Honestly, it feels like a bit of a joke.

Get get 3.2GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i7 8GB model sell 8GB stick get 32gb for 270 and external 1TB SSD for 160 you will have very decent dev box for 1730 - whatever 8gb goes for

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#512
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 used to use Plex, but went back to AppleTV/iTunes.

For some reason Plex wouldn't see half of my video library. I eventually tracked it down to Plex not liking the filenames of certain TV shows.

My TV shows are named Show Name - Episode Name.

Plex wanted them to be ShowName.s0x.e0x.

I'm not going to go through and rename all of my files. Plex should just work from the metadata like iTunes does. That's what metadata is for.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#513
post #324
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!"

The MacMini is a near perfect computer in its category; only thing was it wasn't updated for years. Now it is.

The combination of price and absence of user upgradable M.2 SSD drives make this product un-viable in my opinion. The current price is fine if I could upgrade the drive later. Non-upgrade-able SSD would be acceptable if the price for larger drives was more reasonable.

If SSD could be upgraded buying a i5/i7 would have offered amazing upgrade paths down the road. This machine misses the mark IMHO but not by much.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car manufacturers rarely send their low end models out to reviews as well.

and Ferrari sends tuned versions of the car

Some car companies not only send out tuned versions of the cars, but a team to tune the car during the review.

You see this on The Grand Tour all the time.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote is a bit out of context. The sentence right above it: >It makes almost nothing worse and almost everything better, finally bringing the Mac Mini into the modern age. So, no, it's not "yayy" because it "hasn't gotten worse", it's "yayy", because "[it makes] almost everything better".

I'm going to hold on to my Mid-2015 MacBook Pro for dear life. I'm hoping it will be good for 3 more years.

You're not alone. I actually bought one refurb from Apple this year and I plan on extending the AppleCare to the full 3 years.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#517

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.

The NUC8, like pretty much every small form factor pc, uses a mobile cpu, whereas the new mini uses desktop cpu’s. You have to look at the top model nuc8 with i7 to outperform the entry-level mac mini with the i3, and then the price advantage disappears.

That CPU power comes in handy for most of the mini’s use cases, transcoding for home theater / nas, or build times for build server.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#518
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about SSDs (hint) but that SSD looks like it's on sale at Amazon right now for $393. I'm more than happy to pay Apple a premium of $200 or whatever to just get what I want out of the box and not have to think about this, research options and compatibility, worry about drivers or who knows what else, etc.

There are no compatibility issues, drivers or who knows what else with PCIe m.2 SSDs.

Yeah, I have no idea what PCIe m.2 is, and I don't really care to find out. That's my point.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#519
post #49

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…

> 100% of Windows media players are garbage.

You might want to take a look at Daum Pot Player.

I can't bear to use VLC anymore. It is just that much better.

I haven't tried it for your use case though.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the model you linked has a i3-5005U - a very large step down from a i7-8559U. Still, could be sufficient depending on what you need it for.

Bear in mind the i7 model in the article is $2,499!

In case it wasn't clear, user 21 was responding to user garblegarble with alternatives to the Intel NUC8i7BEH (~$484 in the US), not the Mac Mini.

But yes, the decked-out i7 Mac Mini is really expensive! As noted elsewhere in the comments (and in the article), a big chunk of that cost is in Apple's 1TB SSD pricing - ticking that option adds $800 over the 128GB SSD for some reason.

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