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2018 Mac Mini Review

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#551

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

pier25 wrote: post #209
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of my experiences with Mac have been like this. Got a MBP for college, 2009. Still running as my mom's laptop in 2018. Meanwhile my dad's 2 year old dell has endless problems, it's incredibly cheap, despite having better internal hardware. It's slower, needed tons of configuration out of the box, and Windows 10 is just awful. My dad's laptop constantly has issues. My mom? Never once. It just works. I will gladly…

I used to be as enthusiastic as you. I've bought a number of Macs since I switched in 2007 and I've had a number of tragic stories. My wife's previous Macbook Air died during its second year. It was working fine and one day it didn't turn on. Apple Mexico asked for close to $1000 at the time to replace the logic which was simply ridiculous. My top of the line 2011 MBP died when it was 2.5 years old because of a known…

I'm sure lots of people have stories like ours, one way or another. Things break. Not everything is perfect, but sometimes it is. How often are macs really failing? We hear stories because Apple is hated and you-tubers love getting scenarios where they can make an attack apple video. But without actual numbers we have no idea if this is a trend or not. Consumer Reports regularly ranks Apple as having the best failure rates.

For a long time smart car buyers never bought redesigned vehicles. Why? Their reliability is unknown. As device gains in hardware continue to diminish, perhaps it'd be wise for us to take this stance with electronics - and wait a few years.

> I still prefer Macs for working because of macOS, but I don't know what I will do when my current laptop dies.

Sadly it's not much better on the other side. Premium window machines still can't get basic things like the touchpad right. Windows 10 is pretty bad. I'd gladly get another machine - but nothing offers what I like about my Macs. The linux people aren't worth bothering with. Most people don't want to deal with the limits - and there aren't a lot of manufacturers.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#552

Post by simonh »

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.

HN: This is the worst Apple product ever and Apple has abandoned satisfying their customer with the things they actually want.

Reality: Apple product breaks sales records.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#553

Post by bborud »

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.

You are liking it wrong :)

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#554

Post by ako »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #464
ako wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand all the hate for the touchbar. I can never remember the functions performed by the function keys, so having icons indicating which functions are available seems really useful.

Do you have to look down to use those icons on the Touchbar? This is something I don’t have to do as a touch-typist. Repeatedly craning your neck to look down will result in RSI. I spend a little effort to learn new hotkeys every so often and the benefit far outweighs the cost: I’m much faster and keep my good ergonomics.

I don't use the function keys much, so yes, i do look at the keyboard when using them.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#555

Post by xenihn »

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 have a 2013 15" MBP, a 2015 13" MBP, a 2016 15" MBP w/ Touchbar, and a 2017 15" MBP w/ Touchbar. I vastly prefer the 2013 and 2015, even though they are bare-bones specced and the newer MBPs are top-of-the-line. The touchbar MBPs are provided to me by my employer. I just bought my 2015 13" this year, after considering getting a newer model, and I'm planning for it to be my main personal laptop for years to come.

I don't like the touchbar, I don't like the new keyboard, and I don't like the new ports.

I think there is something wrong if, now two years later, there are still people like me who not only don't see a clear benefit to upgrading, but see it as a net-negative.

Ideally, there should be nearly no one (if anyone) who prefers the previous iteration.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#556

Post by dkonofalski »

reaperducer wrote: post #348
phaus wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

You should snag an app called BetterTouchTool. Makes the TouchBar an amazing addition to the laptop. It's just a shame that Apple didn't build in a tool like it but I hope the developer gets lots of love.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#557

Post by asveikau »

jdboyd wrote: post #469
asveikau wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably figured that people who want these are acceptably served by USB.

Yeah. For SD cards in particular, having the reader slot on the back has always made it useless for me.

External card readers are more flexible. You can get more options with multiple slots, or card sizes, or whatever.

Similarly with audio... I don't know if this is true with Macs too, but on PC laptops I've often found the mic quality sucks or has interference, and I started using USB inputs.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#558

Post by dkonofalski »

fipple wrote: post #507
ako wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand all the hate for the touchbar. I can never remember the functions performed by the function keys, so having icons indicating which functions are available seems really useful.

The problem is that most serious computer users use a laptop docked, so it’s useless 70-90% of the time, which means the software can’t rely on it, which means it’s an afterthought in all apps.

>most serious computer users

Ahh... the good 'ol Scottsman shows his face yet again! Right on time!

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#559

Post by city41 »

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…

I also think the new MacBook Pro is the worst laptop I've ever had. I hated it so much I switched to a Thinkpad. Thankfully these are company issued laptops and I could do this pretty easily. Had I bought a personal one I'd be quite distraught.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#560

Post by bstar77 »

reaperducer wrote: post #512
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 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…

Not sure if you are aware of this, but you have to have your TV shows separate from your movies in Plex. When Plex scans files, it uses different logic for TV show and movie file name. I had a similar problem where I imported my TV shows as movies... some worked, but most didn't. After moving my shows out of my movies directory and re-importing them specifically as tv shows, everything detected perfectly.
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