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Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

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Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#91

Post by environment »

The new mac mini makes a constant electrical noise when I move the mouse. It is audible and irritating >2 meters away from the mac. I have tried hubs, different ports and nothing else connected. It is ok with a wireless mouse, lower polling rate. The fan is quiet, not irritating.

I might have sensitive hearing. Many modern gadgets are a pain in the ear. This type of noise digs deep and ruins the mood. I am sending it back. This is my data point, might not represent all new mac minis.

edit: I can probably go for a low polling rate, but then I wonder about tomorrow. What other use case will stress the same circuit components?

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#92

Post by rz2k »

nicolaslem wrote: post #84

Apple can be proud of using plastic recycled at 60 percent but a not easily serviceable computer will end up in a landfill way sooner than it should. What happens three years down the line when the device is out of warranty and the storage fails? Between paying an absurd amount of money to replace the whole board and getting a new one I bet most people will go with the landfill option. My Mac mini 2012 got a second l…

I think holding Apple to higher standards for its environmental impact has a lot to do with why they innovate in this respect, and I think that it is appropriate, given their size as a manufacturer and their positioning as a premium product.

Tightly integrated hardware, and efforts to develop software that improves performance of long-discontinued products does a lot to explain why Apple products are used much longer than alternatives. Compare a Mac mini to a budget mini tower, and it is difficult to argue that attaching an external Thunderbolt 3 drive in 2024 is worse for the environment, when the competing product will likely be in a landfill, due to difficult to diagnose hardware issues and there not being an easily understood recycling program.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#94

Post by wufufufu »

nicolaslem wrote: post #84

Apple can be proud of using plastic recycled at 60 percent but a not easily serviceable computer will end up in a landfill way sooner than it should. What happens three years down the line when the device is out of warranty and the storage fails? Between paying an absurd amount of money to replace the whole board and getting a new one I bet most people will go with the landfill option. My Mac mini 2012 got a second l…

Some Google searches indicate to me SSDs don't have a worrisome failure rate. If it happens to be a widespread problem for Apple products, there's precedent for them eventually having a replacement program. [1] [2]

[1] https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/ [2] https://support.apple.com/en-my/iphone/repair/service/batter...

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#95

Post by dehugger »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #86
nicolaslem wrote: post #84

Apple can be proud of using plastic recycled at 60 percent but a not easily serviceable computer will end up in a landfill way sooner than it should. What happens three years down the line when the device is out of warranty and the storage fails? Between paying an absurd amount of money to replace the whole board and getting a new one I bet most people will go with the landfill option. My Mac mini 2012 got a second l…

As a counterpoint, when I wanted to sell my Mac mini after 5 years of 24/7 use, I found a buyer within one hour. Try that with any other maintainable PC.

Your counterpoint is a bit weak. You sold a 5 year old Mac Mini, the OP literally just wrote how the old Mac Mini held its value precisely because it could be upgraded with replaceable components, while the updated Mac Mini is not. I doubt a current gen model will hold its value nearly as well as the older models because parts cannot be replaced down the line.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#96

Post by sanketskasar »

mattnewton wrote: post #78
reaperducer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

128 GB doesn't work because it doesn't scale well with age As a counterpoint, my 2011 MacBook Air has 128GB, and works just fine. Photoshop, coding, and lots of personal projects. Maybe 128GB isn't enough for gaming, but I don't think that's what the "mini" is for.

Counter counter point, my 128gb 2013 mbp I use for development has 90gb of “system” cruft somehow and I regularly have to shuffle files around, and have been thinking I need to re-image it since I can’t dig deeper into what the “system” bucket is made up of easily.

GrandPerspective does it for me. Really intuitive interface to figure out what's taking how much of storage and delete it.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#98

Post by sbuk »

ddtaylor wrote: post #50

That thing has like $400 worth of hardware in it.

There’s more to it than the components. For instance;

- manufacturing.

- packaging.

- margin.

- profit.

- tax.

- warehousing.

- dev.

- r&d.

- marketing.

- distribution.

- stores.

- licensing.

- logistics.

Probably more. They all have a cost.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#99

Post by PascLeRasc »

environment wrote: post #91

The new mac mini makes a constant electrical noise when I move the mouse. It is audible and irritating >2 meters away from the mac. I have tried hubs, different ports and nothing else connected. It is ok with a wireless mouse, lower polling rate. The fan is quiet, not irritating. I might have sensitive hearing. Many modern gadgets are a pain in the ear. This type of noise digs deep and ruins the mood. I am sending it…

I've had coil whine on a Windows PC before, but I fixed it by using a USB hub between. Your monitor might have one built-in, see if that fixes it. It also only occurred with one mouse for me, but it was my favorite one so I wanted to keep it.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#100

Post by mbell »

OskarS wrote: post #2

A bit disappointing to see that the storage is not user-upgradable. I guess it matters less on a device like this where you could more easily use external storage, but still. I wish Apple stopped soldering in stuff and just made things a centimeter taller if that was the tradeoff.

It has 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, you don't really need to upgrade the internal storage when you plug in as much storage as you want and not pay much if any performance penalty.
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