271–280 of 480 posts
I really wish I could buy a headless Mac with similar performance (including a real video card) and price. The mini doesn't quite meet my needs and the pro at $3k+ is way too expensive. These specs look good (although I would greatly prefer SSD) but I really don't want an extra monitor on my desk.
It's just frustrating, I switched the household over to Apple devices when OSX came out, and now there really aren't any systems from Apple that look interesting to me. I've been programming since before the (Unix) dawn of time, and Apple devices have been good development machines for me since OSX was released 18 years ago. I'm comfortable on Linux, but the Apple iOS devices and computers are all over my home and in…
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With healthy competition product price is reduced almost to component cost. Not the case with Apple, sadly.
Soldering in the RAM amounts to apple resorting to extortion. Where else are you gonna get this RAM other than paying the toll troll hundreds of dollars over what it should cost solely because apple greedily removed alternatives.
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If someone could figure out a legal way to offer recommended-hardware Hackintosh builds as a service†, that'd be pretty ideal for what you're talking about, in the sense of "you could buy one for your mom", and it would "just work" (and hopefully continue to "just work" through updates, if they do it right.) † I guess, if you were to operate a "Hackintosh OEM", you could sell the hardware build itself without actuall…
I feel like anyone becoming too successful in this space would find the ol' Eye of Sauron pointed at them pretty quickly.. Whether through technical or legal means, I doubt Apple would sit around and let this openly thrive or grow into a viable option for the average consumer.
Hey Apple! While you're on this upgrade sprint, I wish out of the blue, an iPhone SE 2 is also announced.
The more time passes, the more it looks like they released an SE by mistake, still be best phone ever made IMHO but doesn't fit the strategy of upselling as much as possible.
I'm a bit puzzled as to why they don't just keep selling it, maybe with an upgraded SOC but no other new components. I don't think it would cannibalize sales of their mainline phones, and it would give lower income people a path to buy into their ecosystem. They're taking that approach with the iPad line. Maybe it didn't sell as well as I thought it did.
It's just frustrating, I switched the household over to Apple devices when OSX came out, and now there really aren't any systems from Apple that look interesting to me. I've been programming since before the (Unix) dawn of time, and Apple devices have been good development machines for me since OSX was released 18 years ago. I'm comfortable on Linux, but the Apple iOS devices and computers are all over my home and in…
Since you're using a desktop, what's wrong with the 2018 Mac Mini? Upgradable RAM, storage and GPU can be added externally. Dual 4k support out of the box or a single 5k should be enough for your single monitor?
I know because I tried to do this with a 2018 Mac Mini. Aside from the very lackluster GPU performance, it's a pretty speedy machine.
I had a fairly generous budget for a new computer. 32GB of RAM was about $200 from Crucial. The external SSD storage options were pretty crappy. Any sort of TB3 option was a few hundred dollars to start. I ended up settling with a USB3 2TB HDD. I then had to copy my Photo and iTunes libraries over to it and re-point the apps to the right spots.
For the external GPU, you're looking at about $500 at a minimum. And then you have to find a place for that to sit, and it's essentially the size of a small ITX PC case.
I ended up returning the Mini and just breaking down and building a vanilla hackintosh. A 8700K/32GB/1TB SSD/RX 580 ITX box with quality parts that's all in one small case (Fractal Design Define Nano S) in the same desk footprint as just the external GPU enclosure, and it's not a thermally-constrained dongletown.
Would I recommend it to anyone? No. But after an initially scary couple of hours, I have for all intents and purposes a normally-functioning macOS box that is noticeably quicker than the Mini for the cost of just the base Mini -- sans all the other junk I had to buy. The macOS install is vanilla, with SIP enabled, and no janky kexts in the OS install - NOTHING custom in the OS install. The bare minimum shoved in the EFI partition.
Everything works (sleep, audio, iMessage, etc). It was marginally more trouble than getting Windows 10 installed. Less trouble than getting Ubuntu installed.
God, it's glorious.
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it's SATA so you can replace it with anything you like; if you're not fond of paying the extra $200 for 25% of the storage capacity. A bit like buying an OS-less PC. But I agree full-heartedly that it's counter-intuitive to the brand.
Replacing the hard drive in these macs requires separating the display. Possible but a delicate operation. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K+Di... I’d just throw a thunderbolt or usb3 SSD in a port instead. I boot off a USB3 SSD on my Mac mini and that seems to work fine, despite not being quite as good as an internal or TB drive would be.
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I'm curious why you think that. I mostly write code for a living and apart from the notebook line catastrophe (I'm stuck on a 2014 model of a MacBook Pro and waiting for something to come out with a reasonable keyboard and perhaps more than one port that I can use), the desktop line is improving quickly. I've been really tempted by the Mac Mini, I would buy the iMac Pro if I could afford it, and now I intend to get t…
To the parent's point... I'd recommend a hackintosh Intel NUC. I got blisters stuffing RAM SIMMs into daughter cards. I've agonized over IRQ choices for peripherals. I'm so over fiddling with my daily driver. I've got Audrinos and RPi projects for scratching that itch. Uncertainty over the keyboards is precisely why I postponed replacing my laptop. I'd probably use my iMac more if I could find a keyboard & trackpad c…
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Agree. My 2011 Mac mini with only 2 gigs of RAM is almost as comfortable for web browsing as the 1350-usd brand-new Windows 10 box in the office with 8 gigs of RAM. A recent experience qualifies me to say that using a recent version of MacOS on a 5400-rpm hard drive is infuriating compared to using the same version of MacOS running on the same Mac with an SSD. My 2011 Mac mini has an SSD in it. Everything is fine wit…
> I couldn't just reformat the SDD because there was data on it that I didn't have a backup for Not used time machine or is it not backing up all necessary?
Maybe the best feature: > 8GB (two 4GB) of 2666MHz DDR4 memory; four SO-DIMM slots, user accessible
Isn't that slow? And expensive, as usual. I'm looking at 16GB (8x2) 3200MHz for $109 on newegg. The iMac upgrade from 8 to 16GB is $200!