Found this concept about a modular Mac Mini "Pro"
the technology is not there yet but could be developed in the future
Mac mini
211–220 of 259 posts
Re: Mac mini
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are your needs? Because the current Mini serves a lot of Pro needs with the crazy powerful I/O it has. With eGPUs in a fairly mature state, the Mac Mini can serve pretty powerful video/graphics workloads.
I have a slightly upgraded 2018 Macbook Pro right now that does most of my work really well. It has 32gb of RAM, an upgraded GPU and the i7-8750H chip. I want more cores, faster cores, and more thermal headroom. A Mac Mini would be a slight performance bump from where I am right now, but the ROI isn't really there. My workload varies, but I am a freelancer with 3-4 contracts at any given time which vary from wordpres…
One thing you can consider -> the RAM costs are very high if you upgrade through Apple. You can spec out a Mac Mini with the lowest possible RAM and then do the RAM upgrade yourself to save $600.
The whole process takes about 20mins and there's professional YouTube videos that take you every step of the way.
This is exactly what I did and it was a breeze (I didn't have much prior experience messing with computer internals). It might look complicated, but it's really not.
If you do go this route, I'd recommend OWC RAM since they're guaranteed to work with Mac and they also tell a little $7 toolkit that has the TORX screwdrivers you need to do the RAM upgrade -> https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMM18/
Here's a video of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKyv0QP4XPQ
Re: Mac mini
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what you like about it? When I use Windows I try to use it to find Control Panels to set up stuff and it does a horrible job at that. In macOS you'll find Disk Utility by typing "disk utility" in CMD+SPACE, even when you're on a different language system that has it's own name. I couldn't find anything in Windows even when that was the literal name of the panel. And hunting for formerly easy to find sett…
Hit the windows key and type "disk man" and the disk manager pops up. Maybe you're just used to the OSX names for things? Search "alert" brings up the audio settings. I'm not sure what you're doing differently.
It's hard to give exact examples now I'm not behind a Windows machine. But I didn't have a great time finding stuff on a non-English machine even when I typed in the name exactly as it appeared in the top bar when I finally found it and opened it.
Re: Mac mini
#214Still got my fingers crossed for a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac Pro and isn’t a Mac Mini. Would love iMac Pro firepower without being tied to a set display. I’ve been alive 30 years. A good portion of that was growing up as a PC user, overclocker, teenage hacker, etc. My professional career however has been on Unix and MacOS, and as much as I try to get back to desktop Linux and open source OS’s I just find them…
Why did you leave Windows?
Unix is a better environment for everything but gaming, and I am not a gamer. Everything is unequivocally better on a Mac, again, with the exception of gaming. Despite what you will hear around the HN echo chamber these days, macOS is a very legitimate Unix and a good one at that. People complain when they run into userland issues, but their blame on Apple is misplaced.
If you are a gamer, use Windows. If you are working in a .net shop, use Windows. If you are using special software that demands Windows, use it. For everyone else, macOS is the right way to go.
I still use Windows frequently as a consultant - either in testing or in onsite infrastructure deployments on Windows Server hosts. It sucks to use. You will rarely run into a smooth scenario, and due to the proprietary nature of everything you are stuck with whatever is available in the docs or whatever the support team says, assuming you purchased the right support license.
Their greatest contribution to the world is RDP, which is the only saving grace on Windows as far as I am concerned.
Re: Mac mini
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Imagine how good the desktop APUs will be when those come out. I'm starting to think there won't be any more desktop APUs. The next logical step would be an 8 core CPU with better GPU than the 3400G. That would be good enough desktop for a huge swath of the market and might kill sales of higher end chips. I use a 2400G for software development. It's the fastest cpu I've ever owned. It runs a 4k desktop, 4k video,…
I'd love to see a 4800G chip with 8 cores, 20-30 CUs, and 16/32GB onboard HBM2 unified memory in the $400/600 range (depending on RAM).
>> I'd love to see a 4800G chip with 8 cores, 20-30 CUs, and 16/32GB onboard HBM2 unified memory in the $400/600 range (depending on RAM).
It will more likely have only 8 CUs like the laptop chips but with a higher TDP (65W?) and clock. OTOH probably only $200ish. Still a killer desktop value.
Re: Mac mini
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
The performance depends very greatly on the resolution you run the 4K screen at. If you're using a non-evenly scaled resolution (i.e. not exactly 1x or 2x rendering) it's not gonna be fantastic. Running at 'default' 2x my 2018 runs 2x 24" 4Ks without issue - the problem most people have I think is that they buy much larger displays and then want to use a higher rendered resolution, which is where the iGPU will strugg…
> the problem most people have I think is that they buy much larger displays and then want to use a higher rendered resolution I'm not going to buy a 4k screen with the intention of running it at 1080p. There are plenty of large 1080p screens out there. If I buy a 4k screen it's because I want to run it at 4k.
I run my 2 27" 4Ks (off a Hackintosh) at 1080p HiRes. Is for me the best balance of aesthetics and resolution.
Re: Mac mini
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in a similar boat to you and am keeping an eye on WSL2 for Windows. It SEEMS like it could cover my entire dev workflow and have similar performance to MacOS/*nix, but then again I thought that the original WSL was going to do that as well ...
I started down that path. But when you install Windows 10 Pro and your login screen is covered in advertisements and news updates, it leaves a pretty shitty taste in your mouth.
I do not have ads at all and did not have to disable them. This maybe because when I install windows I do it using local account. Not the online account with MS. And of course I answer NOOOOOOO to every question they ask during install.
Re: Mac mini
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do all that now with the mini, it has 4 thunderbolt ports.
Thunderbolt isn't nowhere near close in performance to built-in PCI express slots.
I guess it depends on the width you need. Indeed you won't be able to run x16 or x8 but x4 is possible which is enough for full-speed nvme or dual 10GbE
Re: Mac mini
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not true - even a 10 year old MBA handles it fine. Try disabling your extensions – especially any ad blockers which aren't simple domain blocking.
well adding that last statement is ridiculous. expecting to toggle an adblocker for web page performance.. It's pretty slow on my recent MBA too.
Read the whole sentence: ad blockers which do simple host / path filtering are fast but there are many which inject huge amounts of code into the target pages with unknown impact. There were years where a big fraction of the people complaining about Firefox performance were ABP users.
Re: Mac mini
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mac Mini doesn't need a real GPU in my opinion -- what they need is a mid-level desktop that accepts a real GPU. $1000 - $1500 with decent specs. But, we know they won't move into that space.
"Mac Mini doesn't need a real GPU in my opinion ..." I tend to agree, but then I also see 4x thunderbolt 3 ports and 1x HDMI 2.0 ports and think how nice it would be to drive all four of my monitors from that one tiny system ... However the specifications dictate that only 2x 4k monitors can be driven, simultaneously (at 60hz ?) ... ? Which brings up the same old, tired question: Just who is it that works as an engin…
Thunderbolt 3 ports are multipurpose: disks, external GPU's,etc. Just because you have 3 of them does not mean you should plug in a monitor to each one. And if you really need 4 screens that eGPU will probably handle it.