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Mac mini

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Re: Mac mini

#251

Post by ghthor »

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #187
mceachen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing and applying security updates on a Linux desktop is fairly automatic and uneventful. Keeping a hackintosh updated (for even stuff like graphics card drivers) turns out to be a lot of time doing research, scrolling through endless forum posts, and bricking your install quarterly because you "did the wrong thing" (like absent-mindedly accepting a security update notification). Yes, you can get it running. Bu…

Is there a Linux distribution that fully supports the desktop version of Office 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)? I would love to migrate to Linux, but need Office to work on papers and presentations with the rest of my lab. LibreOffice doesn't cut it. I tried Wine in the past and it was too buggy.

They work pretty well in wine from what I've heard. I dont' have any direct experience running them that way though.

Re: Mac mini

#252

Post by WaltPurvis »

moondev wrote: post #180
WaltPurvis wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "Mini Pro" is what I've been wanting from Apple forever (in tech years). Just a small tower with room for a graphics card and two or three SSD/NVMe drives. I'd be fine with paying Apple's customary 100+% hardware premium for something like that.

You can do all that now with the mini, it has 4 thunderbolt ports.

I thought it was pretty clear I was talking about something much different from hanging multiple external devices off the back of a Mini.

Re: Mac mini

#253

Post by askafriend »

olyjohn wrote: post #224
askafriend wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole premise of the Mac Mini. It's the only non-Pro designated Mac that has four Thunderbolt 3 ports. I don't think you'd find this level of I/O in any other machine in this price range. That incredibly powerful I/O makes for tons of expansion possibilities. Storage, GPU, etc. (Edited to say "non-Pro designated")

Not all Thunderbolt 3 ports are the same. Good chance that two ports are sharing a single PCIe 3.0 4x controller. Since PCIe 3.0 is good for ~7.8Gb/sec/lane, you're looking at two 40Gb/sec Thunderbolt ports sharing about 31Gb/sec of bandwidth on the PCIe bus. Okay, probably not that big of a deal really. The point being that a "Pro" system might have 4 individual Thunderbolt controllers, each getting their own 4x PCI…

Mac mini, iMac Pro, and Macbook Pro all have two Thunderbolt 3 controllers.

The Mac Pro starts with two controllers but can be configured up to six.

The I/O is actually pretty good and provides for a ton of headroom for expansion down the line (I'm thinking primarily storage and GPU for my use-case).

I can see a pretty high powered eGPU saturating the lanes.

Re: Mac mini

#254

Post by gurkendoktor »

hugi wrote: post #176
tabs_masterrace wrote: post #21

Still no real GPU. It's the reason I went back to a MacBook. What drew me in is the desktop class i7. At the time the Mini outperformed all other Macs in benchmarks, and it is noticeable and fast during compile times etc. Once you connect a 4k Screen (or even more screens), an eGPU becomes a must have. The integrated one just can't do smooth UI rendering. For example typing in IntelliJ always felt laggy, because it t…

If IntelliJ can't handle realtime rendering of text on modern hardware, perhaps the problem is with the software? My kid spilled a glass of water on my 2018 MacBook last year ( sob ). At that time, word was out about the 2019 MacBooks with the new keyboards, so I decided to hold out, took out an old 2012 Mac Mini and have been doing my (Java/Swift) development on it for the past few months. It works so well, I've bee…

Indeed it is a software problem. In my experience, JetBrains IDEs perform terribly on macOS as soon as you use a 5K/scaled 4K screen.

A good GPU doesn't help. I've just upgraded to a new 16" MacBook Pro with the maxed-out GPU hoping it could handle CLion on a 4K screen, but it's still worse than anything that I've ever seen on Linux. (Not to mention that this laptop generally suffers from input lag.)

One of the many bug tracker threads about this issue: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-526?p=JRE-526

There's a linked ticket about rewriting the renderer to use Metal on macOS, hopefully that will solve the issue once and for all.

Re: Mac mini

#255

Post by gurkendoktor »

rvz wrote: post #5

The Mac Minis are still expensive and underwhelming (even when maxed out) when compared with the top of the range NUCs with even AMD GPUs. The Skull and Ghost Canyon NUCs are great for Linux CIs or building large projects or I could even go far to either Hackintosh a few NUCs to surpass the need to buy a Mac Mini anyway for next 5 years. Thanks, but I would skip this Mac Mini and go for the latest maxed out NUC inste…

I've been looking for Mac Mini alternatives recently, but both the Skull Canyon NUC and the HP Z2 Mini G4 had plenty of reviews complaining about fan noise, plus they require large external PSUs. The Ghost Canyon NUC isn't super cheap either. The Mac Mini really has a lot going for it.

Re: Mac mini

#256

Post by webmobdev »

oneplane wrote: post #165
cjensen wrote: post #159

I don't understand Apple's aversion to accessible DIMM slots and off-the-shelf M.2 SSDs. It used to be that Apple charged a lot for RAM and Storage, but you could save a bundle by bringing your own. For example, my 2012 i7 Mac mini has maxed memory and a 2TB SSD. When Apple began soldering stuff in, they failed to reduce their punitive prices on expansion, which really hurts reusability and resale value. In other wor…

Like any manufacturer, they are trying to bring down the amount of breakage, and removing electrical connectors and mechanical connections is one way to do that. And when you want things to be smaller you don't really have much of a choice anyway. At the same time, the only reason those slots were there in the first place was so that a manufacturer could build one main board and then offer different configurations by…

I call bullshit on this.

Ask any user if they would prefer an upgradeable device to one that cannot be, they will opt for the upgradeable one.

That is why they were forced to bring back the RAM slots after the failure of Mac Mini 2014 (which had soldered RAM).

Apple does this purely to make more money - they have to spend less on parts if everything is soldered, they can charge an obnoxious amount for more memory and it helps with planned obsolescence.

The current mac mini would sell more if they had user upgradeable SSD. But it is obviously more profitable for Apple to offer soldered one's even if it sells less.

Re: Mac mini

#257

Post by webmobdev »

teilo wrote: post #184

This was originally posted with an (updated) suffix in the title. The Mac Mini has not really been updated. All they did was adjust the storage tiering. Minimum is now 256G. So this amounts to a price drop.

> Minimum is now 256G. So this amounts to a price drop.

Looks like Apple didn't learn its lesson with the Mac Mini 2014 that had soldered everything and was a FLOP. The later versions reverted to upgradeable RAM again, but soldered SSD.

And that is why these Mac Mini aren't selling as expected - because users want upgradeable computers. And aren't as much of a fool as Apple believes to pay the insane high prices Apple charges for its soldered SSD in these devices.

Re: Mac mini

#258

Post by omnimus »

izietto wrote: post #241
omnimus wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what you don't understand. There is no way you can cram desktop grade cpu and gpu in such a small space. You could put laptop line of cpus + gpus there which are slower and probably shouldn't be run 24/7 (apples usecase is NAS). Or you put just desktop cpu which has ok integrated graphics already.

Can't you use a laptop GPU with a desktop CPU? Logically I'd say "yes", but I'm not an hardware expert, just asking

You probably can but maybe it still just doesnt make sense to add it because of heat/money cost. The integrated gpus nowdays are pretty good you can connect 3x4K screens in that mac mini.

So if you need real graphic power mobile gpu doesnt help much and just for output for most people integrated is enough.

In some ways that egpu approach (if it works) is nice.

Re: Mac mini

#259

Post by ksec »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #137
whalesalad wrote: post #70

Still 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…

What about a Mac Mini Pro?

I would be happy if they have just reuse the Mac Pro design, with less expandable ports. May be only two PCI-E Slot, and a Consumer Grade CPU. Would buy one even if it was $2999.
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