Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Next Mac Mini

rustyshelf.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 361 posts

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#21

Post by nottorp »

rwmj wrote: post #12
Marazan wrote: post #3

Apple's attitude to the Mac mini truly confuses me. Many years ago I was interested in getting one for eithet iPhone development or as a media pc but every time I looked they kept seeming to jack the price or downgrade the spec (relatively speaking).

TBH I've never understood what Apple gets out of selling the Mac Mini. It cannibalizes their own low-end laptops/desktops, and at the same time must be quite a marginal product mainly sold to a small number of hackers who probably put Linux on them.

I think it's sold mainly to companies that want a cheap machine for iOS development.

Hackers are more likely to build themselves a hackintosh and triple boot.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#22

Post by daenney »

raphinou wrote: post #15

Honest question : any good reasons to go with Windows rather than Linux?

A lot of it would depend on what your use case is. In this case the author needs an Elgato/Geniatech EyeTV stick and app for his purposes which isn't supported on Linux by the manufacturer. It might work, but it might also not be worth the hassle.

However, if you want something that plays media but doesn't (necessarily) also have to be able to receive regular terrestrial signal it shouldn't matter much beyond user preference and ease of installation/maintenance/debugging.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#23

Post by pmorici »

caleblloyd wrote: post #5

The NUC has full Linux support out of the box. You can configure them with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB-512GB SSD for $400-$500, especially if you go for the old model (Gen 6 Skylake instead of Gen 7 Kaby Lake, not much has changed)

Are you sure? I have one and the wifi definitely doesn't work out of the box and there are a couple other annoyances the worst being the machine locking up if you let it sit for too long. I haven't spent time to investigate but that isn't the definition of "works out of the box"

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#24

Post by benologist »

rwmj wrote: post #9

I would take a look at the Gigabyte Brix. The basic model is £119 [1] - considerably cheaper than the Intel NUC. I have a couple running a firewall and a little server, and they have trucked along for years without problems. [1] For a more complete spec including the other parts you may need, see: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/new-home-gateway-route...

Also ASRock and Zotac make nice ones too. I think these three companies actually work with the NUC insides.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#25

Post by pledg »

coldtea wrote: post #10

> Well, perfect except that six years in this machine is very creaky. It needs a reboot every week or so (otherwise it will refuse to launch anything). That sounds totally unrelated to the age of the machine, and totally related to what's installed, the mini running out of disk, etc. Maybe do a clean install of the OS? Aside from the mechanical parts (CD ROMS, Hard Disks, etc), the "digital" parts of a PC do not age…

My mini was basically unusable due to the hard disk. Switched it out recently for an SSD and it is a decent machine now.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#27

Post by taylodl »

orbitur wrote: post #13
taspeotis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blog doesn't even try to make that point. > It turns out there’s another OS that has all those: Windows. I’ve had Windows 10 on a gaming PC I built over 6 months ago and I’ve not had a single problem with it.

Which is strange, since the Mac mini's only value for the last 9 or 10 years has been it's ability to run OS X/macOS. From a purely technical/specs/price standpoint, the mini hasn't been a competitor since 2006, so I'm not sure what the blog post is saying that is new.

It's small and quiet. Quite nice for a living room machine. It's also rackable so you can put them in your data center and use them as an iOS build server. It's odd the Mac Mini can fill both of these divergent niches but such is the Mac Mini - it's a niche machine.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#28

Post by analog31 »

Joeri wrote: post #14

One of the big selling points of the mini is that it's really quiet. Does anyone with actual experience know how the NUC compares? From what I've read it's significantly louder, which is not what you want from a living room PC.

For the living room PC, I recently went even further downscale and replaced a wheezing old desktop box with a fanless mini-PC running Win10. It solves the problem of when both kids have homework at the same time. The only software on it is Chrome, since the kids do all of their stuff in the cloud.

Oddly, it's the end of an era: The first computer I've owned that I'm not tempted to install MS Office on.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#29

Post by rwmj »

zymhan wrote: post #20
rwmj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH I've never understood what Apple gets out of selling the Mac Mini. It cannibalizes their own low-end laptops/desktops, and at the same time must be quite a marginal product mainly sold to a small number of hackers who probably put Linux on them.

Why would anyone buy a Mac Mini and put Linux on it?! There are a million other small PCs that are far better for that. If I was going to buy a Mac Mini, it's to have an affordable Mac that I can stick somewhere in my house to run occasional OS X software. I already have a few other computers, plenty of them running Linux. A Mac Mini is a great way to get a cheap OS X setup going. Also, it's not low margin, they char…

Back when I had a Mac Mini (10 years ago), you could pull them apart and upgrade the RAM and hard disk, which I did. Is that not still the case?

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#30

Post by delinka »

taspeotis wrote: post #6
orbitur wrote: post #4

Blog post leaves out an important point: is it easy to get macOS running on that particular model? edit: The mini hasn't competed on a purely specs/price level since, perhaps, its first year or two of existence. There have long been better, similarly sized options if you don't care about OS X.

The blog doesn't even try to make that point. > It turns out there’s another OS that has all those: Windows. I’ve had Windows 10 on a gaming PC I built over 6 months ago and I’ve not had a single problem with it.

>Do I actually need this computer to run macOS? I quickly realised I don’t.

This phrasing leads the reader to assume that that macOS can be run on some other computer. I think the author's intent was "Do I actually need [to run] macOS?"

Post reply on HN