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My Next Mac Mini

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Re: My Next Mac Mini

#301

Post by MrTonyD »

carussell wrote: post #150
MrTonyD wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. I recently got a new position and I couldn't find the terminal on the company mac - and a fellow came by and said "you obviously aren't an Apple person". I didn't tell him that I was a Mach kernel engineer at NeXT and that I'd worked on code that is probably still in the OS - or that I've been in way too many meetings with Steve Jobs. Instead, I just quietly nodded and agreed with him.

I'm curious to hear what your setup for the intervening 20 years has looked like. Did it involve moving to GNUstep when NeXTSTEP was no longer viable, or is it something like, you came to NeXT by way of e.g. Sun (or something) and never had any particular affinity for the NeXT environment and so your setup has always been Linux/BSD/Solaris...?

My skills have always centered around OS and Database. I've mostly worked on UNIX then Linux at command line. Lots of vi and compiling over the years. I'll use whatever desktop is around...and, practically speaking, that has usually been Windows at the Fortune 50.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#302

Post by [deleted] »

srj wrote: post #92
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.

If you already have an expensive IPS monitor which Mac do you buy to do your design work? There's the old mini and then the really pricey trashcan Mac.

[deleted]

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#303

Post by Viper007Bond »

jakobegger wrote: post #169

Can someone here explain why Apple seems to be the only company that builds small stuff with an integrated power supply? What's the point in making something small, when you need a huge power brick to power it? It's a shame that Apple's stuff is outdated, but it's just so much nicer when you look at the details.

By having an external power brick, you keep a ton of heat out of the device. That means a smaller device and less cooling needed.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#305

Post by CoolGuySteve »

mattnewton wrote: post #216
fowlerpower wrote: post #157

Someone here needs to explain it to me because I just don't understand. We have the largest computer company in the world, a shit load of people work there, supposedly smart people. Yet they can't put together a refresh of many of their desktop machines. Why the fuck not? What do all those people getting paid all that money do all day? I can only imagine the conversations, "it takes years it has to be super innovativ…

As an apple alumnus, I believe it has to do with a culture of "laser focus" There is an internal course called "what makes apple apple" that you can take, but it's not necessary to pick up one of the key pieces of culture: the importance of saying No to most things. Apple has built their reputation on high quality. To continue to deliver takes immense effort, even for incremental programs, and often almost if the tal…

Apple is not above doing side projects if they integrate existing components. The early Apple TV and iPod Touch come to mind.

IMO the bigger issue with the Mac Mini is that it used to be designed with very similar internals to the plastic/polycarbonate MacBook.

When they discontinued those machines in favour of laptops with integrated RAM and storage, my suspicion is the design path became less clear and required more engineers.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#306

Post by ndesaulniers »

ychombinator wrote: post #132
zuzun wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NUC6i5SYK and Ubuntu 15.10 and now 16.04 LTS. Since I got the NUC right after its release I was hoping for newer kernels to fix some of these problems, but they didn't.

And lack of H.264 encoding in Firefox / YouTube means no smooth HD YouTube playback

Decoding? Firefox supports h.264, and YouTube is mostly VP8/9, which Many Lake has accelerated decode for.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#307

Post by fuzzy2 »

general_ai wrote: post #279

"Never had to reboot". Yet every time I start my sparingly used Windows machine the first thing it wants me to do is reboot to install updates, and it's pretty insistent about it.

Not only that, it will reboot when it decides to and you can't do a thing about it. You haven't pressed a button for a while because you're watching a movie? Time to reboot!

I know about "work time", but it can last only 12 hours (IIRC).

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#308

Post by mstolpm »

AnOscelot wrote: post #276
maolt wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those do you ? How many of those hardcore users actually do like the new MBP and do not bother talking about it ? I would honestly appreciate to see a bit more fact & figures instead of anecdotal evidence.

I'd love to see that too. Sales seems to be high for the MBP so maybe there's more quiet supporters than loud detractors. However the very existence of loud detractors about a product line, which historically has had far more fervent defenders than critics, indicates the hardcore users are unhappy overall. Apple, more than any other tech company, usually attracts the "can do no wrong" type of fans. They're still arou…

At any given time, some (heavy) users were critical about new Apple products and Apple decisions, lamenting that they forget about their most valuable and vocal fans. Apple killed the floppy drive, multiple connectors, "great" products (clickwheel iPod, anyone), resetted software products (FCP, Pages), killed services and so on. Heck, they even killed the Apple ][. And some users cried foul on each of these decisions.

Just now, the internet and clickbait journalism give these voices much more weight. Apple isn't the underdog anymore and Apple bashing produces page views.

That said, of course Apple products aren't perfect. But they never were. But even 10 or 15 years ago, a lot of Apple supporters didn't buy 1.0 releases of new products, didn't install OS/X x.0 releases and so on.

How reasonable are these critics? E.g.: How many users do really need 32GB RAM on their MBP, an option not available before, but now a big failure if you read comments, blogs and articles about Apple. I bet its a tiny minority that is truly limited by this constraint. But still, everyone is complaining.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#309

Post by scott_karana »

esfandia wrote: post #148

I had the same experience as the OP. My Mac Mini was getting old, and the fan was making a worrisome noise. I wasn't going to buy the "latest" Mini, since it is very stale, hard to upgrade and expensive for what it is. Funnily enough I was already running Windows on that Mini anyway, so my next computer didn't have to be a Mac. But I did enjoy the small footprint, and I have to say that the Mac is probably the easies…

The regular NUC has a much quieter fan than the more powerful "gamer" one you selected.

Often, bigger/faster is not better... :)

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#310

Post by mstolpm »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #284
josephg wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - I know a bunch of software developers who excitedly bought one of the new MacBook pros on launch day. And Apple has said that by volume it was one of their best laptop launches ever. I think regarding the new mbps the internet echo chamber doesn't mirror reality.

> by volume it was one of their best laptop launches ever I argue: One reason is that it took Apple one and a half years to refresh the MacBook Pro, leading to pent up demand. Previous models were refreshed after max. 0.8 years, from 2015 to 2016 it took 1.7 years.

And this "it took Apple one and a half years to refresh" hasn't anything to do with Intels lackluster product cycles and product refreshes?

Why update products if the update is only marginally faster/better/newer than the current model?

Really, I can buy a new Acer or Lenovo notebook with a shiny new model number and a lot of "enhanced", "new" and "better" features every two months. It is more difficult to buy the old, trusted models of Lenovo notebooks than fresh models - that all are only better according to marketing, but somehow not faster or better and often somehow crippled in real world use. Do you want that from Apple?

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