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2018 Mac Mini Review

marco.org

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#331

Post by metafizikal »

garblegarble wrote: post #152
blinkingled wrote: post #12

The pricing is not really justifiable especially given the most use cases of the Mac mini (Home Theater, NAS, Backup etc.) are better handled by other OSes. The NUC8 with comparable specs (sans 6 core CPU) comes at under half the price! If you needed the 6 cores sure but given most workloads other than encoding don't - it's questionable. Even then the 6C processor doesn't cost enough to make up for the difference.

>The NUC8 with comparable specs (sans 6 core CPU) comes at under half the price! I'm actually very interested in these - could you point me at some? I've been interested in getting a NUC8 machine, but the cheapest I can find one for (granted, in the UK) is £750 before RAM & SSD... and I have been seriously considering the new Mac Mini as a result because the final price doesn't seem like it'll be much different. edit…

I have the 5i5 (Skylake) NUC running as a HTPC, and it's pretty nice. At the time I think I paid about $600 with the RAM and an SSD. I use it for the typical things, playing music and movies, but also for some lean-back computing on the couch when I don't want to sit at my desk to do email or whatever.

A quick glance at Amazon (US) says that a 7i5 NUC with 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD is $540.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#332

Post by mikewhy »

Larrikin wrote: post #130
veidr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OSes are better for a "Home Theater" TV computer?? That's a serious question; I recently replaced a creaking old Mac Mini (that couldn't do 4K) with a new Dell, after going a little bicurious with respect to Windows 10 (for software development work)... and, surprisingly, it's a complete and utter shitshow. I was astonished, actually; I had assumed Windows would be better than macOS as a TV computer, other than…

Kodi is recommended if you want a media pc connected directly to your tv, but personally I prefer Plex with a Roku and the media streamed to my tv. Only negative is that it's not useful for anything besides video

Plex also does Photos and Podcasts. Not that I've ever used them.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#333

Post by beat »

kalleboo wrote: post #194
throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days optical audio is dying when it comes to home theater systems, primarily due to its lack of codec support. You can't passthrough DTS-HD over optical, you can over HDMI.

I used to use optical audio but it was superseded by HDMI for home theater and USB for hifi. edit: I'd be curious to see what people are using optical for today (I'm under the impression audio pros mainly use USB interfaces as well)

Pro audio for recording has been shifting to USB over the past few years. They were heavily on Firewire or PCI card formats before, but USB has finally gotten fast enough to do the throughput, and of course it's much cheaper and more standard.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#334

Post by hi5eyes »

bluedino wrote: post #205
maxxxxx wrote: post #198

I really don't like when reviewers test the high end configuration only. This makes the review pretty useless for most of us who may be considering a lower spec.

Car manufacturers rarely send their low end models out to reviews as well.

and Ferrari sends tuned versions of the car

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#336

Post by benologist »

kbumsik wrote: post #298

How is it compared to Intel's Hades Canyon? I'm thinking between those two mini-sized computers.

I have the Hades' predecessor, one advantage of this line is a pair of M.2 slots in RAID that will later hold 4tb, 8tb, etc NVMe sticks allowing massively more capacity at similar speed to the Mini's storage.

The AMD graphics in the Hades' is vastly better, but still significantly inferior to anything you will connect via eGPU. A lot of casual usage will not require the Hades' GPU but you'll always pay a power/thermal price for it. As resolutions increase, or depending on your requirements now, you'll probably be forced to pair it with an eGPU because it really only excels at 1080p for 3d stuff afaik.

One nice thing from the Hades' predecessor is fanless cases, I don't know if they've emerged yet for the Hades Canyon but going fanless is really amazing. Prior to that it could be loud, and the Hades added a second loud fan for the GPU.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#337

Post by konradb »

kalleboo wrote: post #229
bluedino wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Marco call the LG 5K “not great”?

The Mac user consensus seems to be that the panel is great, but everything around it is flakey (at least compared to previous Apple displays) - plugging and unplugging doesn't work 100% of the time, stuff like OS integration of brightness and volume keys isn't seamless etc. Looking at user ratings it seems like reliability isn't great either but that could be skewed.

Anecdotally... I bought an LG Ultrafine 5K when they came out - I believe I've got one of the initially faulty ones that can't go too close to a WiFi access point due to lack of shielding.

It was flaky as hell when it first came out but over the course of about a month of receiving it, the problems largely seemed to stop occurring.

I typically unplug and plug it in once per day when I take my Macbook Pro away to sit somewhere else in the evening. But when I'm working during the day I use it as my primary display. For my own experience the integration of brightness and volume is seamless. The speakers are good (although I use some old Genelec monitors instead for this), and the quality of the display is absolutely fantastic as you said.

About one in fifty times plugging it in to the laptop doesn't immediately work, and then I plug it into a different USB-C port on the laptop, and then it does.

Despite this I'm very happy with it.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#338

Post by teolandon »

stephenr wrote: post #320
torben-friis wrote: post #11

A $2500 desktop computer with integrated graphics? Honestly, it feels like a bit of a joke.

How much graphics processing power does your text editor demand? How about your build server? Apple made it pretty clear in their keynote they're focussing this product to be attractive to the 'pro' market that gives zero fucks about a whiz-bang graphics card.

My text editor needs the processing power of my $100 ThinkPad, and that's where I'll be using my text editor.

What is it that justifies the $2500 price?

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#339

Post by ricardobeat »

na85 wrote: post #325
copperx wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone looking for crystal clear vocals should do exactly what NPR does: Stick a Neumann U87 six inches from the mouth with the bass rolled off and use a P-pop and Bob's your uncle. Money will be an issue with the U87, so you can look for good clones; there are a few in the market.

What does it mean to have the bass "rolled off", and what is a p-pop?

Most studio mics have a setting to taper off the bass end of the spectrum. A pop filter is a grate/net that sits between the mic and mouth to stop letters like ‘p’ sounding like a blast due to the air flow.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#340

Post by dawnerd »

mikestew wrote: post #218
kalleboo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use optical audio but it was superseded by HDMI for home theater and USB for hifi. edit: I'd be curious to see what people are using optical for today (I'm under the impression audio pros mainly use USB interfaces as well)

Shockingly, I need optical for a $300 set of gaming headphones I purchased within the last year (Astro A50). Maybe it’s the only way they can do pass through, dunno.

It’s (likely) because they don’t want to add a secondary hdmi output for audio like a lot of other high end gear uses.
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