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New Mac Mini

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Re: New Mac Mini

#331

Post by dimmke »

nicoburns wrote: post #264
tobr wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Apple even sell any product with a non-retina display any more?

No, but you can use Apple products with external displays that may not be hidpi. And of course with the mac mini an external display is the only display option.

This answers my question - In recent years I have used MacOS with 3 different external displays, and have never had a problem. Their resolution was always QHD.

It usually doesn't look as good, but it's not like distractingly bad.

Re: New Mac Mini

#332

Post by compiler-guy »

coder543 wrote: post #271
cmatthias wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think modern Apple Photos is built to handle slow spinning rust very well. Apple's software is garbage so I'm sure you're correct, but modern hard drives can do several hundred MB/s of throughput. How is that not fast enough for a freaking photo application? For Apple not to test/support this use case is inexcusable.

Modern external hard drives are more like 120MB/s, not "several hundred" MB/s, last I checked, but that's only for sequential access. Scanning and accessing a photo library is extremely random I/O and has nothing to do with the peak sequential throughput. Hard drives are awful at random I/O. If Apple kept proper indexes and thumbnails somewhere (especially somewhere fast, like on an SSD), maybe it would be fine, but…

The pain many people experience with using external hard drives and Apple photos is photos building that index and those thumbnails. Huge amounts of io that apparently need to be rebuilt constantly [1]. Probably also happens on SSDs, but you can’t tell because you can’t hear.

1. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251365140 And many, many like it.

Re: New Mac Mini

#333

Post by samcat116 »

blakesterz wrote: post #2

I'd still like a few more ol' fashion USB-A ports on there. I have so many things I need to plugin to USB-A ports still. My Mini only has 2 and it's just not enough.

Can I ask what they are? And are they devices with removable cables where you could move some to a native USB-C cable instead of adapting?

Re: New Mac Mini

#334

Post by qwytw »

threeseed wrote: post #160
cmatthias wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you define "sweet spot" in this case? Usually I see that term used when the thing being considered is a pricey upgrade, and you need to strike a compromise between price and performance. In this case, we're talking about an extra 8GB of memory, which would add perhaps $10 in cost to the bill of materials for the machine (or maybe less in sufficient volume). Given that Apple is also overcharging by at least 3x cur…

Majority of users are just going to be using web, email and photos. There is simply no need for more than 8GB for those use cases.

Also it makes it much easier for Apple upsell upgrades and increase their margin through market segmentation.

> There is simply no need for more than 8GB

I don't really agree. But let's say that the case. Will it still be the same in 2-4 years? Possibly not? Great Apple can just sell another mac.

Re: New Mac Mini

#335

Post by cat_plus_plus »

atonse wrote: post #302
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #300

I miss getting real innovation from Apple like in the 90s and 00s. For laptops, I still understand the appeal of serious power with all day battery life, here I am just getting less software choices and less upgradability than a Windows desktop for same price. It used to be that software innovations like running UNIX out of the box, automatic full backups and good music/photo/video tools made up for it. Now Windows a…

I've thought the same but I'm not really sure what else I'd want in my laptop. With the M1s they've just hit such a sweet spot. Battery life is great, the laptop is fast enough for everything I need. TB 3 hubs allow me to use external peripherals, two 4k 27" monitors, plenty of real estate. Update: I just saw a couple other comments – camera for sure. A much better camera than the garbage they include nowadays.

Agreed for laptop, but how much will power efficiency make a real difference on a Mac Mini?

Re: New Mac Mini

#336

Post by [deleted] »

Varloom wrote: post #182

I can't use my M1 mini with non-retina monitor because of how blurry it is. They stopped providing font anti-aliasing (default on Windows) few years ago in MacOS to make retina displays more relevant.

[deleted]

Re: New Mac Mini

#337

Post by qwytw »

tyingq wrote: post #116
crypt1d wrote: post #7

disappointed to see them still selling these with 8gb RAM. More than a dozen chrome tabs and a few discord servers has been enough to crash/significantly slow down my m1 mac mini edit: the ad says up to 24/32GB of ram, but seems like 8gb/16gb models are the only ones available for pre-order at the moment.

Maybe people still want 8gb models for affordable-ish CI/CD runner farms?

Well Apple could add the extra 8GB keep the same base price and still have higher margins than any other PC OEM.

Of course why would they do this if they don't have to...

Re: New Mac Mini

#338

Post by [deleted] »

nomel wrote: post #317
mempko wrote: post #259

Kind of shocked how many people here on HN are like "I'm totally fine with 8GB of ram on my mac". What? Isn't this hacker news? What are you guys doing with your computers? Are computers just toys now? Is HN no longer a space for professionals and hackers? It's like a plumber saying they are totally fine using a $2 Walmart wrench. I just don't get it.

I have about 20 Safari tabs open, an IDE, Excel, Slack, Discord (web), Tableau, mail/calendar/etc, and some terminal windows. Activity monitor says I'm pretty much maxed out, but this is all I need, daily. Memory compression is a thing, and these SSDs are fast, but I still don't understand how this is working so well. I was fully expecting to exchange this for a higher memory model, since it's supposed to be a tempor…

[deleted]

Re: New Mac Mini

#339

Post by ehutch79 »

coredog64 wrote: post #89
Kerrick wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a desktop device, the classic filesystem packrat might be best off just buying an external HDD with double-digit TB worth of storage and leaving it plugged in all the time.

That presupposes that the user knows how to deal with that. I did it for my wife’s current Mac Mini and never again. Photos is all janky and anything that causes an inconvenience is my fault.

"I understand that the way I set things up doesn't jive with your workflow. So I'm going to just step back, and let you take care of things exactly how you like. Just keep in mind that I'll be hands off no matter what."

Re: New Mac Mini

#340

Post by 13of40 »

qwytw wrote: post #329
13of40 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Mac Mini from around 2010 that I saved from the recyclers recently. Dusted it off, put in 8GB of RAM and an SSD, and it booted up Windows 11 just fine. However, as far as I can tell there is no up to date MacOS available for it because Apple considers such a thing too obsolete to support.

You might be able to install latest macOS using OpenCore-Patcher (it's just bootloader IIRC it does not modify the OS itself in anyway so it should be pretty safe). I've used it on 2011ish 17" mbp and had no issues.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Next thing I was going to try was host a VM under Linux and see if I could make a "hackintosh" on real Apple hardware.
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