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

2018 Mac Mini Review

marco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 653 posts

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#621

Post by rbanffy »

phaus wrote: post #341
crad wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty happy with mine, but thanks for speaking for us all with your sweeping generalization.

I work at a company where most of us use Macs. Everyone that has upgraded from a 2013-2015 MBP to the touchbar model absolutely hates it, including me. There's gotta be someone around here that actually likes it, but I haven't met them yet. Its OK if you like it. I'm sure lots of people do, but you know damn well significantly more people have had issues with this laptop than normal, so I'm not sure why you're implyi…

Anyone who hates the touchbar has never chased a chat window for the mute button (it's there). Also, no need to leave the keyboard to click on dialog box buttons - they also get there.

It could be better - it could require a bit more of pressure to press buttons and could have haptic feedback like the touchpad, but I bet someone is working on that, even if it means extending haptic feedback to the whole chassis (which is not a bad idea anyway).

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#622

Post by rbanffy »

aczerepinski wrote: post #468
jillesvangurp wrote: post #83

People are missing the point about the integrated graphics. For me this is a feature not a bug because it has USB-C instead. That means that instead of hopelessly compromising thermals and power supply with some power hungry, yet limited GPU (because of the small form factor) you simply buy the CPU and memory that you need. It simplifies the job of keeping it cool. CPUs are evolving a lot slower these days. This one…

That sounds like a horrible mess of wires and power strips to me. If only they could make a single case to fit all these various computer components in, and one chord to supply power to all of them.

> If only they could make a single case to fit all these various computer components in

They do. It's called an iMac and comes free with an excellent monitor.

Now, seriously, unless you plan to do a lot of GPU computing (I don't) the internal Intel graphics are pretty reasonable. I can't see how a 64 gig mini would not be able to be my main machine for 5 years or more. With an updated SSD, my previous mini is a pretty good general purpose computer.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#623

Post by Nexxxeh »

simonh wrote: post #565
drcongo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who owns a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will definitely be saying "yay it hasn't gotten worse!" about these.

And now the top thread is dominated by an argument about laptop keyboards, for a device that isn't a laptop and doesn't even come with a keyboard.

But to be fair, the device is made by Apple and the discussion speaks to how Apple treats its consumers.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#624

Post by pier25 »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #551
pier25 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be as enthusiastic as you. I've bought a number of Macs since I switched in 2007 and I've had a number of tragic stories. My wife's previous Macbook Air died during its second year. It was working fine and one day it didn't turn on. Apple Mexico asked for close to $1000 at the time to replace the logic which was simply ridiculous. My top of the line 2011 MBP died when it was 2.5 years old because of a known…

I'm sure lots of people have stories like ours, one way or another. Things break. Not everything is perfect, but sometimes it is. How often are macs really failing? We hear stories because Apple is hated and you-tubers love getting scenarios where they can make an attack apple video. But without actual numbers we have no idea if this is a trend or not. Consumer Reports regularly ranks Apple as having the best failure…

My biggest gripe is not that things fail (that's completely expected) but how Apple reacts to that.

For example my 2007 MBP suffered from Nvidiagate. The GPU died during its third year, many months after the warranty had ended. Apple fixed it, no questions asked.

The 2011 Radeongate affair was ridiculous. There were thousands and thousands of users complaining online. It took Apple 2 years from the first machines failing to start a repair program AFTER a couple of class action lawsuits. It was a massive fuckup.

I haven't bought any of the redesigned MBPs with the butterfly keyboard, but again it took a couple of years to get a repair program after a couple of class action lawsuits. Also, in the US Apple is all fine and dandy, but in Mexico I've personally witnessed cases of Apple refusing to repair the keyboard because apparently they couldn't reproduce the issue.

> But without actual numbers we have no idea if this is a trend or not

Yeah, Apple is as opaque as things can be. Even more now than they will not even share the number of units sold in future reports.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#625

Post by cptskippy »

ihuman wrote: post #524
cptskippy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a hard time watching him talk because the over dubbed audio is completely out of sync. It's really bad right around the 1 minute mark. I ended up minimizing the window and just listening. I honestly don't care for this audio, it's crystal clear and perfect for a podcast but the video is of him sitting in front of a window with a dog and the absence of any environmental noise is odd.

"Yeah, sorry about the audio sync. I was fighting it for the entire edit, and ran out of time to really nail it. Next time, I’ll pipe the audio directly into the camera instead of relying on manual syncing during post, which had tons of drift." https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/1059869643928670208

Thank you for confirming that I'm not insane. :)

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#626

Post by gregmac »

spookthesunset wrote: post #596
gregmac wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used any Apple stuff, but I've gone through many iterations of this over the past 15-ish years, going from MythTV to SageTV to Plex+Netflix, and using various iterations of Linux, Windows 7, 8, and 10 on everything from leftover PC part builds to the SageTV appliance to dedicated Mini-ITX HTPC systems to Raspberry Pis. My main criteria is being able to use everything from the couch, using a single remote, a…

> I was close to that with the SageTV boxes, but Google bought SageTV and it started becoming obsolete, and there was never really a good Netflix integration anyway. Man I was pissed when Google bought and killed SageTV. It was probably the best DVR out there. Flexible in all the ways you'd want it to be. High Wife Approval Factor (MythTV was a disaster) I guess they open sourced it a few years ago, but our family ha…

Yeah, similar feelings. MythTV and SageTV both got me entirely off non-DVR broadcast TV. The idea of 'shows is on at x time' or 'show is interrupted by commercial breaks' is completely foreign to us at this point. Also even the MythTV interface of a decade ago is superior to all the DVR's I've seen at my family/friends locally: they all seem to do "live TV" first, then the DVR bit is an afterthought in a menu. To me, Live TV is the exception that I rarely use, and even then, I want to go to the Guide first -- not just start "channel surfing".

I did spend some time trying to get the SageTV backend working with Plex, but scheduling required an awkward web app (not wife friendly) and I could never get it naming everything in a way that made it easy to navigate with Plex. Around this time, my cable company also turned off their unencrypted QAM channels so I could no longer tune them, and that was really the nail in the coffin for me. I don't pick up enough OTA channels to make it worthwhile.

When Plex released their PVR thing, since I had the gear I set it up, but honestly, I just never watch it.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#627

Post by jocoda »

adamlett wrote: post #137
dev_north_east wrote: post #17

I bought a mac mini ten years ago (for about E400?). It still lives on today as my parent's desktop. I passed to them many years ago and not one problem. Fantastic machine. However I cannot justify the prices they're asking for these ones. I'm looking for a new machine for myself now, but no way will these be considered.

Let me get this straight: You would not consider paying a premium for a machine even though your experience tells you, that it has a useful life of 10+ years?

meh. I had a 2007 mini that crapped out one month after the guarantee expired. Took it in for support and they told me to buy a new one, not interested in taking it on. To be fair this was a specialist apple dealer. At the time there was no local Apple store.

My general experience with Apple products has been 50:50 some good, some bad, Apple is nothing special when it comes to quality. Better than some is about all I can say.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#628

Post by scaasic »

kylec wrote: post #439
scaasic wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal issue with it is the lack of standard inputs, which make it impossible to use with an eGPU setup (excluding the Blackmagic, but that's a whole other kind of subpar). The data ports being exclusively USB-C is probably an issue for some as well.

If your complaint about the Blackmagic eGPU being “subpar” was the power of the Radeon Pro 580, you’ll be happy to hear that one with a Vega 56 is now available: https://store.apple.com/xc/product/HMQT2VC/A

It was partially the 580, partially the inability to swap out the card. It's nice that they're offering Vega options now, but for that model I'd be paying a $500 premium over a comparable setup, with TB3 out being the only benefit. I'll stick with my Dell P2415Q + Akitio Node for now.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#629

Post by TomVDB »

rthille wrote: post #589
TomVDB wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people use both ESC and Caps Lock all the time. How else would you bind ESC?

Caps-Lock is a waste of a key. NeXT had it right by using Command-Shift (without any other keys) to turn on/off Caps-Lock.

I learned high speed touch typing in the eighties, with included heavy use of the caps-lock.

There is nothing wasteful about it when you've been trained that way.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#630

Post by dkonofalski »

rusk wrote: post #571
dkonofalski wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>most serious computer users Ahh... the good 'ol Scottsman shows his face yet again! Right on time!

A Scotsman would be to say “No true computer user ...” - this was a generalisation. An apt one IMHO

No it wasn't. Define "serious". What makes one computer user more "serious" than another. The point of the no true Scottsman is that the term is never defined by the statement and so it's completely subjective.
Post reply on HN