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Apple Mac Mini

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91–100 of 134 posts

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#91

Not a bad price until you see it costs $300 to go from 4GB RAM to 16GB RAM. Do these have user-upgradeable RAM? I can buy RAM a lot cheaper than that.

All previous Minis had user-upgradeable HDD too. I use a Mac mini with 16gb RAM and an SSD I've put in myself.

I've also upgraded RAM a mini purchased originally to do iOS app development. Getting the case off was a bit dicey, but otherwise it is pretty straightforward. Guides are on Youtube.

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#92
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as I said else where small mac shops when they get to 10-15 people start to need a mac midi if they want to stay in the mac ecosystem

Not sure that's the right number - I worked in a Mac shop (an engineering firm) with 20-30 users with 21" iMacs, served off a single Mac Mini server. If your users are just normal users, iMacs are fine. (Though the Macs did come under fire from the finance folks - taking the line that "equivalent" PCs are "industry standard" and a third of the price. I think this argument won out in the end, and the Macs all disappea…

but 2tb is just to small and id want to use esxi to virtualise the server we have tools that run on Ubuntu

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#93

BTO option is now a dual core i7 (3Ghz), vs previous model's BTO option of a quad core i7 (2.3Ghz). I wonder what the performance difference is between the two.

which is totally insane. Yes, let's alienate the group of people who build 3rd party software and want a reasonably priced headless mac, and user upgradeable memory/HDD. Idiots. $100+ billion in cash or marketable securities and total spite for the dev/performance market. Just blind arrogance at this point - 'we don't need to offer this option anymore'

Apple has never been shy that "developer" Macs are the MacPros. The fact that you can get a reasonable developer experience on a Mac Mini or an iMac the last few years has been coincidental.

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#94

This is a credible answer for our new default developer machine, now that it has 2 Thunderbolt ports, but it doesn't seem cheap enough. We want dual 27" 2560 x 1440 displays, 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB fusion drive. This is for Rails development, so we're not taxing the CPU or GPU, although we do run parallel_rspec and parallel_cucumber, so more cores are helpful. The 27" iMac is $2199 + $399 for this Monoprice monitor…

  parallel_rspec and parallel_cucumber, so more cores are helpful.
How well do parallel_rspec and parallel_cucumber use all cores?

I was a little dismayed by the move from 4 to 2 cores as well, since I was looking at using the new Mac Mini as a server. Was hoping for a max of 32GB of RAM for the server as well.

Now, though? I'm thinking of this as a development machine. I think the higher single-core performance might just make it faster than the old 2.2ghz quad-cores in my 2011MBP and the old Mini....

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any good ITX hackintosh howto writeups? I might go that route too as I want small form factor and OSX, but do not want to pay an apple tax (even if their case is way prettier).

tonymacx86.com is a decent enough community. I've built 10+ machines using the site-promoted build tutorials (with some modifications) for myself and friends. The forums are hit or miss in terms of helpful information, though.

tonymac is a thief of open source tools, namely myHack, whose developer had to move to a closed source model because tonymac, amongst others were passing his work off as their own. http://myhack.sojugarden.com/guide/

Although for yosemite, just use Clover to boot the ESD and install as normal from there. I have some intel NUC's running 10.10 with no problems. (the i3 first model with dual HDMI, and the more recent i5 with displayport)

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#96
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above calculation was for 32bpp: 3 colors * 1 byte * (8 bits/byte) = 32 bits

I am sorry,but no it wasn't. 3*8 is 24 not 32. But in any case I don't think the display requires 32 bits, alpha is not necessary.

Thanks for the clarification. fwiw, I knew that alpha wasn't necessary, but vaguely remembered that DisplayPort might support displays that expected the entire 32 bit word to be sent. Looking at the specs, I don't see that. But it does show that DisplayPort supports 16 bits per component, or 48bpp.

FYI, Wikipedia's section on DisplayPort lists the resolution of 5120x2880 x 24bpp @ 60Hz as requiring 22.18 Gb/sec of bandwidth, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Specifications

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#97
post #36

I've been waiting for about a year for this refresh and fully expected to buy one today, but after looking at the combination of price, default HDD, processors, and very weak integrated graphics, I just can't justify buying this. Compared to the relationship between the 2012 Mini and the 2012 computing ecosystem, the 2014 Mini is really not that impressive.

I don't really understand Apple's current obsession with fitting their machines with low-end GFX. I get that it increases battery life, but let me make the choice between high-end GFX/poor battery life & low-end GFX/great battery life (at least as an option).

A top end Macbook Pro retina really should be capable of sporting a top end 8x series Nvidia as a minimum. In fact a 9x nVidia refresh with 40% the current battery would probably make me drop the cash for another one (I only bought a new Macbook about 3 months ago). I want "this" physical hardware, but with a nice GPU so I can demo things like the Rift DK2 on the road without hulking around another PC laptop just for "those moments". The current Macbook Pro just isn't cut out for modern day 3D like a cheap(ish) MSI stealth Pro is...Trust me Apple... I'll find a power outlet if I need it.

As an aside, it's still the best laptop I've ever owned.

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#98
Mac Minis have been great entertainment boxes for me!

Hook them up to a LCD TV, use a wireless mouse and enjoy tons of free content on Hulu, YouTube, Justin.TV substitutes and others!

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#99
post #36

I've been waiting for about a year for this refresh and fully expected to buy one today, but after looking at the combination of price, default HDD, processors, and very weak integrated graphics, I just can't justify buying this. Compared to the relationship between the 2012 Mini and the 2012 computing ecosystem, the 2014 Mini is really not that impressive.

I don't really understand Apple's current obsession with fitting their machines with low-end GFX. I get that it increases battery life, but let me make the choice between high-end GFX/poor battery life & low-end GFX/great battery life (at least as an option). A top end Macbook Pro retina really should be capable of sporting a top end 8x series Nvidia as a minimum. In fact a 9x nVidia refresh with 40% the current batt…

My last two (current and previous) MacBook Pros have been 17". The last one had a dedicated Nvidia GPU, this one has intel + Radeon GPU.

In both machines, I've had faults in with the discrete GPU. Both times required logic board replacements twice. (that's four replacement logic boards across two laptops).

I can absolutely understand why Apple is moving as much as possible of their line to using integrated Intel graphics solutions - they're 'good enough' for the vast majority of people, and have followed Intel's recent energy efficiency work, so not only do they drain the battery slower they produce less heat, and from what I've seen are much less likely to have catastrophic failures than discrete graphics.

If you want discrete graphics, buy a high end machine. If you don't have that requirement, why pay for the extra hardware that is more likely to cause a fault than be of use?

Re: Apple Mac Mini

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand Apple's current obsession with fitting their machines with low-end GFX. I get that it increases battery life, but let me make the choice between high-end GFX/poor battery life & low-end GFX/great battery life (at least as an option). A top end Macbook Pro retina really should be capable of sporting a top end 8x series Nvidia as a minimum. In fact a 9x nVidia refresh with 40% the current batt…

My last two (current and previous) MacBook Pros have been 17". The last one had a dedicated Nvidia GPU, this one has intel + Radeon GPU. In both machines, I've had faults in with the discrete GPU. Both times required logic board replacements twice. (that's four replacement logic boards across two laptops). I can absolutely understand why Apple is moving as much as possible of their line to using integrated Intel grap…

Anecdotal +1. Many of my Apple product failures have been discrete GPU related.
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