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Mac mini review–a testament to Apple’s stubbornness

84 points by okket 8y ago

harryh 8y ago
I bought a previous rev of the Mac Mini in 2014 to use mostly as a media server. It fits in a small media closet. It's quiet. It was relatively inexpensive. It's more than powerful enough to do the job so I have no need to upgrade. The only goofy thing was that I had to buy a doodad[1] to stick in the HDMI port to get it to switch into certain resolutions even though I'm running it headless. While not a big deal, that seems like kind of a bug. Overall, I continue to be very happy with the purchase. 1. https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425 https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425
- robotmay 8y ago
  I think that use case was a very good one for the Mini, but with the price hike I just don't see why anyone would choose this latest model. You can pick up a HP MicroServer Gen8 for ~$150 or the latest ones for ~$450, and those offer tons more variety on configuration, more storage expansion capacity, and they're extremely easy to maintain (I'm far from a HP fan, but they sure can build a solid server).
  - scarface74 8y ago
    No one should have ever bought the $499 Mac Mini before with 4Gb of RAM. The cheapest Mac Mini that anyone should have bought was at least $699 with 8GB of RAM and you still had a slow hard drive.
  - asdkhadsj 8y ago
    I've been looking for small closet servers, this looks neat! Thanks! Any other brands/models you'd recommend?
    - krylon 8y ago
      FWIW, I have a HP Microserver Gen8 with the dual-core Celeron and 16 GB of RAM, including 4 3 TB HDDs I paid about 800 bucks. I have had this machine for three years now, and it has given me no trouble whatsoever. It is quiet, reliable and for my use case, it performs well (I use it as a file server, DHCP and DNS server, plus I run a few low-end VMs on it). The one thing that was a little annoying is that it does not have UEFI firmware, and the BIOS cannot deal with GPT, so I cannot boot off the HDDs and need an additional USB flash drive for that. Other than that I cannot say a bad thing about it.
      - robotmay 8y ago
        I rigged mine to boot off an SSD wedged into the "CD Drive" bay at the top. Cheapy connector to power it off the CD power connector and a SATA cable and it works great. There's an option in the BIOS to swap the disk controller to a dumb version, which works much better for me (I use ZFS anyway so any built-in RAID stuff just gets in the way), and that picks up the SSD and lets you set it as a boot drive. I might think about rejigging my setup soon to use that SSD as an L2ARC cache and instead boot off a pair of USB sticks. 16GB of RAM max on the Gen8 is a bit of a pain with ZFS, so that might be a sensible evolution before I eventually look to get a newer model :)
        krylon 8y ago
        I considered that option, but as far as I could find out, that would force the SATA controller in to RAID mode, making it impossible for ZFS (I use ZFS, too) to get at the SMART data from the disks. My server runs FreeBSD, and I have restricted the ZFS ARC to 8GB, so I have some RAM left for the other stuff, performance has been okay for me. Then again, a) a home network with about half a dozen client devices is not that big a challenge, and b) due to a combination of laziness and stupidity, my home network still is 100MBit, so I do not have to worry about any bottlenecks on the server. ;-)
    - robotmay 8y ago
      Ah I've only used one of those unfortunately! I'm sure there must be some other similar models about :D My Gen8 has an upgraded Xeon E3 in it and runs a ZFS array; works extremely well as a media server, and transcodes very well (works pretty well with the base processor, but for multiple simultaneous streams I opted to upgrade).
asdkhadsj 8y ago
I've been debating my next "laptop" purchase actually be a Mac mini. Ie, every day I'd throw it in my backpack, head to work (when I go into office), and plug it in there. Why? Well, I already do that. I have a MacBook Pro 2017, and I treat it like a MacMini. I don't use it like a laptop. Partially because I have monitor/keyboard setups that I prefer at both work and home, but also because I simply don't trust the laptop to withstand any real usage. The keyboard, mainly. I have two friends with the same laptop, under sane conditions and both have experienced problems (with the keyboard). So what do I do when I actually need a laptop? I travel with my trusty 2014 (or whatever year it is) MacBook Pro. I love it to death. And when it dies I guess I'll upgrade it. But I've realized I prefer a lesser, small and portable machine for my travel laptop. My "main" work machine is too expensive to feel safe traveling with. My travel laptop is in a separate category. So when the need occurs, I'm debating hauling a Mac mini between work and home as my daily driver. For travel, it will be a smaller, much more cheap laptop that if I lose/damage I won't be out $3.5k. It just seems to fit my needs better. On that note, anyone think a Mac mini will survive daily hauls like that? I am concerned that it will be too much movement for a non-laptop. Thoughts?
- detaro 8y ago
  I know people who've done that, didn't appear to be a problem. (not surprising, since it has little in the way of moving parts or connectors inside) I'd look into protective bags for DJ gear: some of that has similar sizes and should make a good equivalent to a laptop sleeve.
- ianai 8y ago
  They’re 100% solid state. You’ll be fine. Just be sure you find a sleeve or something to protect from scratches and dents.
  - ChrisRR 8y ago
    Just because they're solid state doesn't mean they're not still susceptible to impact and thermal shock between the PCB and components. Obviously the failure rate won't be anywhere near the same as a spinning disk, but it still is a possibility for a system that was designed to not move.
DannyBee 8y ago
If you remove the hyperbole here, i think a bunch of the author's points are probably right: IE "Need a Mac because you're wanting to explore iOS development? Get the Mac mini and continue to use the keyboard/mouse/display that you've already got on your desk. It's no longer the affordable way into the macOS environment that it once was, but it's the best thing Apple really has to offer." "Apple's refusal to build, y'know, a regular desktop computer means that the mini often ends up being the best option if you really are committed to using macOS." etc I've own/owned 5 or 6 mac mini's at this point (including the 2018) At this point, i buy them to shove them in a closet somewhere. Size is not a factor in that. It's big enough at this point (compared to NUC's, etc) that it has no meaningful size advantage. As a server, you'd want some different tradeoffs. As a desktop, the only reason you'd use it is, as the author says - you don't have a lot of options in what you can use for MacOS and this checks some boxes the other option doesn't. It'll probably be the last computer i buy from apple to set up for others - MacOS isn't as bulletproof as it used to be. For the second time, I had to debug obscure apple bugs for my parents over thanksgiving - which is why i set them up with a mac mini in the first place - to stop having to deal with this on windows or linux.
- danso 8y ago
  > It'll probably be the last computer i buy from apple to set up for others - MacOS isn't as bulletproof as it used to be. What have you moved on to if I can ask? Windows 10?
  - DannyBee 8y ago
    Nothing yet. I have a few Windows 10 machines around, for example, the one that controls my CNC machine, and the one i use for CAD. So far, zero issues, which is "better than it used to be". I'll try it for the family and see what happens. In the past, my dad used to set up Linux server machines for my Mom, which is what was there pre-mac-mini (he's a long time software engineer). They were just so finicky in practice (IE audio on webcam would stop working so she could never be sure a video chat she started would actually work, etc) That did not last all that long. My mom started to avoid that desktop like the plague, so it ended up with Dad running Linux and Mom running Windows.
scarface74 8y ago
I have no use for a personal laptop. Every job provides a laptop for work and for my personal non developer work, my iPad suffices. I’m always using a multiple monitor setup anyway and the Mac Mini supports three. I don’t need large internal storage, I can always add external hard drives.
- organsnyder 8y ago
  I have a personal laptop that doesn't see much use (though I am using it right now, coincidentally). However, whenever I'm working on non-work projects, I use the personal machine to ensure that there's no question of copyright ownership.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    That’s what I am saying. My work laptop moves between two places - my job with a dual monitor setup and my favorite Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and my home office with a dual monitor setup and a separate set of the keyboard and mouse. So why buy a more expensive, less capable laptop that will only be used in one spot at home for my personal use instead of just buying the Mac Mini? Second question is usually why not just buy a cheaper PC? I’m slowly moving away from the Microsoft Windows ecosystem - but I still will be using some .Net Core - and the macOS is real certified Unix that just works.
nakedrobot2 8y ago
> "there isn't a PCIe slot to be found across the entire range of systems" Thunderbolt is PCI express.
- DrPizza 8y ago
  s l o t
nik736 8y ago
I think the form factor is great. The argument that there is no room for a dedicated GPU is imo simply false. If a mobile VEGA fits in a MBP it will fit in a Mac Mini chassi. Apple decided against it, for whatever reason and that is the only problem I have with this machine.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  Physically having room for the chip and having enough space that you can actually run it without running into thermal issues are different things. Laptops have a bigger surface area to get rid of the heat but thermals are still a challenge for laptop design. I don't know for sure that Apple couldn't have pulled it off but the issue is not just physically having space to cram the chip in, it's being able to run it cool enough.
  - nik736 8y ago
    I doubt that's the reasoning, but even if they could've made it slightly larger. No one cares if their mini is 5mm larger on one side.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Well, anyone who has a rack of Mac Minis probably appreciates them keeping the size the same. I know Mac Mini Colo does.
- benologist 8y ago
  I think they really made this for companies with 100s or 1000s on shelves, a better GPU wouldn't be useful but the lowest-power GPU and keeping the old case sure would. http://thesweetsetup.com.s3.amazonaws.com/img/sponsors/2013-11-11-macminicolo-sponsorship-hero.jpg http://thesweetsetup.com.s3.amazonaws.com/img/sponsors/2013-...
  - nik736 8y ago
    so what, they could've made a version with optional GPUs, problem solved.
nakedrobot2 8y ago
the author complains that the mac mini has no power brick - why not just have a power brick? he says. but he complains that an external GPU is a dumb idea? this guy didn't like apple and his review simply reflects his emotion, nothing more.
- zrail 8y ago
  The first version had a power brick that was half the size of the mini itself. It was a dumb idea.
- cgh 8y ago
  Peter Bright is Ars’s Microsoft guy and is known for his Apple antipathy. Not sure why he’s doing this review.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    That gives you another viewpoint. About like how Gruber always buys the flagship Android phone from Google every year just to give his thoughts.
  - gumby 8y ago
    To be fair he called this out up front (although until your note I didn't know what he was taking about -- but I got the idea).
- glenneroo 8y ago
  A power brick is sort of like a real brick - a big chunk of plastic which should be out of sight/mind and can be placed just about anywhere, as most people tend to do, often on the floor/behind the desk, etc... generally communing amongst other forgotten cables and dustbunny colonies. External GPUs + enclosures are larger and more expensive than power bricks and therefore are probably best kept somewhere relatively safe, especially while connected to a tiny Thunderbolt port - I've personally seen plenty of bent/broken USB/FW ports due to cable management "issues" among friends/acquaintances/colleagues.
- DrPizza 8y ago
Someone1234 8y ago
I'm struggling what to get, I largely need a Mac just to test Safari against web-sites I develop, and while you can do that on an iPad, the lack of a real browser development console makes tracking down JS bugs a nightmare (and, yes, I've seen the hacky iFrame websites that "add" a developer console to iPad, it isn't good enough). So that leaves me with a Mac Mini, Macbook, Macbook Air, or one of those services which claims they can do virtual Safari testing (but I'm unclear how that would work on localhost/internal sites). Is there any real advantage to the Mac Mini aside from slightly more power and ports? For the same money a Macbook/Air comes with its own screen, keyboard, and mouse.
- lostgame 8y ago
  For you, it must be annoying that Apple killed Safari for Windows, but I always wondered why they did that to start.
  - danso 8y ago
    I can't imagine that Windows Safari usage rates were very good. According to the last 90 days of federal website analytics [0], Safari was used by 28.9% of users (Chrome and IE are 46.6% and 10.5%, respectively). But only 14% of Safari visits were from MacOS -- i.e. 4% of all browsers. 0: https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  FWIW, Browserstack does a pretty good job of testing limited-access sites – traffic appears to be routed back through your local machine when using the Chrome extension, so everything works as expected. I'd say it's pretty good if you're doing basic functionality checks, but it's ultimately not as nice as having the real thing, especially not if you're trying to debug anything graphically intensive etc.
- adrianN 8y ago
  If you need it just for testing, just pick something used from ebay. I use a 2009 Macbook at home and it works fine.
- 8y ago
matthewmacleod 8y ago
It's indeed annoying that there's a bit of a gap in Apple's product range for a high-end-but-not-excessive machine. I'd go right ahead and buy a higher-end Apple desktop machine, with enthusiast-level components, and the ability to bump the memory, storage, and GPU up myself at a later date. I don't need a tiny enclosure or dual GPUs or built-in screens, so the Mac Pro and iMac Pro are not cost-effective products. I really do miss the old Mac Pro, which fitted this use-case perfectly. I'm genuinely pretty surprised there's not a market for that kind of thing among software developers in particular.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  There is and Apple already announced that they will fix their mistake with a new, modular Mac Pro in 2019.
lostgame 8y ago
When I was only 15 years old, I'd received an inheritance from the passing of a relative to the tune of $2000 USD. I was living with my Father at the time, who worked for Microsoft in networking (he now works at Azure), and he had nurtured my interest in programming from the age of 8 or 9. He agreed we could put half aside for my college fund, and I could use half to buy or build a new computer, among some other niceties. So I basically had an $800 USD budget for a computer, including any RAM or HDD upgrades I wanted to do, or any extra peripherals I wanted. I had a vast interest in moving away from Windows, and a continued interest in audio production/recording already - I fell in love with the original iMac G4, and, while it was definitely out of my price range, being an all-in-one starting at, I think, $1,199 - but all I wanted was to make music with GarageBand, movies with iMovie, and try to explore MacOS and learn about xCode and Objective-C. So, at $499, the original 1.42ghz G4 Mac Mini was, for me, as a high school student - who literally would've had to save months for it had they not been so lucky - well, it might has well have been a Lamborghini to a 15-year-old. But, I was fortunate, and, given my desire to explore in the Apple ecosystem, I was willing to invest in what my Father thought was a very underpowered machine for the money. What makes me sad is that today, that same 15-year-old kid could not have walk into that store and have the same experience. Today, I'm a professional iOS developer at a major bank, when I'm not running an independent music label with artists that exclusively run on Logic Pro X systems that I configure for them, so collaboration is seamless. Everyone loves them. But I exclusively use 2010-2013 MacBook Pro hardware for my artists that I purchase, upgrade, shove an SSD and the most RAM I can in them and often experience better performance, or at the very least certainly a more enjoyable experience, than the 2017 15" Touch Bar Macbook Pro I'm 'typing' on right now. (While I was writing this post, I accidentally brushed the lock screen button and was temporarily locked out.) The Mac Mini was a very important and crucial product in their product line. Something at least reasonably affordable. Something you could basically justify with, well, hey, it's got a $100-200 Apple Tax on it, but at the end of the day, it's still something affordable for education and low-income markets who may otherwise simply need to turn to other hardware. The $999 MacBook/Air was also a crucial piece of hardware in this position. tl;dr: an increase of price of this magnitude would've probably have robbed me of my future career of an iOS developer if it'd happened to me when I was younger.
- 8y ago
dmtroyer 8y ago
yawn.
hellofunk 8y ago
> And if you're a suspicious sort who wants ECC in their build farm, then a Xeon or an AMD processor of some kind would be a better fit. What does ECC refer to?
- mantesso 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
- mpmpmpmp 8y ago
  Error correcting code memory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- julioneander 8y ago
  Error-correcting code. They're referring to ECC memory, which is more reliable to bit flips than normal memory, useful in cases when sensitive tasks can't afford an unexpected bit flip.
pasta 8y ago
I think it's clear what Apple is doing here. The smartphone market is saturated, the tablet market is saturated, the laptop market is saturated, the desktop market is almost dead and Apple doesn't have (a lot of) users in the workstation market. So why put a lot of effort in designing new products every year? What we now see is that Apple is focusing on people with money and on paid services. And it works. They won't tell you how many iPhones they sold but the profit will be huge.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Of course it’s clear. It’s no great conspiracy. Apple has been emphasizing their service revenue growth for years and they said they are emphasizing making their products last longer. iOS 12 is compatible with the 2013 iPhone 5.
ksec 8y ago
At this point, someone should just make a Space Grey Mac Mini Casing, with 1 or 2 NVMe housing on the side, along with 7nm Radeon Vega. Stack them up and connect the two via Thunderbolt, upgrade the Mac Mini yourself with 64GB Memory. Done!. Apart from the CPU limited to 6 Core, I think this is about as close to "Mac" as most people want. The only problem is I am not sure about the performance penalty of eGPU, may be two Thunderbolt connection instead of one will help?

84 points by okket 8y ago

I bought a previous rev of the Mac Mini in 2014 to use mostly as a media server. It fits in a small media closet. It's quiet. It was relatively inexpensive. It's more than powerful enough to do the job so I have no need to upgrade. The only goofy thing was that I had to buy a doodad[1] to stick in the HDMI port to get it to switch into certain resolutions even though I'm running it headless. While not a big deal, that seems like kind of a bug. Overall, I continue to be very happy with the purchase. 1. https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425 https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425

robotmay 8y ago
I think that use case was a very good one for the Mini, but with the price hike I just don't see why anyone would choose this latest model. You can pick up a HP MicroServer Gen8 for ~$150 or the latest ones for ~$450, and those offer tons more variety on configuration, more storage expansion capacity, and they're extremely easy to maintain (I'm far from a HP fan, but they sure can build a solid server).
- scarface74 8y ago
  No one should have ever bought the $499 Mac Mini before with 4Gb of RAM. The cheapest Mac Mini that anyone should have bought was at least $699 with 8GB of RAM and you still had a slow hard drive.
- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  I've been looking for small closet servers, this looks neat! Thanks! Any other brands/models you'd recommend?
  - krylon 8y ago
    FWIW, I have a HP Microserver Gen8 with the dual-core Celeron and 16 GB of RAM, including 4 3 TB HDDs I paid about 800 bucks. I have had this machine for three years now, and it has given me no trouble whatsoever. It is quiet, reliable and for my use case, it performs well (I use it as a file server, DHCP and DNS server, plus I run a few low-end VMs on it). The one thing that was a little annoying is that it does not have UEFI firmware, and the BIOS cannot deal with GPT, so I cannot boot off the HDDs and need an additional USB flash drive for that. Other than that I cannot say a bad thing about it.
    - robotmay 8y ago
      I rigged mine to boot off an SSD wedged into the "CD Drive" bay at the top. Cheapy connector to power it off the CD power connector and a SATA cable and it works great. There's an option in the BIOS to swap the disk controller to a dumb version, which works much better for me (I use ZFS anyway so any built-in RAID stuff just gets in the way), and that picks up the SSD and lets you set it as a boot drive. I might think about rejigging my setup soon to use that SSD as an L2ARC cache and instead boot off a pair of USB sticks. 16GB of RAM max on the Gen8 is a bit of a pain with ZFS, so that might be a sensible evolution before I eventually look to get a newer model :)
      - krylon 8y ago
        I considered that option, but as far as I could find out, that would force the SATA controller in to RAID mode, making it impossible for ZFS (I use ZFS, too) to get at the SMART data from the disks. My server runs FreeBSD, and I have restricted the ZFS ARC to 8GB, so I have some RAM left for the other stuff, performance has been okay for me. Then again, a) a home network with about half a dozen client devices is not that big a challenge, and b) due to a combination of laziness and stupidity, my home network still is 100MBit, so I do not have to worry about any bottlenecks on the server. ;-)
  - robotmay 8y ago
    Ah I've only used one of those unfortunately! I'm sure there must be some other similar models about :D My Gen8 has an upgraded Xeon E3 in it and runs a ZFS array; works extremely well as a media server, and transcodes very well (works pretty well with the base processor, but for multiple simultaneous streams I opted to upgrade).

asdkhadsj 8y ago

I've been debating my next "laptop" purchase actually be a Mac mini. Ie, every day I'd throw it in my backpack, head to work (when I go into office), and plug it in there. Why? Well, I already do that. I have a MacBook Pro 2017, and I treat it like a MacMini. I don't use it like a laptop. Partially because I have monitor/keyboard setups that I prefer at both work and home, but also because I simply don't trust the laptop to withstand any real usage. The keyboard, mainly. I have two friends with the same laptop, under sane conditions and both have experienced problems (with the keyboard). So what do I do when I actually need a laptop? I travel with my trusty 2014 (or whatever year it is) MacBook Pro. I love it to death. And when it dies I guess I'll upgrade it. But I've realized I prefer a lesser, small and portable machine for my travel laptop. My "main" work machine is too expensive to feel safe traveling with. My travel laptop is in a separate category. So when the need occurs, I'm debating hauling a Mac mini between work and home as my daily driver. For travel, it will be a smaller, much more cheap laptop that if I lose/damage I won't be out $3.5k. It just seems to fit my needs better. On that note, anyone think a Mac mini will survive daily hauls like that? I am concerned that it will be too much movement for a non-laptop. Thoughts?

detaro 8y ago
I know people who've done that, didn't appear to be a problem. (not surprising, since it has little in the way of moving parts or connectors inside) I'd look into protective bags for DJ gear: some of that has similar sizes and should make a good equivalent to a laptop sleeve.
ianai 8y ago
They’re 100% solid state. You’ll be fine. Just be sure you find a sleeve or something to protect from scratches and dents.
- ChrisRR 8y ago
  Just because they're solid state doesn't mean they're not still susceptible to impact and thermal shock between the PCB and components. Obviously the failure rate won't be anywhere near the same as a spinning disk, but it still is a possibility for a system that was designed to not move.

DannyBee 8y ago

If you remove the hyperbole here, i think a bunch of the author's points are probably right: IE "Need a Mac because you're wanting to explore iOS development? Get the Mac mini and continue to use the keyboard/mouse/display that you've already got on your desk. It's no longer the affordable way into the macOS environment that it once was, but it's the best thing Apple really has to offer." "Apple's refusal to build, y'know, a regular desktop computer means that the mini often ends up being the best option if you really are committed to using macOS." etc I've own/owned 5 or 6 mac mini's at this point (including the 2018) At this point, i buy them to shove them in a closet somewhere. Size is not a factor in that. It's big enough at this point (compared to NUC's, etc) that it has no meaningful size advantage. As a server, you'd want some different tradeoffs. As a desktop, the only reason you'd use it is, as the author says - you don't have a lot of options in what you can use for MacOS and this checks some boxes the other option doesn't. It'll probably be the last computer i buy from apple to set up for others - MacOS isn't as bulletproof as it used to be. For the second time, I had to debug obscure apple bugs for my parents over thanksgiving - which is why i set them up with a mac mini in the first place - to stop having to deal with this on windows or linux.

danso 8y ago
> It'll probably be the last computer i buy from apple to set up for others - MacOS isn't as bulletproof as it used to be. What have you moved on to if I can ask? Windows 10?
- DannyBee 8y ago
  Nothing yet. I have a few Windows 10 machines around, for example, the one that controls my CNC machine, and the one i use for CAD. So far, zero issues, which is "better than it used to be". I'll try it for the family and see what happens. In the past, my dad used to set up Linux server machines for my Mom, which is what was there pre-mac-mini (he's a long time software engineer). They were just so finicky in practice (IE audio on webcam would stop working so she could never be sure a video chat she started would actually work, etc) That did not last all that long. My mom started to avoid that desktop like the plague, so it ended up with Dad running Linux and Mom running Windows.

scarface74 8y ago

I have no use for a personal laptop. Every job provides a laptop for work and for my personal non developer work, my iPad suffices. I’m always using a multiple monitor setup anyway and the Mac Mini supports three. I don’t need large internal storage, I can always add external hard drives.

organsnyder 8y ago
I have a personal laptop that doesn't see much use (though I am using it right now, coincidentally). However, whenever I'm working on non-work projects, I use the personal machine to ensure that there's no question of copyright ownership.
- scarface74 8y ago
  That’s what I am saying. My work laptop moves between two places - my job with a dual monitor setup and my favorite Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and my home office with a dual monitor setup and a separate set of the keyboard and mouse. So why buy a more expensive, less capable laptop that will only be used in one spot at home for my personal use instead of just buying the Mac Mini? Second question is usually why not just buy a cheaper PC? I’m slowly moving away from the Microsoft Windows ecosystem - but I still will be using some .Net Core - and the macOS is real certified Unix that just works.

nakedrobot2 8y ago

> "there isn't a PCIe slot to be found across the entire range of systems" Thunderbolt is PCI express.

DrPizza 8y ago
s l o t

nik736 8y ago

I think the form factor is great. The argument that there is no room for a dedicated GPU is imo simply false. If a mobile VEGA fits in a MBP it will fit in a Mac Mini chassi. Apple decided against it, for whatever reason and that is the only problem I have with this machine.

mattnewport 8y ago
Physically having room for the chip and having enough space that you can actually run it without running into thermal issues are different things. Laptops have a bigger surface area to get rid of the heat but thermals are still a challenge for laptop design. I don't know for sure that Apple couldn't have pulled it off but the issue is not just physically having space to cram the chip in, it's being able to run it cool enough.
- nik736 8y ago
  I doubt that's the reasoning, but even if they could've made it slightly larger. No one cares if their mini is 5mm larger on one side.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Well, anyone who has a rack of Mac Minis probably appreciates them keeping the size the same. I know Mac Mini Colo does.
benologist 8y ago
I think they really made this for companies with 100s or 1000s on shelves, a better GPU wouldn't be useful but the lowest-power GPU and keeping the old case sure would. http://thesweetsetup.com.s3.amazonaws.com/img/sponsors/2013-11-11-macminicolo-sponsorship-hero.jpg http://thesweetsetup.com.s3.amazonaws.com/img/sponsors/2013-...
- nik736 8y ago
  so what, they could've made a version with optional GPUs, problem solved.

nakedrobot2 8y ago

the author complains that the mac mini has no power brick - why not just have a power brick? he says. but he complains that an external GPU is a dumb idea? this guy didn't like apple and his review simply reflects his emotion, nothing more.

zrail 8y ago
The first version had a power brick that was half the size of the mini itself. It was a dumb idea.
cgh 8y ago
Peter Bright is Ars’s Microsoft guy and is known for his Apple antipathy. Not sure why he’s doing this review.
- scarface74 8y ago
  That gives you another viewpoint. About like how Gruber always buys the flagship Android phone from Google every year just to give his thoughts.
- gumby 8y ago
  To be fair he called this out up front (although until your note I didn't know what he was taking about -- but I got the idea).
glenneroo 8y ago
A power brick is sort of like a real brick - a big chunk of plastic which should be out of sight/mind and can be placed just about anywhere, as most people tend to do, often on the floor/behind the desk, etc... generally communing amongst other forgotten cables and dustbunny colonies. External GPUs + enclosures are larger and more expensive than power bricks and therefore are probably best kept somewhere relatively safe, especially while connected to a tiny Thunderbolt port - I've personally seen plenty of bent/broken USB/FW ports due to cable management "issues" among friends/acquaintances/colleagues.
DrPizza 8y ago

Someone1234 8y ago

I'm struggling what to get, I largely need a Mac just to test Safari against web-sites I develop, and while you can do that on an iPad, the lack of a real browser development console makes tracking down JS bugs a nightmare (and, yes, I've seen the hacky iFrame websites that "add" a developer console to iPad, it isn't good enough). So that leaves me with a Mac Mini, Macbook, Macbook Air, or one of those services which claims they can do virtual Safari testing (but I'm unclear how that would work on localhost/internal sites). Is there any real advantage to the Mac Mini aside from slightly more power and ports? For the same money a Macbook/Air comes with its own screen, keyboard, and mouse.

lostgame 8y ago
For you, it must be annoying that Apple killed Safari for Windows, but I always wondered why they did that to start.
- danso 8y ago
  I can't imagine that Windows Safari usage rates were very good. According to the last 90 days of federal website analytics [0], Safari was used by 28.9% of users (Chrome and IE are 46.6% and 10.5%, respectively). But only 14% of Safari visits were from MacOS -- i.e. 4% of all browsers. 0: https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/
matthewmacleod 8y ago
FWIW, Browserstack does a pretty good job of testing limited-access sites – traffic appears to be routed back through your local machine when using the Chrome extension, so everything works as expected. I'd say it's pretty good if you're doing basic functionality checks, but it's ultimately not as nice as having the real thing, especially not if you're trying to debug anything graphically intensive etc.
adrianN 8y ago
If you need it just for testing, just pick something used from ebay. I use a 2009 Macbook at home and it works fine.
8y ago

matthewmacleod 8y ago

It's indeed annoying that there's a bit of a gap in Apple's product range for a high-end-but-not-excessive machine. I'd go right ahead and buy a higher-end Apple desktop machine, with enthusiast-level components, and the ability to bump the memory, storage, and GPU up myself at a later date. I don't need a tiny enclosure or dual GPUs or built-in screens, so the Mac Pro and iMac Pro are not cost-effective products. I really do miss the old Mac Pro, which fitted this use-case perfectly. I'm genuinely pretty surprised there's not a market for that kind of thing among software developers in particular.

thirdsun 8y ago
There is and Apple already announced that they will fix their mistake with a new, modular Mac Pro in 2019.

lostgame 8y ago

When I was only 15 years old, I'd received an inheritance from the passing of a relative to the tune of $2000 USD. I was living with my Father at the time, who worked for Microsoft in networking (he now works at Azure), and he had nurtured my interest in programming from the age of 8 or 9. He agreed we could put half aside for my college fund, and I could use half to buy or build a new computer, among some other niceties. So I basically had an $800 USD budget for a computer, including any RAM or HDD upgrades I wanted to do, or any extra peripherals I wanted. I had a vast interest in moving away from Windows, and a continued interest in audio production/recording already - I fell in love with the original iMac G4, and, while it was definitely out of my price range, being an all-in-one starting at, I think, $1,199 - but all I wanted was to make music with GarageBand, movies with iMovie, and try to explore MacOS and learn about xCode and Objective-C. So, at $499, the original 1.42ghz G4 Mac Mini was, for me, as a high school student - who literally would've had to save months for it had they not been so lucky - well, it might has well have been a Lamborghini to a 15-year-old. But, I was fortunate, and, given my desire to explore in the Apple ecosystem, I was willing to invest in what my Father thought was a very underpowered machine for the money. What makes me sad is that today, that same 15-year-old kid could not have walk into that store and have the same experience. Today, I'm a professional iOS developer at a major bank, when I'm not running an independent music label with artists that exclusively run on Logic Pro X systems that I configure for them, so collaboration is seamless. Everyone loves them. But I exclusively use 2010-2013 MacBook Pro hardware for my artists that I purchase, upgrade, shove an SSD and the most RAM I can in them and often experience better performance, or at the very least certainly a more enjoyable experience, than the 2017 15" Touch Bar Macbook Pro I'm 'typing' on right now. (While I was writing this post, I accidentally brushed the lock screen button and was temporarily locked out.) The Mac Mini was a very important and crucial product in their product line. Something at least reasonably affordable. Something you could basically justify with, well, hey, it's got a $100-200 Apple Tax on it, but at the end of the day, it's still something affordable for education and low-income markets who may otherwise simply need to turn to other hardware. The $999 MacBook/Air was also a crucial piece of hardware in this position. tl;dr: an increase of price of this magnitude would've probably have robbed me of my future career of an iOS developer if it'd happened to me when I was younger.

8y ago

dmtroyer 8y ago

yawn.

hellofunk 8y ago

> And if you're a suspicious sort who wants ECC in their build farm, then a Xeon or an AMD processor of some kind would be a better fit. What does ECC refer to?

mantesso 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
mpmpmpmp 8y ago
Error correcting code memory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
julioneander 8y ago
Error-correcting code. They're referring to ECC memory, which is more reliable to bit flips than normal memory, useful in cases when sensitive tasks can't afford an unexpected bit flip.

pasta 8y ago

I think it's clear what Apple is doing here. The smartphone market is saturated, the tablet market is saturated, the laptop market is saturated, the desktop market is almost dead and Apple doesn't have (a lot of) users in the workstation market. So why put a lot of effort in designing new products every year? What we now see is that Apple is focusing on people with money and on paid services. And it works. They won't tell you how many iPhones they sold but the profit will be huge.

scarface74 8y ago
Of course it’s clear. It’s no great conspiracy. Apple has been emphasizing their service revenue growth for years and they said they are emphasizing making their products last longer. iOS 12 is compatible with the 2013 iPhone 5.

ksec 8y ago

At this point, someone should just make a Space Grey Mac Mini Casing, with 1 or 2 NVMe housing on the side, along with 7nm Radeon Vega. Stack them up and connect the two via Thunderbolt, upgrade the Mac Mini yourself with 64GB Memory. Done!. Apart from the CPU limited to 6 Core, I think this is about as close to "Mac" as most people want. The only problem is I am not sure about the performance penalty of eGPU, may be two Thunderbolt connection instead of one will help?