7 ms·

Still got my fingers crossed for a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac Pro and isn’t a Mac Mini. Would love iMac Pro firepower without being tied to a set display

Still got my fingers crossed for a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac Pro and isn’t a Mac Mini. Would love iMac Pro firepower without being tied to a set display. I’ve been alive 30 years. A good portion of that was growing up as a PC user, overclocker, teenage hacker, etc. My professional career however has been on Unix and MacOS, and as much as I try to get back to desktop Linux and open source OS’s I just find them to be so brittle and hacked together. I tried to daily drive Linux and just couldn't do it, and I am not a newb to Linux either. I got my feet wet on SuSE (Kernel 2.4!), and then saw the light of Debian and Ubuntu and have used that primarily since. Remember when you could order free install CD's for Ubuntu? There were copies of Warty Warthog all over my high school. I have installed arch by hand, btw. I’ve used Fedora and RHEL and CentOS and Slackware! Gnome and KDE and XFCE. Remember Compiz? It isn’t the desktop environments. It isn’t the distributions. It’s just the unavoidable consequence of an entire ecosystem of desktop Linux being designed by committee. So I’ve accepted I’ll be on macOS for a long time to come (not unlike DHH - https://m.signalvnoise.com/back-to-windows-after-twenty-years/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/back-to-windows-after-twenty-year...) and have started to seriously consider building a hackintosh. But when your time is billed hourly and you have a half dozen clients, time is money and the novelty of a Ryzen-powered hate tank hackintosh for my professional work is starting to look less realistic. So how about a Diet® Pro for those of us who want something that isn’t a laptop in a big AppleTV chassis and isn’t a desktop in a monitor chassis.

nxpnsv 7y ago
They could call it a "Mac".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
disease 7y ago
I'm in a similar boat to you and am keeping an eye on WSL2 for Windows. It SEEMS like it could cover my entire dev workflow and have similar performance to MacOS/*nix, but then again I thought that the original WSL was going to do that as well ...
- boredpudding 7y ago
  What are you currently missing with the current WSL?
  - yetanotherme 7y ago
    filesystem performance is absolutely horrible, which affects lots of workflows.
    - muratsu 7y ago
      If you create the files on the linux side as compared to shared windows folder, the performance seems to be good for me. Before vscode wsl plugin, the only way to work was to open files from windows and use the linux cli but the plugin made it so that you can stream files from the linux, which removed the need for using any shared drive for me. Perf bonus of switching to linux only workflow was significant, you should give it a try.
    - chx 7y ago
      That is only for cross OS FS work, the Linux FS speed is as good as native. Yes, the /mnt/c situation is bad.
- whalesalad 7y ago
  I started down that path. But when you install Windows 10 Pro and your login screen is covered in advertisements and news updates, it leaves a pretty shitty taste in your mouth.
  - mceachen 7y ago
    Agreed, shitty, but those aren't hard to disable, and it's one of the first things I do on new installs. (I only run windows to do cross-platform testing)
    - oneplane 7y ago
      For most users that get that nasty aftertaste, it's not as much that you can't remove or disable those ads/unexpected feeds, but that the manufacturer or core team that built it had the mentality to put it there in the first place.
aikinai 7y ago
Ryzen would probably not be worth it if your time is money, but if you build a basic Intel Hackintosh with known compatible parts, you could probably do it in a day (assuming first time; much faster if you have experience).
- whalesalad 7y ago
  I built a Hackintosh back when Tiger was hot (on an AMD socket 754 chip!) so I have a little familiarity - but I am sure things have changed a lot. My current test bench is an i3770k in a pretty popular Z77 Asus board so if I find myself an AMD card I could probably prototype it here first.
mceachen 7y ago
Installing and applying security updates on a Linux desktop is fairly automatic and uneventful. Keeping a hackintosh updated (for even stuff like graphics card drivers) turns out to be a lot of time doing research, scrolling through endless forum posts, and bricking your install quarterly because you "did the wrong thing" (like absent-mindedly accepting a security update notification). Yes, you can get it running. But macOS is buggy enough as it is, and is decidedly not-pleasant if you're relying on it as a daily driver and you just can't fix the Bluetooth mouse disconnecting after sleep unless you reboot, or the USB bridge not enabling after suspend, or the diaplayports deciding to not send signal if there are multiple monitors (fixed in the new GPU driver, but that driver requires the OS upgrade you can't apply due to other show-stipping bugs). You shouldn't be relieved every time you step up to your desk that your computer can turn on. (FWIW: this was ~> year ago, on a machine built with the "best compatability with hackintosh" parts list. The landscape with T2 is most likely less comfortable).
- whalesalad 7y ago
  > But macOS is buggy enough as it is I really do not understand this sentiment at all. Mind you, I am decidedly on Mojave. I am not discounting the experience of others, but macOS has been rock stable for me since about Leopard. I had kernel panics back on Tiger, but that was their first OS for x86 so I can forgive that.
  - cosmiccatnap 7y ago
    You are fortunate. That being said I've never had any issues with Linux myself so why take the risk if all you get in return is a bubbly GUI and some bloatware
- acomjean 7y ago
  >Keeping a hackintosh updated (for even stuff like graphics card drivers) turns out to be a lot of time doing research, scrolling through endless forum posts, and bricking your install quarterly because you "did the wrong thing" (like absent-mindedly accepting a security update notification). That was my experience with a hackintosh. It works great, but your always worried about it not working. The "T2" security chip is a good point. Will likely make Hackintoshes a thing of the pas. There are some good machines you can buy with Linux installed. I have a system76, it updates all the time without issue. I feel the extra cost over an "install it yourself" is worth it, especially for a laptop. Dell even sells machines with ubuntu.
2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
What about a Mac Mini Pro?
- ksec 7y ago
  I would be happy if they have just reuse the Mac Pro design, with less expandable ports. May be only two PCI-E Slot, and a Consumer Grade CPU. Would buy one even if it was $2999.
askafriend 7y ago
What are your needs? Because the current Mini serves a lot of Pro needs with the crazy powerful I/O it has. With eGPUs in a fairly mature state, the Mac Mini can serve pretty powerful video/graphics workloads.
- whalesalad 7y ago
  I have a slightly upgraded 2018 Macbook Pro right now that does most of my work really well. It has 32gb of RAM, an upgraded GPU and the i7-8750H chip. I want more cores, faster cores, and more thermal headroom. A Mac Mini would be a slight performance bump from where I am right now, but the ROI isn't really there. My workload varies, but I am a freelancer with 3-4 contracts at any given time which vary from wordpress sites or rails apps, vue apps, python apps, up to 'big data' processing pipelines. I usually have a handful of services running for any client, redis, es, postgres, mysql, etc... and the Docker/mac story needs work. I essentially don't want to ever wait on IO ever again. That is another reason I would like a full desktop chassis: I want PCIe slots so that I can outfit them with something like an Optane SSD. Attemping to spec out something that would perform better than my current MBP: 3.2GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz) 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 Intel UHD Graphics 630 1TB SSD storage 10 Gigabit Ethernet (Nbase-T Ethernet with support for 1Gb, 2.5Gb, 5Gb, and 10Gb Ethernet using RJ‑45 connector) Same generation chip that I have now. Same core count. Higher boost clock. $2600 is the final price and that is certainly not worth it.
  - askafriend 7y ago
    One thing you can consider -> the RAM costs are very high if you upgrade through Apple. You can spec out a Mac Mini with the lowest possible RAM and then do the RAM upgrade yourself to save $600. The whole process takes about 20mins and there's professional YouTube videos that take you every step of the way. This is exactly what I did and it was a breeze (I didn't have much prior experience messing with computer internals). It might look complicated, but it's really not. If you do go this route, I'd recommend OWC RAM since they're guaranteed to work with Mac and they also tell a little $7 toolkit that has the TORX screwdrivers you need to do the RAM upgrade -> https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMM18/ https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMM18/ Here's a video of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKyv0QP4XPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKyv0QP4XPQ
hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
Such product would cannibalise their line, so they'll never make it. They wouldn't need the Mini, and the mid-tier would be too far from the Mac Pro.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Such product would cannibalise their line, so they'll never make it. Apple does this quite frequently.
grecy 7y ago
> Still got my fingers crossed for a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac Pro and isn’t a Mac Mini People have been waiting eons for this, and it seems like you'll just have to keep waiting. From what I can remember, Apple haven't done anything like this since the G4 cube, and they've never given indications they'll do it again. Everyone was praying the new Mac Pro would be the magic xMax, but it just isn't. Personally I don't think anything wrong with being tied to the iMac display, given it's one of the best you can get.
- whalesalad 7y ago
  The iMac Pro price tag is hard to swallow when I already have a 4k display that I really like (HP Z27)
- _ph_ 7y ago
  The iMac display is great, I am using it right now :). But I don't get why it is still locked at 27". Apple once used to make 30" cinema displays. Not only is the iMac overdue for a redesign, it better should have an option for a larger display. Also, it is absolutely offensive, that the iMac as a desktop is glued together, preventing even the simplest maintenance like fan cleaning.
  - whalesalad 7y ago
    Is it glued together? The glass is no longer removable with suction cups?
    - _ph_ 7y ago
      Yes, it is glued together, suction cups are no longer sufficient to remove the display. To service the current gen iMacs, you have to cut away the glue and afterwards re-glue the machine. My dealer charged me about $300 labor cost for a HD replacement due to this.
FpUser 7y ago
For backend development I am writing native C++ servers that run on Linux. But all the development and debugging is done on Windows using Visual Studio. After I am ready to publish I check out the source and rebuild it on Linux. Since I use multi platform libraries all works like a charm and I have yet to encounter any platform related problem. I can still edit/debug project on Linux ( Using CodeLite ) but the need is very rare. This way I get to either build my hardware any way I like or buy a laptop (the kind I can customize) with exact configuration I need.
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Why did you leave Windows?
- whalesalad 7y ago
  Unix is a better environment for everything but gaming, and I am not a gamer. Everything is unequivocally better on a Mac, again, with the exception of gaming. Despite what you will hear around the HN echo chamber these days, macOS is a very legitimate Unix and a good one at that. People complain when they run into userland issues, but their blame on Apple is misplaced. If you are a gamer, use Windows. If you are working in a .net shop, use Windows. If you are using special software that demands Windows, use it. For everyone else, macOS is the right way to go. I still use Windows frequently as a consultant - either in testing or in onsite infrastructure deployments on Windows Server hosts. It sucks to use. You will rarely run into a smooth scenario, and due to the proprietary nature of everything you are stuck with whatever is available in the docs or whatever the support team says, assuming you purchased the right support license. Their greatest contribution to the world is RDP, which is the only saving grace on Windows as far as I am concerned.

nxpnsv 7y ago

They could call it a "Mac".

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

disease 7y ago

I'm in a similar boat to you and am keeping an eye on WSL2 for Windows. It SEEMS like it could cover my entire dev workflow and have similar performance to MacOS/*nix, but then again I thought that the original WSL was going to do that as well ...

boredpudding 7y ago
What are you currently missing with the current WSL?
- yetanotherme 7y ago
  filesystem performance is absolutely horrible, which affects lots of workflows.
  - muratsu 7y ago
    If you create the files on the linux side as compared to shared windows folder, the performance seems to be good for me. Before vscode wsl plugin, the only way to work was to open files from windows and use the linux cli but the plugin made it so that you can stream files from the linux, which removed the need for using any shared drive for me. Perf bonus of switching to linux only workflow was significant, you should give it a try.
  - chx 7y ago
    That is only for cross OS FS work, the Linux FS speed is as good as native. Yes, the /mnt/c situation is bad.
whalesalad 7y ago
I started down that path. But when you install Windows 10 Pro and your login screen is covered in advertisements and news updates, it leaves a pretty shitty taste in your mouth.
- mceachen 7y ago
  Agreed, shitty, but those aren't hard to disable, and it's one of the first things I do on new installs. (I only run windows to do cross-platform testing)
  - oneplane 7y ago
    For most users that get that nasty aftertaste, it's not as much that you can't remove or disable those ads/unexpected feeds, but that the manufacturer or core team that built it had the mentality to put it there in the first place.

aikinai 7y ago

Ryzen would probably not be worth it if your time is money, but if you build a basic Intel Hackintosh with known compatible parts, you could probably do it in a day (assuming first time; much faster if you have experience).

whalesalad 7y ago
I built a Hackintosh back when Tiger was hot (on an AMD socket 754 chip!) so I have a little familiarity - but I am sure things have changed a lot. My current test bench is an i3770k in a pretty popular Z77 Asus board so if I find myself an AMD card I could probably prototype it here first.

mceachen 7y ago

Installing and applying security updates on a Linux desktop is fairly automatic and uneventful. Keeping a hackintosh updated (for even stuff like graphics card drivers) turns out to be a lot of time doing research, scrolling through endless forum posts, and bricking your install quarterly because you "did the wrong thing" (like absent-mindedly accepting a security update notification). Yes, you can get it running. But macOS is buggy enough as it is, and is decidedly not-pleasant if you're relying on it as a daily driver and you just can't fix the Bluetooth mouse disconnecting after sleep unless you reboot, or the USB bridge not enabling after suspend, or the diaplayports deciding to not send signal if there are multiple monitors (fixed in the new GPU driver, but that driver requires the OS upgrade you can't apply due to other show-stipping bugs). You shouldn't be relieved every time you step up to your desk that your computer can turn on. (FWIW: this was ~> year ago, on a machine built with the "best compatability with hackintosh" parts list. The landscape with T2 is most likely less comfortable).

whalesalad 7y ago
> But macOS is buggy enough as it is I really do not understand this sentiment at all. Mind you, I am decidedly on Mojave. I am not discounting the experience of others, but macOS has been rock stable for me since about Leopard. I had kernel panics back on Tiger, but that was their first OS for x86 so I can forgive that.
- cosmiccatnap 7y ago
  You are fortunate. That being said I've never had any issues with Linux myself so why take the risk if all you get in return is a bubbly GUI and some bloatware
acomjean 7y ago
>Keeping a hackintosh updated (for even stuff like graphics card drivers) turns out to be a lot of time doing research, scrolling through endless forum posts, and bricking your install quarterly because you "did the wrong thing" (like absent-mindedly accepting a security update notification). That was my experience with a hackintosh. It works great, but your always worried about it not working. The "T2" security chip is a good point. Will likely make Hackintoshes a thing of the pas. There are some good machines you can buy with Linux installed. I have a system76, it updates all the time without issue. I feel the extra cost over an "install it yourself" is worth it, especially for a laptop. Dell even sells machines with ubuntu.

2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago

What about a Mac Mini Pro?

ksec 7y ago
I would be happy if they have just reuse the Mac Pro design, with less expandable ports. May be only two PCI-E Slot, and a Consumer Grade CPU. Would buy one even if it was $2999.

askafriend 7y ago

What are your needs? Because the current Mini serves a lot of Pro needs with the crazy powerful I/O it has. With eGPUs in a fairly mature state, the Mac Mini can serve pretty powerful video/graphics workloads.

whalesalad 7y ago
I have a slightly upgraded 2018 Macbook Pro right now that does most of my work really well. It has 32gb of RAM, an upgraded GPU and the i7-8750H chip. I want more cores, faster cores, and more thermal headroom. A Mac Mini would be a slight performance bump from where I am right now, but the ROI isn't really there. My workload varies, but I am a freelancer with 3-4 contracts at any given time which vary from wordpress sites or rails apps, vue apps, python apps, up to 'big data' processing pipelines. I usually have a handful of services running for any client, redis, es, postgres, mysql, etc... and the Docker/mac story needs work. I essentially don't want to ever wait on IO ever again. That is another reason I would like a full desktop chassis: I want PCIe slots so that I can outfit them with something like an Optane SSD. Attemping to spec out something that would perform better than my current MBP: 3.2GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz) 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 Intel UHD Graphics 630 1TB SSD storage 10 Gigabit Ethernet (Nbase-T Ethernet with support for 1Gb, 2.5Gb, 5Gb, and 10Gb Ethernet using RJ‑45 connector) Same generation chip that I have now. Same core count. Higher boost clock. $2600 is the final price and that is certainly not worth it.
- askafriend 7y ago
  One thing you can consider -> the RAM costs are very high if you upgrade through Apple. You can spec out a Mac Mini with the lowest possible RAM and then do the RAM upgrade yourself to save $600. The whole process takes about 20mins and there's professional YouTube videos that take you every step of the way. This is exactly what I did and it was a breeze (I didn't have much prior experience messing with computer internals). It might look complicated, but it's really not. If you do go this route, I'd recommend OWC RAM since they're guaranteed to work with Mac and they also tell a little $7 toolkit that has the TORX screwdrivers you need to do the RAM upgrade -> https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMM18/ https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMM18/ Here's a video of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKyv0QP4XPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKyv0QP4XPQ

hcarvalhoalves 7y ago

Such product would cannibalise their line, so they'll never make it. They wouldn't need the Mini, and the mid-tier would be too far from the Mac Pro.

saagarjha 7y ago
> Such product would cannibalise their line, so they'll never make it. Apple does this quite frequently.

grecy 7y ago

> Still got my fingers crossed for a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac Pro and isn’t a Mac Mini People have been waiting eons for this, and it seems like you'll just have to keep waiting. From what I can remember, Apple haven't done anything like this since the G4 cube, and they've never given indications they'll do it again. Everyone was praying the new Mac Pro would be the magic xMax, but it just isn't. Personally I don't think anything wrong with being tied to the iMac display, given it's one of the best you can get.

whalesalad 7y ago
The iMac Pro price tag is hard to swallow when I already have a 4k display that I really like (HP Z27)
_ph_ 7y ago
The iMac display is great, I am using it right now :). But I don't get why it is still locked at 27". Apple once used to make 30" cinema displays. Not only is the iMac overdue for a redesign, it better should have an option for a larger display. Also, it is absolutely offensive, that the iMac as a desktop is glued together, preventing even the simplest maintenance like fan cleaning.
- whalesalad 7y ago
  Is it glued together? The glass is no longer removable with suction cups?
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    Yes, it is glued together, suction cups are no longer sufficient to remove the display. To service the current gen iMacs, you have to cut away the glue and afterwards re-glue the machine. My dealer charged me about $300 labor cost for a HD replacement due to this.

FpUser 7y ago

For backend development I am writing native C++ servers that run on Linux. But all the development and debugging is done on Windows using Visual Studio. After I am ready to publish I check out the source and rebuild it on Linux. Since I use multi platform libraries all works like a charm and I have yet to encounter any platform related problem. I can still edit/debug project on Linux ( Using CodeLite ) but the need is very rare. This way I get to either build my hardware any way I like or buy a laptop (the kind I can customize) with exact configuration I need.

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

Why did you leave Windows?

whalesalad 7y ago
Unix is a better environment for everything but gaming, and I am not a gamer. Everything is unequivocally better on a Mac, again, with the exception of gaming. Despite what you will hear around the HN echo chamber these days, macOS is a very legitimate Unix and a good one at that. People complain when they run into userland issues, but their blame on Apple is misplaced. If you are a gamer, use Windows. If you are working in a .net shop, use Windows. If you are using special software that demands Windows, use it. For everyone else, macOS is the right way to go. I still use Windows frequently as a consultant - either in testing or in onsite infrastructure deployments on Windows Server hosts. It sucks to use. You will rarely run into a smooth scenario, and due to the proprietary nature of everything you are stuck with whatever is available in the docs or whatever the support team says, assuming you purchased the right support license. Their greatest contribution to the world is RDP, which is the only saving grace on Windows as far as I am concerned.