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Comment by wahern | Hacker News Reader

I'm still using my 4-core, mid-2011 Mini. Aside from the poorly supported graphics hardware--video playback in Chrome, etc has inexplicably taken up more CPU over the years, I guess because lazy developers increasingly depend on more modern CPU and GPU features--I have no reason to upgrade and nothing enticing to upgrade to. It seems my mini won't be supported for macOS 10.14, and I have no idea what I'll do.

I'm also still hanging onto my Macbook Air, which to me is the epitome of laptop design.

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I'm still rocking my mid-2012 Mini that I upgraded to 16GB RAM and an SSD, luckily I'm getting 10.14, but otherwise I also see zero reason to upgrade my desktop Mac atm. This machine has been more than powerful for most tasks I've thrown at it, and it still runs like a dream.

If Apple were to actually upgrade/update the Mini with new CPUs and a smaller form factor, I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade finally. Those Intel NUCs are starting to get real appealing to me, but I'm not ready to jump to Windows or Linux for my home machines...

Mind sharing which SSD you used? I'm on the fence of updating my 2012 mini like yours or move to a NUC but not be able to upgrade it.

Might be worth just riding it out until the next Mac mini that runs on A* cpu's instead arrives.

I upgraded a 2012 Mini with a 240GB SanDisk [0]. It wasn't too bad, but watch the YouTube videos first. (And, as noted above, the 2014 may be trickier.)

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M8ABEIM

Thanks! Seems like a good way to get some time out of this. Just have to keep in mind when Apple may EOL the MacOS/Security updates.

You probably don't have hardware level support for the VP9 codec, when YouTube switched to that my laptop at the time would run it's fans at 100% just to play a video.

I remember playing DVDs on 20-ish year old hardware. Even without a hardware decoder, I can't imagine how a modern CPU is unable to handle simple tasks like video decoding. Maybe its the higher bitrate..

>Maybe its the higher bitrate..

An HD Netflix stream has about the same bitrate as a DVD, but has drastically better image quality. Modern codecs are extremely efficient in terms of bandwidth, but that comes at the cost of computational complexity. Decoding HEVC or VP9 is far from a simple task; hardware acceleration of video decoding is absolutely crucial for power-constrained devices like smartphones and laptops.

> Modern codecs are extremely efficient in terms of bandwidth, but that comes at the cost of computational complexity

Right, but as with every codec, the cost is always heavily skewed towards encoding the stream.

>Decoding HEVC or VP9 is far from a simple task; hardware acceleration of video decoding is absolutely crucial for power-constrained devices like smartphones and laptops.

I don't believe that decoding video streams should come anywhere close to saturating a modern CPU in 2018. The hardware acceleration you mentioned isn't magic, and doesn't use any crazy tech either. Its going to be some kind of low powered ARM chip on MediaTek SoCs like the MT8581.

I'm still using a late `09 mini with 8GB ram and an SSD drive. It's still working fine for web app dev work. This has been the best Mac I've ever owned. I would love to see a new Mac Mini come out and I've been ready to buy one and waiting on them to announce the new models for awhile now.

That said, I'm ready to move over to a Linux Desktop now if Apple ditches the product entirely. I don't want to, but I know I'll do fine with it.

I was a Mac user for ever 20 years -- finally ditched it a few weeks ago [for Linux] after getting fed up with their daft shenanigans.

The whole App Store / iTunes archipelago, the willful rejection of expandable and [easily] user-serviceable hardware design in favor of a 'form before function' approach, the related planned obsolescence strategy [e.g., older hardware simply will not run recent software; new OS breaks older 3-party software], and the ghastly overpricing were among the factors that drove me off.

Mainly, I liked MacOS because I prefer putting work into projects as opposed to maintaining my own system, and MacOS "just works," until it doesn't. These days though, I run an idiotresistant distribution of Linux on my productivity machine, a minimal one on my 'learning' machine, and am generally more content. Also, running Linux, I feel less like I'm directly interfacing with a villain from 'Black Mirror'

I get it. I've been using Macs for 25+ years and I recently installed a Linux distro with KDE on my Mac in preparation for the ThinkPad I ordered after much deliberation (in lieu of getting one of those crappy "touch bar" MacBook Pros) on which I planned to run Linux while staying on MacOS on the Mac. I am almost certain now that I'm going to stick with Linux across the board on both machines. KDE suits me quite well.

It's been a death by a thousand cuts staying with Apple these past few years. iOS is completely locked down (and shows no signs of relenting) and I only see them moving MacOS in the same direction. Their sub-par, insulting hardware offerings only further cement my view that they no longer give a crap about what the Mac used to be. So, like you, I'm out. It was a fun ride. I've been on-board since System 7.

Total agree. I didn't actually have a computer when System 7 came out, but I used to hang out at the UMO computer lab with my mom and play with Hypercard. Fun, quality stuff.

Good call on the Thinkpad -- after I got my T61 in the mail a few weeks ago and realized immediately that its ergonomics were vastly superior to my MBPs' which cost a heck of a lot more, I was like "gee, maybe I should have taken a hard look at this issue sooner..."

It’s not inexplicable, it’s chrome :).

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