Hacker News Reader

Comment by cupofjoakim | Hacker News Reader

It's not for me but I'm happy that this little machine gets to continue with new iterations. I guess the only question is "who is it for" and "why is it for them"?

View on HN

I don't expect this product line to be the most popular mac product line, but it does have it's users.

* A mac is required for iOS development, so it can be used as a build server for teams working in Xamarin. Possibly used in other cross platform mobile development workflows. (Who: mobile developers, Why: to run builds)

* People that need more I/O than a macbook pro can support. In addition to the I/O a MBP has this has 10GB Ethernet, 2 USB A, HDMI, and a dedicated power slot. It's also significantly cheaper than the iMac Pro, while also having 10GB Ethernet. (Who: People working in video, photography, and anyone that heavily uses a 10GB network. Why: Better connectivity)

* Groups with existing macos server applications that want a headless server with cheaper/newer hardware than the Mac Pro or old Mac Mini. (Who: companies with macos server programs running. Why: It's newer better hardware)

* People that want a very small computer. (Who: Everyday consumers. Why: Small footprint. It's the cheapest Mac for people that like MacOS but don't the need portability of a macbook or the monitor of an iMac.)

Put me down under number 1.

I'm dreading buying anything from Apple, but I need to compile my React Native app.

I keep waiting for old generation macs to enter the used market to drive down prices. Hopefully I can snag a used one, compile once, and forget about the experience.

Have you considered hosted options?

https://macminicolo.net/pricing.html

Still absurdly expensive, but this might be a solution.

I could use a friends unused mac....

Thank you for the idea, I seriously didnt consider that.

That's $70/month for 2014 hardware (dual core no ssd), or $120 if you need a quad core or ssd. Prices for the new hardware haven't yet been announced.

Either way, if they keep their same pricing, there's a 12 month break even of buying your own hardware if you don't need to be on a data center backbone.

Good points. Do you know anyone who offers a Digital Ocean type of service where you can quickly spin up a machine and pay by the hour? May be useful for people who only need a machine occasionally to compile an app for iOS.

There's https://portal.macincloud.com/select/#/plans

Visual Studio App Centre has a build pipeline for React Native

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/app-center/

* Employees with desktop administration done with JAMF.

I'm currently an MBP user (and have been for several years). But I find myself not using the keyboard and screen that often, most of what I do is shuttle between home and office where I have better keyboards and larger screens. The mini looks like an interesting option because it can take more RAM than MBP, and is smaller/more portable. For those few times when I actually need a portable screen and keyboard, it may be possible to use an ipad pro for that, might be worth checking that out, or some other solution may be out there. Likewise on the MBP, I seldom actually need a battery, so I feel like I'm paying a huge premium for the laptop form factor.

That said, I can afford the MBP; as a professional, one shouldn't cheap out on tools that help you get your job done efficiently.

It's for me! It's a new Mac, and it's the cheapest model. There's no big mystery.

It's not the fastest, but all computers are fast enough now that it doesn't really matter to me. It doesn't have a built-in 5K display or high-end GPU, but I'm not a graphics geek so I don't care. I've already got a pair of big displays and a keyboard and mouse and speakers that I like.

It's smaller than my Mac Pro, so it will probably save me a bunch on my power bill.

It's pretty portable so I can take it with me, if I need to. Compared to Apple's laptops, it's cheaper, and doesn't require adapters for HDMI, ethernet, USB-A, or audio-out (i.e., everything I run across in the field).

It probably supports Linux better than a MacBook, so when Apple stops supporting it, I can still make good use of it.

It doesn't have analog/digital audio input/output, like my Mac Pro, which is too bad, but I can solve that with a cheap "external sound card". Those features seems to be on the way out with their professional models, anyway.

The only real downside is that the hardware isn't very upgradable, but that's basically the case with all Macs today, so until it gets so painful that I leave MacOS for Linux again, I'll just have to live with it.

A new Mac Pro might be nice, but it could be a year before we see that, and nobody has any idea what it's going to be. My hunch is it'll be expensive. It hasn't been since the G4 days that the entry-level Mac workstation was $1500.

We use the trashcan Mac Pros at work to host VMs, and it's kind of a pain in the tuchas: terrible form factor, wicked expensive, and really outdated. These maxed out Mac Minis will be better for us in almost every way.

As a home user, I just might get this instead of building another hackintosh, but my guess is that it will be less interesting priced with a usable configuration. If the memory and storage is user upgradable, on the other hand ...

Edit: if I max out a Mac Pro's memory and storage, it comes to US$4,800. A comparable Mac Mini is US$3,300, and I can spend $800 to double the storage to 2TB. I definitely see us getting these at work.

For home use, I like that I can upgrade the memory, but Apple is predictably marking up the storage big time.

> Apple is predictably marking up the storage big time.

It's pretty offensive. +$600 to upgrade the SSD to 1TB from 256G, when a new 2TB drive at Newegg is $350.

To be fair, they are using NVMe, not SATA

It would have been for me if it were available a year ago.

I needed a family computer, to use in a shared space. I looked at the Mac Mini, but new ones had soldered RAM and didn't want to invest in a 2011 used model. I bought a 27 inch iMac because it was the only Mac with up-gradable memory. Have already upgraded the memory to 32GB, so all four of us can be logged in at the same time.

This Mini, with a 3rd party RAM upgrade, would have been perfect. Could have used the monitor, keyboard and mouse I already owned.

I’ve had a mac mini as my desktop since 2005, this new model will be my third one. It’s quiet and easy to run 24/7 as a home server while doubling as an always-on desktop. The imac would also do, but I prefer buying the screen separately and the imac is still a lot more expensive (900 euro more for an equally specced imac to the mini I want to get).

I'm considering it as a mid-tier machine to run ableton/logic on as well as hopefully play some not-too-demanding games through Wine. Not a super hardcore gamer but I usually play roguelikes that are available on GOG for macOS or that are supported by Wine/Proton. Would be nice to run this with No Man's Sky through Wine on an eGPU.

Yep, also considering one of these for music software.

I'm a dev who's considering getting a Mac; currently running Ubuntu 16.04 on a Dell XPS Developer Edition, as well as 18.04 on a self-built desktop from 3 years ago (haven't used Windows regularly since 2014). Mac Mini seems like the best choice for me, because I do less damage to the environment and my wallet getting a machine that lets me buy/upgrade/replace the screen, keyboard, mouse, and RAM separately. I would probably go for the 6-core CPU (would probably last me 5+ years), 32GB RAM, and 512GB SSD (not much of a music, games, or movies person).

We use them as servers around the office, mainly to store local caches of Apple updates so we don't saturate our internet bandwidth.

Add an eGPU (Razor Core X?), some discs via Thunderbolt and a nice screen and it will eat deeply into iMac and MacPro customers providing upgradability via the peripherals without the price of an internal screen and touchbar (hopefully, I am very curious about the price of the 6-core i7 with 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD, and 10gigE model.

Too bad the thunderbolt is not running over a fiber connection. That would have been a better upgrade and made the external devices, GPU etc. even better.

Not really; 40 Gbps fiber is the same speed as 40 Gbps copper and fiber can't carry power.

I'm a fan on the Mac mini, as an iOS dev it makes the perfect CI build server and continuous deployment machine.

I'm curious, what CI tool(s) do you run on it?

A combination of Xcode command line tools/server (clang/swift compiler/app build), gitlab (the actual CI runner), and fastlane ruby gems to script the continuous deployment to Test Flight/App Store.

Thanks for the info!

One use I’ve commonly heard is using it to offload builds for iOS development.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com