2018 Mac Mini Review | Hacker News Reader

2018 Mac Mini Review

marco.org

455 pointsjanvdberg639 comments

>Number one — and this is a big one these days, especially for this product — is that it’s not any less useful or versatile than the outgoing Mac Mini, including the generous assortment of ports. If the previous one served a role for you, the new one can probably do it just as well, and probably better and faster, with minimal donglage.

Wow. This is what it's come to. "It hasn't gotten worse! Yayy!"

The quote is a bit out of context. The sentence right above it:

>It makes almost nothing worse and almost everything better, finally bringing the Mac Mini into the modern age.

So, no, it's not "yayy" because it "hasn't gotten worse", it's "yayy", because "[it makes] almost everything better".

Anyone who owns a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will definitely be saying "yay it hasn't gotten worse!" about these.

And now the top thread is dominated by an argument about laptop keyboards, for a device that isn't a laptop and doesn't even come with a keyboard.

I'm pretty happy with mine, but thanks for speaking for us all with your sweeping generalization.

I don't mind the touchbar. It has it's moments. I just wish they had included it in addition to the normal keyboard, rather than replacing the top row.

I don't dislike the touchbar, I'm just annoyed at having to pay so much for something I'm ambivalent about.

I don't have a problem with the Touch Bar. It's kind of handy for occasional things that are context specific and normally involve using the mouse.

Chiming in to agree that it wasn't a problem here. Though I also never understood why someone would be crazy enough to leave ESC as the default keybinding anyhow.

I don't think that really changed the implication. Regardless of whether he's speaking specifically about the Mac Mini, about Apple products in general, or about the entire industry; he's still saying that it's bucking the trend of "being a series of compromises and disappointments sold as innovation" and that almost everything is genuinely an improvement.

I'm going to hold on to my Mid-2015 MacBook Pro for dear life.

I'm hoping it will be good for 3 more years.

You might be alright - I'm still on a 2009 MBP 13" (4Gb SSD) and a 2010 17" (8Gb, SSD) hands down the best money I ever spent.

I'm using a 17" 2010 at work with an i7, SSD upgrade, and 16Gb of RAM and its plenty fast still. At home I've got a 2010 Air that begs for more RAM yet still runs as well as when I bought it including 3+ hours of battery life depending on if I am surfing or writing. 2010-2012 was a high point in Mac laptops.

You're not alone. I actually bought one refurb from Apple this year and I plan on extending the AppleCare to the full 3 years.

My mid-2012 MacBook Pro works like a dream and has never had a problem, FWIW.

Given the use of the word "donglage" I suspect it was a somewhat snarky reference to the iphone and the disappearing head phone jack.

It's actually a reference to the USB-C ecosystem for the laptop line; Marco and his cohosts on the Accidental Tech Podcast have burned a lot of time griping about the state of connecting things to a laptop. Not so much time on the head phone jack, which was mostly a no-op for them (since it was paired with the airpods).

No, that quote is not out of context at all. The expectation that Apple would in some way ruin the Mac Mini in the next update is the topic of several of the first paragraphs in the article. The gist is indeed "It hasn't gotten worse! Yayy!"

Granted, that's not all of it. He is celebrating that it's gotten better, but he is also specifically celebrating that it hasn't lost many advantages.

> "Unless you used optical audio, audio input, or the SD-card reader"

Craftily hidden in a footnote for that paragraph.

They probably figured that people who want these are acceptably served by USB.

Yeah. For SD cards in particular, having the reader slot on the back has always made it useless for me.

I missed that! So not only is 'not any less useful or versatile than the outgoing Mac Mini, including the generous assortment of ports' a shockingly low bar, it's also what might charitably be termed 'rather a bit of a fib'.

It also doesn't look like it has a DisplayPort. If I wanted to hook it into my KVM, I'd need a USB-C to display port dongle.

It has four Thunderbolt 3 connectors. Thunderbolt 3 features DisplayPort 1.2

With the old one, you would probably need a mini DP to DP dongle anyway (I did for my displayport KVM on my 2012 Mini), so this isn't really worse, but it might mean you now need a different dongle.

I'm really hoping there's a good/reliable solution for 30" Apple Cinema Display > Dual Link DVI > Mini Display Port > [INSERT PRODUCT HERE] > USB-C

I use optical audio in a mac mini as a home theater TV driver. No thanks.

These days optical audio is dying when it comes to home theater systems, primarily due to its lack of codec support. You can't passthrough DTS-HD over optical, you can over HDMI.

Isn't that little headphone port a combo optical/electrical port that you can plug either headphones or mini-toslink-whatever into ?

Isn't that what it was before ? I swear I had previous mac minis with a combo port like that ... why would they not continue that ?

Now that I think about it, axing the optical audio ports was probably a deliberate move by Apple to nudge home TV users of mac minis into using Apple TVs, where they have way more control over the interface and content.

edit: apparently Apple TV doesn't have optical audio either.

Marco gotta keep those free gifts from Apple coming in

You obviously haven’t seen Marco complain about the MacBook, Apple Watch, the existing Mac Pro, the 2014 Mac Mini upgrade, etc.

Marco made a few million when Tumblr was sold, has a profitable podcast app and is on either the most popular or second most popular Apple related podcast.

I doubt that he’s hurting so much for money that he has to lie to get a loaner Mac Mini.

Alternatively, lower down the article:

> I Can’t Believe The Mac Mini Is This Awesome, I Can’t Even Say “Again” Because It Never Was

Sounds like his conclusion is that it's better than it used to be.

That's a reasonable expectation from Apple these days. Their "War on Ports" and "War on Repairability" has gotten to groan inducing levels.

I would phrase it more like "Yay it has made improvements without compromises"

The MacMini is a near perfect computer in its category; only thing was it wasn't updated for years. Now it is.

The combination of price and absence of user upgradable M.2 SSD drives make this product un-viable in my opinion. The current price is fine if I could upgrade the drive later. Non-upgrade-able SSD would be acceptable if the price for larger drives was more reasonable.

If SSD could be upgraded buying a i5/i7 would have offered amazing upgrade paths down the road. This machine misses the mark IMHO but not by much.

You can upgrade the drive, externally through tb3. There will be tb3 enclosures that exactly match the mini’s size (historically there always have been) and it won’t even look weird. I did that on a previous mini (firewire).

Having said that, I’m still going to get one with 512gb ssd, because I just want everything neatly in one box.

I believe there was speculation they would stop the Mac Mini line altogether, so perhaps it's more of a comment on the fact that they built a new one.

I was doing some research a year ago or so on which Mac Mini to buy - currently using one from 2006 or so, which can't handle https sites mostly, but otherwise is great.

Everything I read said to get the 2012 model, not the 2014 one, which was slower, less memory, less everything - way worse. So the last one before this new one definitely did get a lot worse.

I have a 2006 Mac Mini that refuses to die. I ended up putting Windows 7 on it and giving it to my mom. She still uses it as a secondary computer when she is tutoring.

And it has got a bit worse. Just not as worse as we'd expect from Apple.

Well, quite a bit faster, in ways that are relevant to my interests. Stands to reason designing a thing like this together onto a bespoke board allows for some optimizations: it's hilarious that it's apparently faster than any other Mac anywhere ever, for single-core things that suit it. Including Mac Pros and iMac Pros… I just think that's amusing.

I'm now wondering if VCV Rack is sufficiently multicore that it will perform better on more expensive Mac boxes, or whether this little thing has now set the bar for ability to run demanding modular synth software live. That would be really convenient.

Building a PC mothership is certainly cool as hell and I'm not knocking it, but there's something to be said for 'this is my live performance rig, it's stable as a rock and it fits in my pocket. And it's cheap enough that if I'm headlining Coachella with my modular jams, I'll buy a second one and clone it so I have a backup, there onstage ready to be plugged in if there's a problem'.

I'm with Marco on this one. Looks nice. I know what I'm getting with a Mac of this type, and this definitely looks nice to me.

And it still has real USB A ports so you don’t have to hop your audio interface through a C to A dongle thing. Though I don’t know if a C->A adapter is just rerouting wires, or has circuits with their own latency - either way, it’s a bit of mess you don’t need with one of these.

(Assuming you use a typical USB A audio interface rather than something more exotic)

FWIW, I also do electronic music, though just as a hobby.

Worse how? There are a couple of directions you can go in, just curious (price/storage)?

Probably price. $800 is pretty steep for the entry version, when you can buy a better equipped Lenonvo ThinkCentre for $200 less.

This is going to best outcome as Moore's Law ends.

People are missing the point about the integrated graphics. For me this is a feature not a bug because it has USB-C instead.

That means that instead of hopelessly compromising thermals and power supply with some power hungry, yet limited GPU (because of the small form factor) you simply buy the CPU and memory that you need. It simplifies the job of keeping it cool.

CPUs are evolving a lot slower these days. This one should last you many years before it becomes a problem. Having upgradeable memory all the way to 64GB means that too is not going to be a problem any time soon. It means that a mac mini should have a serviceable life of 3-5 years or more if you are less of a power user.

Additionally, you plugin an eGPU of your choice and additional storage via USB-C. Better, when improved eGPUs become available, you can sell your old one and buy a new one without having to tear the machine apart. They also don't overtax and compromise your power supply or cooling.

I currently have an imac 5K that is nearly 5 years old now. I maxed it out at the time with all the bells and whistles and it has served me well. So, money well spent despite the shocking price initially.

I'd totally consider spending 3-4K on a setup with a mac mini, decent eGPU + monitor, and external ssd storage (I actually have a Samsung 2TB T5 already). The new imac pro would cost more and deliver less value. What I like about this setup is that it is completely modular and I can replace individual components without having to worry breaking the other components.

I imagine the mac pro next year will also emphasize expansion and upgrades through USB-C rather than internals. Basically the old model without dedicated GPU and upgradable Xeon CPUs + Memory would be exactly the right product right now. Egpus can be replaced easily and with a solid base configuration, a pro machine should have a long productive life.

That sounds like a horrible mess of wires and power strips to me. If only they could make a single case to fit all these various computer components in, and one chord to supply power to all of them.

That doesn't sound like something with "mini" in the name. Maybe an alternative product with "pro" in the name?

Sure, except the 'trashcan' Pro doesn't have room in it for anything either, it was also designed to daisychain drives etc. via TB. My very elderly 'cheesegrater' Pro of course does have lots of room for 3.5in drives and PCIe cards, but I have wrung about as much as I can out of it, so the new Mini has some appeal. I am skeptical that the new-new Pro of 2019 (assuming it materializes) will be designed with extensibility in mind...

It was a sarcastic attempt to point out that scattering the components of a computer into 3 or 4 units with separate power chords is an inferior design to the standard desktops we’re used to. I want a Mac desktop for under $3,000 that doesn’t require multiple accessories plugged in to behave like a desktop.

> If only they could make a single case to fit all these various computer components in

They do. It's called an iMac and comes free with an excellent monitor.

Now, seriously, unless you plan to do a lot of GPU computing (I don't) the internal Intel graphics are pretty reasonable. I can't see how a 64 gig mini would not be able to be my main machine for 5 years or more. With an updated SSD, my previous mini is a pretty good general purpose computer.

It's not so much that I want a gigantic GPU, but I'd like something that could just run two external 4K monitors without stuttering. That would make this an excellent general-purpose desktop machine. The 15" 2017 MacBook Pro does this fine, so it's hard to accept that it would be difficult to engineer something into place. Unfortunately, an eGPU is gigantic external box costing a large chunk of change, so it's not really a good option.

With a laptop, an external GPU is indeed a big issue in terms of form factor. However in your case, your big 4K monitors are comparatively large as well so having an eGpu that you can also use as docking station is not necessarily the end of the world. Likewise, with a mac mini this should be less of an issue. I'm also guessing this market will develop over the next few years with more attractively priced options aimed at people who just want a middle of the road setup that works reasonably well for games and vr. Right now all the available options are targeted at people who in any case spend too much money on HW.

Besides, with Apple you are paying a premium for a dedicated GPU in a macbook, which makes the price of an external eGPU less of an issue. Because if the choice becomes paying 500 euro extra for a mac mini with a last generation laptop grade GPU or spending the same on a eGPU with modest specs (or a bit more on something fancier), that's a lot easier to defend. Especially if you can swap it out once every other year for a new one.

I'm guessing that with the mac pro they may offer some options for a dedicated, non upgradable GPU as well as eGPU options. Most professionals would probably prefer investing in the latter because it provides them performance without much compromise and an easy way to upgrade. E.g. I'm still waiting for Apple to make a move with AR/VR, which they sort of support but which they don't really actively promote currently.

Anyway, the mac mini is not necessarily that interesting for people looking for cheap options. The start configurations are nice if you don't need much but most more serious users are going to want bigger ssds, more cpu, and more memory. That creeps into the mac pro use case already. I'm guessing that in terms of price segment this thing is designed to fill the gap with the mac pro, which will likely have a starting price of around 5K, just like the last one.

What's the need for an eGPU if there's enough space for a GPU in the unit?

I long for a return to the Powermac G5 'basic tower' form factor.

The MBP 15" mobile Radeon Pro is decent and does 4K well. It would only cost Apple 1mm of extra thickness and what, $60? There is no excuse.

I wish someone made MacMini-sized eGPUs and external disk drives so they could be stacked on top of each other. That'd look very good aesthetically with minimal or no mess of wires.

An ITX format video card (~7") should fit into MacMini-sized case (7.7"), not sure about PSU and heat dissipation though.

If it was the same shape as the MacMini but just taller then it might still look cool stacked.

What would you recommend for a Mac-compatible eGPU these days?

The Blackmagic eGPU is designed to be plug-and-play compatible with Macs. You can even buy it directly from Apple:

https://store.apple.com/xc/product/HM8Y2VC/A

Also, one nice thing about this eGPU is that it has two Thunderbolt ports, so you can plug a Thunderbolt display like the LG UltraFine 5K directly into it.

Well, THAT's interesting. I've been looking at some Blackmagic stuff for streaming and camera work, that would take burden off my desktop computer. It looks like the new Mini plus this plus outboard x264 encoding (also includes ability to run a good dynamic mic into the encoding) would add up to an insanely flexible livestreaming setup that could do both GPU-needing things and camera-based things without loading the computer, and be expandable later with SDI camera inputs and the ability to do production video switching.

It… didn't occur to me that I might be thinking about running such a rig off a Mac Mini. But then it didn't occur to me that a Mac Mini would come out and be in some conditions faster than any other Mac currently made. Interesting times…

I have an HP Omen Accelerator with an RX580 and a 2016 MBPr and it's plug and play in macOS 10.14. Last I checked, you could get most Nvidia GPUs working, but it required some spelunking. It may be different now.

I've been very happy with it overall. I have a 4k 28inch monitor and a 30 inch Cinema Display plugged into the GPU, and the eGPU enclosure has a sata port + ethernet port. There are some gotchas, eGPU.io is a great resource.

Also, bootcamp with windows 10 works with my eGPU, but required some work. If you want more info, let me know.

I've been using the Razer Core X for a few months now and it's worked flawlessly.

Have you tried swapping it between machines? Could I use an eGPU with say a NUC and the Mac Mini?

You have small form factor PCs with GPUs. But the exterior won't be as pretty because you have much more thermal to deal with

> But the exterior won't be as pretty

There are actually plenty of nice looking small form factor PC cases that can house a full GPU

- http://www.louqe.com/

- https://www.dan-cases.com/dana4.php

I'd actually say this is one area of the custom PC market that's well served by nice design.

Those are 7 liters or more, or the volume of five Mac minis. So, a different class of “small”.

i like that idea, but I also need a laptop and investing in both seems overkill for my needs. But i guess with a current 6C Macbook and 32GB + eGPU, i could kind of do the same thing.

a) You assume that at least some GPU power in SFF wouldn't

- be possible (while SFF devices like Hades Canyon et al. with e.g. Kaby Lake-G manage to do just fine without breaking thermals and noise)

- still be immensely useful for many/at least better than current integrated Intel (which is a significant step backwards with the dropping of Iris)

b) You assume to have USB-C/TB3 instead, when there's no argument against having both.

And for anyone really not needing it and arguing about the unneccessary cost - just restrict it to the more expensive SKU, done.

The pricing is not really justifiable especially given the most use cases of the Mac mini (Home Theater, NAS, Backup etc.) are better handled by other OSes.

The NUC8 with comparable specs (sans 6 core CPU) comes at under half the price! If you needed the 6 cores sure but given most workloads other than encoding don't - it's questionable. Even then the 6C processor doesn't cost enough to make up for the difference.

What OSes are better for a "Home Theater" TV computer?? That's a serious question; I recently replaced a creaking old Mac Mini (that couldn't do 4K) with a new Dell, after going a little bicurious with respect to Windows 10 (for software development work)... and, surprisingly, it's a complete and utter shitshow.

I was astonished, actually; I had assumed Windows would be better than macOS as a TV computer, other than integration with Apple services (Apple Music, my kids photos as screensaver).

Nothing could be further from the truth. It's a shitshow. 100% of Windows media players are garbage (VLC included, and there is no Movist). They can't play high-bitrate video without stuttering (on way better hardware), they show some ungodly mishmash of scaled UI and tiny unreadable UI on a 4K TV, for each player you install (about 10, so far, for me) you have to google for an hour to make sure they aren't malware (and of course almost all of them nominally are, trying to install all sorts of insane adware shit during the install phase, although that is par for the course on Windows)...

It's been 2 months and I saw the new Mac Mini and despite the 200%+ markup on storage I couldn't help but think Hmmm....

My TV also has at its disposal Xbox (OK but not great), PS4 (pretty shit), iOS (Apple TV, pretty shit), and Nintendo Switch (has no TV computer features at all, basically).

So what OSes are you talking about? Linux?? Android?

> What OSes are better for a "Home Theater" TV computer

I use an Apple TV 4K. For non-netflix/hulu/primevideo stuff, it streams off a Synology NAS (using Plex or VLC for Apple TV)

edit: it's funny how your experience pretty much mirrors mine almost 10 years ago. A Mac guy outfitting a machine for a home media center. I was used to Mac media stuff always being behind on codec support and performance so I bought some HP PC. It never worked right, always had to mess around with audio outputs (HDMI audio output worked maybe once) and codec stuff kept breaking since either Windows or the Nvidia drivers hated trying to do hardware acceleration and you just got a green screen. We mostly ended up plugging in our MacBooks...

I haven't used any Apple stuff, but I've gone through many iterations of this over the past 15-ish years, going from MythTV to SageTV to Plex+Netflix, and using various iterations of Linux, Windows 7, 8, and 10 on everything from leftover PC part builds to the SageTV appliance to dedicated Mini-ITX HTPC systems to Raspberry Pis.

My main criteria is being able to use everything from the couch, using a single remote, and no keyboards. I was close to that with the SageTV boxes, but Google bought SageTV and it started becoming obsolete, and there was never really a good Netflix integration anyway.

I find the trouble with all PC-based stuff is switching between things and inconsistency between apps. Netflix on PC doesn't have a good way to do keyboard-based control, so remotes don't work well -- you pretty much need a mouse-style pointer. Plex works GREAT but the keyboard works differently than it does when you're using YouTube, and there's not a great way to switch. There's also all kinds of dumb problems getting multi-channel audio working with Netflix since they require some type of certified system or something.

A couple years ago I gave up on PCs and bought an Nvidia Shield, and it's basically the perfect device for me. AndroidTV is a great launcher, it supports everything I use (Plex, Netflix, Youtube, Weather, Baby cam monitor) and everything works with a single remote (I use a Logitech Harmony to control it + the TV + audio). No compatibility, rights or audio issues. And bonus: it is a Google Cast device, and also works with an OTA tuner (Silicondust HDHomerun -- though I never actually use that anymore). My TV never changes inputs: it's basically just a dumb display for the Shield, which now does 100% of content playback in my house.

It costs maybe a bit more than a nice MiniITX HTPC build, but just works (whereas an HTPC will take hours of time to get it working semi-properly).

Kodi is recommended if you want a media pc connected directly to your tv, but personally I prefer Plex with a Roku and the media streamed to my tv. Only negative is that it's not useful for anything besides video

Buy a cheap NUC for server (run Ubuntu) and use an Nvidia Shield for front end. Works flawlesslh.

> 100% of Windows media players are garbage (VLC included, and there is no Movist). They can't play high-bitrate video without stuttering

Eh? I use VLC and Media Player Classic HD on a few different machines, including a rather old i5 that only had spinning disks, and I've never had any issue with high bitrate video.

I wonder if it's something specific to your setup?

I personally use Xbox and Roku along with Plex running on a windows desktop computer which is powerful enough to do transcoding.

All of the video files reside on a local windows machine and a cheap storage VPS on the cloud(located in NL). Both of the machines run plex server and auto transcode all content to an MP4 container ( HEVC for 4k content ). I force plex on the xbox to direct play all content and it usually works pretty well.

>I had assumed Windows would be better than macOS as a TV computer,

You assumed correctly circa ten years ago. Unfortunately the best solution bar none was killed by Microsoft: Windows Media Center Edition. It had a killer ten foot interface and actually supported CableCard digital TV tuners. I can only assume it wasn't a big revenue maker and that the support calls were pretty high. Not to mention it never had more than lukewarm reception from cable companies which didn't appreciate the competition for set top tuner boxes.

These days if you really want to roll your own you can buy an HD Home Run [1] and let it stream to you. It doesn't install any malware but I haven't seen the UI so no clue if it's beautiful or absolute crap. Since it can stream via DLNA that probably depends on the device you stream to as much as anything. I punted and used Youtube TV which I'm about to cancel since hurricane season is over. Like the old song says "500 channels and nothing's on."

[1] https://www.silicondust.com/

I previously used a Mac Mini as an HTPC, but have switched to separate NAS running Plex server + a streaming box or stick as the client (currently a Synology but anything with Docker and maybe hardware accelerated transcoding should be good, and a Nvidia Shield as the client, but 4K Apple TV and Roku are supposedly ok too)

I like the flexibility of having them separate (upgrade separately, keep in separate rooms, etc), and having a unified “10 foot” UI I can control with a remote to access Plex, Netflix, etc.

You could easily get a 2 or 4 bay NAS + HDDs + Shield/Roku/AppleTV for less than the $800 base price of the new Mac Mini. Unless there’s a reason you need Mac OS I wouldn’t get the Mac Mini.

If you’ve already got the Dell I’d consider just using it as a server and getting a Nvidia Shield as the client.

Windows 10 with MadVR for video rendering with GPU upscaling, and a 3D LUT for colour correction.

Have you tried Kodi (kodi.tv)?

> 100% of Windows media players are garbage.

You might want to take a look at Daum Pot Player.

I can't bear to use VLC anymore. It is just that much better.

I haven't tried it for your use case though.

Since the gp also mentioned NAS and backup, I would presume they're definitely talking about some ∗nix, yes.

I'm not sure if Linux would make for a play-for-play better home theatre OS than MacOS, but it would certainly be both better than Windows, and better value than a Mac.

What is your beef with VLC? It’s the only player that has yet to fail me.

I also use a Synology. And a Raspberry Pi as the client.

XBox, PS4, Android with a NVidia Shield.

Why do you need a PC at all? A TV can play movies directly from a NAS.

I went through this when I built a Win7 HTPC perhaps 5 or 6 years ago. I was so happy to no longer have to use Connect360 on my xbox 360 to stream transcoded video from my Mac Pro (that I had to power on to run the whole thing). Finally I'd be able to just play files directly from my NAS into the endless world of Windows media support. No more transcoding from whatever stupid codec/container/disaster the 'scene' is using these days. It will Just Work because all of these people use Windows and it plays everything, right?

Nope. Unmitigated disaster. Same thing, navigating endless spy/mal/adware laden sites to download CCCP codec packages and plug things together, every time I installed one thing I found another thing that didn't work right. I have some weird Jockersoft thing to force some other application to keep running and restart if it fails, and even though I no longer use whatever that thing was, I can't uninstall the goddamned jockersoft thing to save my life.

Windows Media Center itself was actually a joy, though, I really enjoyed how well it worked for the things it could do out of the box which were far fewer than I had been led to believe.

I also realized that a decade+ of using OS X had left me unprepared to navigate the latest online threats in the world of not-entirely-legitimate download sites for Windows utilities. It got really bad while I was away.

I would say most uses of the mac mini are simply as a desktop computer. It's what I use as my primary OSX workstation -- I have an old late 2012 model, upgraded with 16GB and an external SSD that I made the primary -- and it works fantastic. I plan on getting the new model.

Two monitors. Monitors that are exactly what I want.

2012 model work for iOS programming? I'm writing in react native, hopefully I only need to hit compile and never have to use an apple product.

An Audi SUV's price isn't justifiable given almost every use case for a consumer automobile, but a lot of people enjoy the experience and find it worth paying tens of thousands dollars more than a Camry. By comparison, if you work on a computer for several hours every day and prefer the ergonomics of a Mac, spending an extra $1,000 is a pretty minuscule premium.

And I say that as someone that happily switched from a Mac to a PC I built a few years ago - I like getting the maximum grunt for my money.

The NUC8, like pretty much every small form factor pc, uses a mobile cpu, whereas the new mini uses desktop cpu’s. You have to look at the top model nuc8 with i7 to outperform the entry-level mac mini with the i3, and then the price advantage disappears.

That CPU power comes in handy for most of the mini’s use cases, transcoding for home theater / nas, or build times for build server.

>The NUC8 with comparable specs (sans 6 core CPU) comes at under half the price!

I'm actually very interested in these - could you point me at some? I've been interested in getting a NUC8 machine, but the cheapest I can find one for (granted, in the UK) is £750 before RAM & SSD... and I have been seriously considering the new Mac Mini as a result because the final price doesn't seem like it'll be much different.

edit: found some on SimplyNUC.co.uk starting at £650 (inc VAT), 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD, awesome! https://simplynuc.co.uk/8i7beh-full/

I have a NUC7 (NUC7i5BNH) in a silent Akasa Newton case. It's great, I love having a completely silent computer.

I tested the original case, and it was fairly noisy, like a busy laptop. I don't recommend it.

You may find it slightly cheaper if you install the RAM and SSD yourself. This would be easy with the normal case. Installing the silent case was more tricky, since it requires using thermal paste to connect the case to the CPU.

Doesn’t matter to everyone, but something to keep in mind is that Mac Mini’s have their power supply inside the unit itself while NUCs need those awful wall warts.

You might want to look at some Chinese mini/industrial PCs

Same 8GB/128 GB, but probably lower CPU for £307: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B077SLPZ63

There are many different configurations on Amazon/Ebay

http://www.inctel.com.cn/product/MiniPC.html

I have the 5i5 (Skylake) NUC running as a HTPC, and it's pretty nice. At the time I think I paid about $600 with the RAM and an SSD. I use it for the typical things, playing music and movies, but also for some lean-back computing on the couch when I don't want to sit at my desk to do email or whatever.

A quick glance at Amazon (US) says that a 7i5 NUC with 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD is $540.

If you’re bought in to the Apple ecosystem, you can get a good HTPC by buying a 5+ year old Mac Mini from Craigslist. I’ve seen em for around $100, and unlike an AppleTV, you can run whatever additional Mac software you want. My 2010 is running great, recently upgraded to a SSD, and thanks to a kind soul here on HN pointing me to a link, can even run Mojave even though it’s technically unsupported.

If you think the hardware and cost is overkill for "most use cases" perhaps the problem is your assumption of what "most use cases" are.

There is a very specific use case for this: Apple ecosystem integration.

- Home theater -> iTunes movies play

- NAS -> iCloud clone with eventualy automation running

- Backup -> iCloud / Dropbox / Google Drive backup

- bonus: siri, xcode builds, local+ third party remote iOS backup

I have a raspberry pi setup handling the above for Google + dropbox. The day I want to switch to an Apple centric system I’d move to the Mac mini in a heartbeat.

> The pricing is not really justifiable especially given the most use cases of the Mac mini (Home Theater, NAS, Backup etc.) are better handled by other OSes.

I dont' know about "most", but pros who want quiet, small and fast (read: musician, audio engineers) will be all over this Mini.

And hopefully it is not just me, but it feels so much better to have a solution based on "open" hardware (i.e. PC based) and software (e.g. Linux), rather than support Apple's lock-in model.

It’s hilarious how often this exact comment gets made in every single new apple product thread everywhere.

This exact comment is specific to this reviewers use case for his Mac Mini; it can't be made in every apple product thread, other apple products are used for things other than home media centres.

and its pointing out the truly obvious as well...

I really don't like when reviewers test the high end configuration only. This makes the review pretty useless for most of us who may be considering a lower spec.

I agree with you, but somehow i feel like Marco gets a pass - he's not really trying to run a tech review site to give this thing an objective score, it's his personal blog and his opinion and this is the model he finds interesting.

I know it's probably not fair to give him a pass on reviewing the top-end, because really it is a review and should be held to the same standard as other reviews, but something about his tone makes me not care so much.

He said specifically that it's the model Apple decided to send him for review, so he had no choice.

Well it was an early Apple provided review unit.

But more than that, Marco Arment actually uses high end rigs in his daily work and describes pushing them to the limit. It is highly appropriate for Marco to review a Mac Mini with high end specs, and I find it informative

Here’s a review of the entry-level model: https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/11/06/mac-mini-2...

It outperforms every previous mac mini, and doesn’t benchmark that far below the 2018 i7 macbook pro. This is a desktop i3, the desktop-class cpu’s are a different performance class from the mobile line.

Car manufacturers rarely send their low end models out to reviews as well.

and Ferrari sends tuned versions of the car

Some car companies not only send out tuned versions of the cars, but a team to tune the car during the review.

You see this on The Grand Tour all the time.

Basically all performance car manufacturers send out cars to journalists with a higher power setting, top tier tires, optimized suspension settings, etc. But journalists know that.

He did test one thing to match a lower end configuration:

>Interestingly, I disabled Turbo Boost to simulate the base i3 model’s thermals, and couldn’t get the fan to spin up audibly, no matter what I did. Those who prioritize silence under heavy loads should probably stick with the i3.

This is a pretty questionable methodology. I don't think it teaches us much about lower end configs.

What would you want to see tested in the i3 8GB model?

Test how it performs? Maybe some benchmarks? Or even compare it to the high end model?

Macs aside - this video clearly shows the wonderful experience you can get when an audio/video producer cares about audio quality. Spoken word recorded with clear audio is so lovely.

I listen to podcasts and audiobooks on a daily basis and I really really appreciate someone putting the effort into this. Thanks!

I had a hard time watching him talk because the over dubbed audio is completely out of sync. It's really bad right around the 1 minute mark. I ended up minimizing the window and just listening.

I honestly don't care for this audio, it's crystal clear and perfect for a podcast but the video is of him sitting in front of a window with a dog and the absence of any environmental noise is odd.

"Yeah, sorry about the audio sync. I was fighting it for the entire edit, and ran out of time to really nail it.

Next time, I’ll pipe the audio directly into the camera instead of relying on manual syncing during post, which had tons of drift."

https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/1059869643928670208

Thank you for confirming that I'm not insane. :)

Agreed. It's drifting around and rarely in sync.

Watching on iOS I had no sync problems. Maybe it’s a transcoding problem caused by YouTube? At 1:25 you can clearly hear how when he turns away from the camera the audio changes as well. I’d say the audio is recorded live, not dubbed.

He makes Overcast, the best iOS Podcasting app. Many good features to handle all the fiddly edge cases. Almost no complaints[0] and he keeps making it better.

[0] The only one thing I wish he'd add would be the ability to limit concurrent downloads to prioritize at least one of them finishing. I routinely get bad wifi and seeing 8 downloads at 55% is maddening.

The only complaint that I have is that the UI is ugly ugly ugly and has so much wasted space. The previous version had so much better UI.

I do agree with the wasted space part but why would you call it ugly? Also, I don't find the UI intuitive at all. Many actions like to go to the list of episode of a podcast you have to kind of start from the beginning. But ugly? No. In fact I find it pretty clean.

Anyone looking for crystal clear vocals should do exactly what NPR does: Stick a Neumann U87 six inches from the mouth with the bass rolled off and use a P-pop and Bob's your uncle.

Money will be an issue with the U87, so you can look for good clones; there are a few in the market.

Boy oh boy, I can't stand that sound. Must be years of being trapped in other kids' parents' cars, who were educated and listened to NPR. I just wanted to listen to Big Douche and the Boys talk over the intro to Enter Sandman, like my high school dropout parents would.

What does it mean to have the bass "rolled off", and what is a p-pop?

The mic has a switch on it that imposes a hardware high-pass filter to counterbalance the proximity effect you get from being close to it. Since the mic is a cardioid mic (directional sound pickup) it would normally pick up a great deal of extra bass due to the geometry of the cardioid capsule (radio announcer sound, big and deep and bassy). The switch lets you take away that bassiness and the pop filter prevents the mic from going 'THUMP' when you say 'P' into it, and the combination of these things gives you that super-present, 'NPR interview' sound.

Most studio mics have a setting to taper off the bass end of the spectrum. A pop filter is a grate/net that sits between the mic and mouth to stop letters like ‘p’ sounding like a blast due to the air flow.

I'd guess he means a pop filter.

There's a running joke on ATP that Marco buys just tons of mics. Not to mention he made Overcast, so he knows audio pretty well.

I think he just buys tons of everything.

And then he sells them

A $2500 desktop computer with integrated graphics?

Honestly, it feels like a bit of a joke.

It starts at $800, and you can instantly save $600 even for this top-of-the-line model by installing RAM yourself (it's user-upgradable again).

The model & price reviewed here is the "let's not stop people from throwing money at us" option.

The RAM is upgrade-able on a Mac? Who put his neck on the line to get that option into the final product? That man is a hero.

You can't upgrade the i3, or the measly 128GB hard drive they bundle with it though. For $800, nearly every other option is better.

How much graphics processing power does your text editor demand? How about your build server?

Apple made it pretty clear in their keynote they're focussing this product to be attractive to the 'pro' market that gives zero fucks about a whiz-bang graphics card.

My text editor needs the processing power of my $100 ThinkPad, and that's where I'll be using my text editor.

What is it that justifies the $2500 price?

It would be $3500 with GPU, so I'm glad.

Don't need GPU for typical coding.

A huge chunk of that is the SSD. It's actually very reasonably priced, especially considering that you get a Mac ecosystem along with the computer.

Reasonably priced because SSD? You know a 1TB NVME PCIe M.2 drive can be had for under $250 right? How Apple justifies $800 for this single part is beyond baffling.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN217QG/?coliid=I2D5ZX13M1AMZ7&...

The price for those SSD upgrade are more than double of the current Retail Pro Level SSD at same capacity and similar speed. Which Apple saves on SSD Controller, better NAND pricing, no retail and distributor margin. Even though I expected the Apple SSD upgrade were to be expensive, those upgrade price levels are simply ridiculous.

The DRAM too but at least I could upgrade that myself to 64GB.

I bought a 1 TB Samsung EVO 860 one month ago for a little more than 170 Euro. The SSD could be a huge chunk of the manufacturing cost but that means that Apple enjoys a huge margin on this computer.

Have you looked at SSD prices lately!?

TBH - Do you even need 1TB of storage on your desktop? If your image/music library is that large, you'd have it on a NAS. Maybe if you've got a big batch of VMs for some reason...

> considering that you get a Mac ecosystem

People consider this a good thing?

EDIT: To clarify, the cost of their proprietary devices mean spending an additional bit. Every other company uses USB C now.

Get get 3.2GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i7 8GB model sell 8GB stick get 32gb for 270 and external 1TB SSD for 160 you will have very decent dev box for 1730 - whatever 8gb goes for

You could add an eGPU over TB3.

Lack of GPU wasn't OP's gripe.

Ugh, all the comments about how it's overpriced in this thread.

"This is crazy! You can just build your own for half the price!"

Snooze. You could have made this comment about most of Apple's products for decades. Some people apparently just don't get it, so here it is from my perspective:

As long as Apple does what I need, I'm not going to buy anything else. I'm definitely not going to build my own PC to save a few bucks. I recognize that not everyone is in this position, but my time is valuable and the difference between "click buy" and "research and buy a ton of parts and assemble them and install software and drivers and blah blah blah" is worth thousands of dollars to me.

I rely on a Macbook Pro for work every day. I generally keep them for 2-3 years, and given my preferences, work setup, software, and how much money I make with these things, I'd pay triple (or more) what Apple currently charges for them vs. getting some shitty Dell or Lenovo and hassling with Windows or Linux. That's not to say everyone should feel that way, but that's my situation, and I'm not alone.

100% this, but for people who don't make money from using the computer I can see how the high prices are a real problem

But Apple's strategy has never been to go after the price-sensitive market. Complaining that their prices are way higher than commodity parts you can piece together yourself makes zero sense. That's like complaining that a Ferrari is way more expensive than a Honda.

Yep, good point. I read someone online commenting that Apple's "price sensitive" option are second-hand devices as they (historically) remain updated and working well for a long time. Hopefully the new 3rd generation keyboard will stand up to years of use - I'm not at all confident that my 2017 will have much resale value due to the keyboard issues.

The review doesnt tell you that you cannot upgrade or replace your SSD.

Or boot Linux, because the T2 chip prevents it[1].

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-T2...

Why would you buy this to run Linux?

Well, I certainly wouldn't, but in four to five years if I need a general purpose server, it'd be nice to install Linux.

That turned out to be rubbish. You can easily disable secure boot.

From the link:

> Update 2: It looks like even if disabling the Secure Boot functionality, the T2 chip is reportedly still blocking operating systems aside from macOS and Windows 10.

That seems to contradict your claim, and I haven't seen that refuted elsewhere.

I will never again buy a laptop or computer where I can’t replace the SSD myself.

Last time I had a problem with my MacBook Pro and took it in to get fixed. They wanted me to write down my login password before they would accept it!

I had to reschedule and wiped my disk before bringing it back again.

Another way of looking at that is that macs are so secure even apple can’t get into them without your password.

So if the motherboard dies, all your data is gone?

You should use backups anyway. ‍️

But if the computer dies and the motherboard survives, you can connect to some thingy on the board to get the data.

You can, or Apple can for a fee?

Apple products are anti consumer and anti developer.

I consider using Apple products on par with using Keurig, its bad capitalism.

Which also means the entire thing has to be thrown out when the SSD eventually dies. Sure it's going to take a while, but it will happen. Yay consumerism, I guess.

In late 2014 I replaced the disks in my 2008 Mac Pro at work and my 2009 Mac Pro at home with Samsung EVO 840 and 850 SSD disks. I kept track of accumulated writes.

Both machines were heavily used for development and consumer type stuff. No big data stuff or big media stuff.

Samsung rates these things at 150 TB write endurance for the 850 and something around 120 TB for the 840.

My projection based on that usage is that it will take over 35 years to reach 100 TB.

Samsung's ratings are quite conservative. Reviewers that have put these things through write torture tests to the point of error have typically gotten several times Samsung's rating. Around 170 years worth of writes at my usage rate.

I haven't seen numbers for Apple's durability, but if it is within even distant sight of Samsung's EVO performance you can expect to have retired the computer for other reasons long before the SSD dies.

I'd expect that the only reason the SSD might lead to getting a new computer is that you want a bigger SSD, but even that might not be an issue because Thunderbolt 3 gives pretty good performance for external disks.

My Mac Pros have both been retired, replaced with a 2017 iMac (one iMac could replace both office and work computer because we switched to working at home). My Samsung EVOs are now on the iMac in an AKiTiO Thunder3 Quad Mini enclosure.

The internal SSD in the iMac gets just short of 2000 MB/s for both read and write, according to Disk Speed Test from Blackmagic Design. The Samsung EVOs get around 465 MB/s write, 520 MB/s read, so 1/4 the internal disk but still fast enough for most purposes.

Note that the Samsungs are SATA drives. Something that made more direct use of TB3 could probably go much faster.

I bought a 1TB Samsung 840 Evo in September 2013, and it just died last month. So it was in operation for around 5 years.

I used it for development type stuff. It outlasted the 2011 MBP I bought it for. In fact, I ran it on 3 different computers during its life span.

Overall, I'm pretty happy that it got the 5 years. With spindles, I prefer to replace them every 2 years to avoid headaches.

Technically not. You can boot from an external thunderbolt SSD, which is capable of the same speeds as an internal drive. It’s mildly ugly, but not a showstopper.

But I thought that modern SSDs were supposed to last decades, even under heavy use. Is this actually a real problem?

Does anyone know if TRIM is supported using an external SSD over thunderbolt?

I remember reading it’s not supported over USB3.

My wife is using her iMac with an external SSD via USB3 since the HDD is too slow. She even can boot her Macbook Air from the macOS installation on that same SSD and keep working.

This article makes me happy. To see that Apple is listening. I'm super excited for the next Macbook Pro,and I really hope we really get something that is better, more reliable and practical. I'll be thrilled if they can find their groove again for the Macbook Pro

I'm in the market for a new machine, but unfortunately that GPU is too anaemic to make sense. It's a shame, because otherwise it looks like a pretty great proposition. An eGPU is an option, but at £500+ and twice the size of the machine, not a vary attractive one.

I guess the options are throwing down the cash for a 15" MacBook Pro, or waiting to see what they come up with for the Mac Pro next year…

There are some “puck-sized” eGPUs, somewhere between the size of an AppleTV and a Mac Mini, have chips comparable to the high end MacBooks Pro options.

I have the same issue, I don't understand why they are able to fit a Vega in the 15" MBP but not in the larger Mac Mini.

15" MBP is not an option for me because of the touchbar and keyboard, so I am basically out of options.

The mini has a 65w tdp cpu, vs the mbp’s 45w cpu. That means more heat to dump from a smaller surface area. I’m not surprised they couldn’t fit a warmer gpu in the thermal profile.

Yea, it could at least have been an option. But my guess is they didn't want too many SKUs, and wanted to hit a price-point of less than $1000.

In a world of 5K displays and Apple's insistence on smoothness, this GPU just won't work.

There isn't a "world of 5k displays" unfortunately, only Apple's high-end all-in-ones offer this option.

Supposedly Apple is planning an 8k display to go with the modular Mac Pro.

I suspect if they release a new display it will somehow be beholden to graphics capability of new Apple machines, possibly requiring A chips or their ilk. https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives

Philips 275P4VYKEB, but yeah, just one monitor.

Edit. Remembered Iiyama ProLite XB2779QQS, but it uses 6bit colors.

Is that really an issue with Intel's integrated GPUs? Honestly asking.

I'm considering a Mac Mini, but there's no way I'm going back to low PPI displays and the lack of affordable 5K / 27" options concerns me (in my opinion 4K/UHD at 27" is a borderline unusable combination with its effective resolution of 1080p - feel free to convince me otherwise).

If those few 5K options can't be driven smoothly by an Intel GPU, it's settled and I'm waiting for an iMac update instead. Ideally I'd like a multi monitor setup though.

I have an iMac 5K and I need to scale things up a little bit for my (tired) eyes.

For me personally 4K 27'' would be better. At 163 PPI it would be worse than the 218 PPI of the 5K display, but it would not be a deal breaker if the color quality was the same.

Looking to buy a 4k 27 inch external monitor for my 2018 macbook. What's the problem with it and why is it not better than a 1080p?

My Thinkpad with Intel integerated graphics is unable to power a 4k display as smoothly as my desktop with 1070. It definitely makes a difference.

The 545/645 found in the 13" MBPs can drive a 5k display adequately. Not sure about this 630, though.

I bought a 2016 13" MBP to use it on an external display. It only works well on 2.5K. Always consider the GPU nowadays.

That's strange. I use an early 2015 13" model which happily drives two external 4k displays simultaneously. I'm not running them high-DPI though – the performance there is noticeably worse.

Is anyone worried that Apple's transition to their own CPUs will render these x86 machines obsolete very fast? How long did it take for the pre-x86 Macs to fall behind when the software started focusing on x86 instead?

Apple waited for 5 years to release a version of OSX that couldn’t run PPC apps on x86 Macs.

Last PPC Mac: 2005

First x86 Macs: 2006, PPC apps work on x86 Macs

Adobe CS3 (first native x86 version): 2007

OSX 10.5, last OSX version released for PPC Macs: 2007

OSX 10.6 (x86 only, PPC apps still work): 2009

Adobe CS5 (x86 only): 2010

OSX 10.7, PPC apps no longer work: 2011

I remember when they went to x86, but I think the landscape is different now. I was working in graphic design at the time, and I didn't know a single person outside of that field who used a mac. Now, I'm surprised when someone's laptop isn't a Mac. So, I imagine there's a lot more critical software that needs ported.

One area I can speak to now, which I'm heavily invested in, is audio applications. It's the main reason I still run a Mac. Upgrades are usually slow and cautious in this domain. I'm still on 10.12.6, and have no plan on upgrading anytime soon.

I, for one, am quite concerned. It used to be in regards to performance, but now it's all the applications and plugins that will need ported. There's a very real chance I'll go to Windows if it looks like a nightmare. Would love to see a Ubuntu variant come out of the ashes of such a thing, but that's probably a pipe dream.

Yep, it's time for my to change the laptop at work, I currently have an old i5 Macbook Pro and it held for +5 years. Even my personal macbook air is from late 2010 (reddit + spotify machine) I doubt that any mac today would held for another 6 or 7 years.

> Unfortunately, we still don’t have any great standalone 5K displays. (The LG UltraFine isn’t.)

What’s wrong with the LG display? It gets a lot of criticism, but I find it hard to understand why. There was an interference shielding issue, but it was fixed more than a year ago.

For anyone familiar with the matter, what is it that makes the LG not great?

My personal issue with it is the lack of standard inputs, which make it impossible to use with an eGPU setup (excluding the Blackmagic, but that's a whole other kind of subpar). The data ports being exclusively USB-C is probably an issue for some as well.

If your complaint about the Blackmagic eGPU being “subpar” was the power of the Radeon Pro 580, you’ll be happy to hear that one with a Vega 56 is now available:

https://store.apple.com/xc/product/HMQT2VC/A

I have two of them and they are both excellent. I can see no discernible difference between them and my 5k iMac. They are expensive, though.

I found that the LG UltraFine is by far the best monitor for my MacBook Pro. Nothing else comes close.

I bought a mac mini ten years ago (for about E400?). It still lives on today as my parent's desktop. I passed to them many years ago and not one problem. Fantastic machine.

However I cannot justify the prices they're asking for these ones. I'm looking for a new machine for myself now, but no way will these be considered.

Let me get this straight: You would not consider paying a premium for a machine even though your experience tells you, that it has a useful life of 10+ years?

All of my experiences with Mac have been like this.

Got a MBP for college, 2009. Still running as my mom's laptop in 2018. Meanwhile my dad's 2 year old dell has endless problems, it's incredibly cheap, despite having better internal hardware. It's slower, needed tons of configuration out of the box, and Windows 10 is just awful. My dad's laptop constantly has issues. My mom? Never once. It just works.

I will gladly pay for a product that is like that. I don't care what an SSD costs on Amazon. I don't want to spend time looking up components and motherboards and bargain hunting. I don't care about gaming and therefore the GPU. People on here look at numbers and costs but they never consider the customer experience.

It's far more damning of Apple to have the bad keyboard on the new MBPs than have some overpriced hardware. Ask 99% of people on the street if they even know what an i7 is.

meh. I had a 2007 mini that crapped out one month after the guarantee expired. Took it in for support and they told me to buy a new one, not interested in taking it on. To be fair this was a specialist apple dealer. At the time there was no local Apple store.

My general experience with Apple products has been 50:50 some good, some bad, Apple is nothing special when it comes to quality. Better than some is about all I can say.

1 - it wouldn't be suitable for me now (nor for the past few years).

2 - I remember there being a big differential in equivalently priced machines back then. One of my current work Dell workstations is a much cheaper option than this Mac, much better specced and I've had no issues with it for over two years.

3 - It's £800 for the thing, seems way out of line with inflation compared to what I bought then.

No, I wouldn't consider buying a Toyota Corolla for 60K.

Looks promising. I've ordered one to replace my ancient cheese grater Mac Pro, and it should be quite an update.

I've always been fond of the old Mac Pros (still one of most beautiful machines from Apple), but the extensibility through TB3 has rendered many of the advantages moot (and my Mac Pro is stuffed to the gills).

Side discussion: What are everyone's thoughts when it comes to external HiDPI monitor options to use with this Mac Mini?

Ideally I'd want 5K displays (I'm used to the iMac 5K) but it seems that LG's UltraFine is the only real option and the rest of the industry has settled on 4K/UHD at 27 inches, which results in a) limited screen real estate due to an effective resolution of 1080p at 2x scaling and b) slightly less pixel density.

I maybe fine with b) but both issues considered I'm seriously wondering why UHD displays at 27" are so popular - it seems like a subpar and regretful combination. Are my worries unwarranted?

I’ve been using dell P2415Qs. I run 3 at the HiDPI “looks like 2560x1440”. It’s not perfect 2x scaling, but it is close enough (185 dpi) and the price $300-400 each cant be beat. I’ve considered switching to the 21.5 inch LG ultrafines (220 dpi) but they are $700 and have very limited port choices compared to the dells. I use the dell displays with multiple other machines that don’t have USB-C graphics out. And want to be able to use the displays with eGPUs that won’t have USB-C out.

I just hope the default GPU of the mini can drive 3 UHD displays without choking on the dock animations :|

I too am disappointed by the lack of 5k options. The iMac 5k display is truly outstanding and I wish there were other options. The 1080p aspect ratio is not great in my opinion.

Something you might want to consider is this 32" 4k monitor: https://www.benq.com/en/monitor/designer/pd3200u.html

It has great reviews, and while it's a bit different from what you're looking for, you might be able to run it at a higher resolution and get more screen real estate. Food for thought...

I have a 31.5" 4K display I'm using at native resolution with my MacBook Pro and honestly I can't wait for 8K... I wouldn't want to trade off any of this screen space but every day the low ppi bothers me.

Nobody's forcing you to use 2x scaling. I use two 27" UHD displays with Debian/GNOME. The system-level scaling factor is 1, and I adjust application zoom levels as needed.

I typically divide each display in half, and each half comfortably fits one browser window, mail client, terminal, Spotify, etc.

> 4K/UHD at 27 inches, which results in a) limited screen real estate due to an effective resolution of 1080p at 2x scaling

MacOS's non-integer scaling works surprisingly well on these; I use one with an apparently resolution of 1440p with no issues.

There is also Philips 275P4VYKEB. But you need two displays ports to power it. IIRC only some new and not so adopted(both by displays and GPUs) display port standards support 5K. Apple iMac 5K uses same setup of two DPs to power display.

I'm with you.

Not high enough DPI for retina, not big enough to avoid scaling. The monitor market seems to be messed up at the moment, there's LG monitor models which were shown at CES 2017 that are barely appearing in some countries today.

Why does Marco call the LG 5K “not great”?

There is zero justification for the pricing. It needs to be starting around $399. Apple is still working the privileged pricing model. Considering it has year old processor and 8GB RAM. For $800 an i5 and 16GB should be standard. I can forgive that 128GB SSD but not the CPU or RAM.

Side note, why is a computer only for games, streaming, and mining bitcoin? It that what the end user experience is limited to?

>> There is zero justification for the pricing.

There is a justification for the pricing, but you probably won't like it: More than enough people will buy the product at a high margin price to make up for the price-sensitive people who won't buy it.

Apple uses value-based pricing, not cost-based pricing.

>> I can forgive that 128GB SSD but not the CPU or RAM.

I had the curse of having to use a 2017 MacBook Pro 13” with a 128GB SSD...it’s not forgivable, it’s not usable.

By the time I put xCode in there as well as Office, et cetera, and project files, I was left with 20-30GB left, and anytime I dipped below...20? it bombarded me, literally, continually, with a message ‘you are low on disk space.’

You know what is never forgivable? Soldering a hard drive to the motherboard on a $1500 device.

I agree that Apple has gone completely crazy with the markup, but who is saying those are the only applications for computers???

Too expensive. If you just want a redundant NAS everything else is cheaper. If you want a non-redundant NAS asingle disk NAS enclosure costs 54 bucks: https://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_cod...

I'm fairly new to this NAS stuff. Is there a reason to have one hard drive per sever, or is that just a limitation of this one in particular? I'm sure that RAID over a network of hard drives is a solved problem, but I wouldn't know where to start.

It's a limitation of that odroid enclosure. You could do raid over iscsi (but I wouldn't). Buffalo do a 2 drive enclosure very cheap, but I'd go for a synology or qnap enclosure for a bit more money.

This is a really weird device. The mac mini has long been used as a home theater pc of the apple ecosystem, due to it's formfactor and being the one apple device that didn't come with its own 20 inch screen or 3 foot tall tower. Apple tv, for all it's shortcomings, has sort of supplanted that and you're much better off sticking that under your tv and running your plex server somewhere else. So now we have a mac mini which is too expensive to be a home theater pc or to be stuck in a closet serving media, and is comparably priced with macs that have actual screens. So its like good for someone who for some reason doesn't want to carry a macbook around but wants a semi-portable workstation? or someone who wants an iMac with a bigger screen? It's not useful as a mac mini, and it's pretty redundant thanks to every use case being covered by an existing mac. Who is this device for? Who is buying this over a macbook or imac?

I've bought two Minis as dev machines in the past. Portability was part of it. I also saved a bunch of money because I already had a full set of peripherals. Edit: Upgradable RAM and the ability to install a second drive was also great in retrospect, I wonder if the latter is still possible with the 2018 model.

And I'm not sure whether glossy Retina screens are really the best bang for the buck for developers. I often wish I had dual 1440p or a ginormous 21:9 screen when I'm dealing with complex projects.

Weirdly, it has a lot of enterprise-scale applications and implications with it's ability to accept 64GB of RAM.

We're replacing a ton of those 'garbage-can' Mac Pro models with them. Lord knows we don't need kick ass graphics cards.

In terms of consumer-level applications, it definitely seems like the sell used to be the pleasant $500 price point.

The G4 Mac Mini, at $499, was my very first entry into the Mac world. I certainly couldn't afford $1,100 for an iBook G4 in High School.

Many people. This is targeted at professionals who need a max with good performance. Eg. Software developers. I can imagine this being a popular device.

I really wish people would more clearly disclose when they have been provided a product to review by the manufacturer.

Can it really be more clear than this:

Apple lent me a high-end configuration for review — 6-core i7, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD — which would cost $2499 (much of which is the SSD)

How about blazing red letters at the top of the page?

How about putting "paid review" in the title of the HN submit?

Yeah, how about putting that disclaimer first paragraph, first sentence.

I think (and I have no relation to this person) http://lon.tv is an example of an exemplary and ethical reviewer in this regard.

> much of which is the SSD

A 1 TB SSD is on the order of $150.

I've been an avid Apple user and supporter for many years, preached about the stability and the superior (tongue in cheek) hardware. I was waiting for a decent replacement for an ageing mini, but seriously Apple, at these prices?? It's insane. I've made up my mind after I saw the Apple event and reading/following the news of them hiding their sales numbers from now on [0].

I've switched over to Linux as my main desktop completely. While I've been using Windows for years, Windows 10 is just not doing it for me, even with WSL, it just feels limited and unpolished. Anyway, rant over. [0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/when-the-going-gets-tough-...

Slightly off topic but is there cloud Mac/Xcode that I subscribe to for my occasional App development?

There probably is but it will be built on top of Mac mini or Mac Pro farms as Apple does not allow virtualization of macOS on any hardware not carrying a Apple logo (I believe that is how it is actually stated in the terms even). So of it is available it might not be a cheaper option.

But I believe Travis CI does have macOS workers available for free, but they might be scarce in available time slots.

Checkout Macstadium. https://www.macstadium.com

Maybe https://www.macstadium.com

Tag for interest, I have no interest in using Apple for anything, but I need to compile my RN app.

hostmyapple macincloud

"...cost $2499 (much of which is the SSD)"

The cheapest SSD I can find goes for €129.47, and it doesn't seem to get up to much more for consumer SSDs. Unless this SSD has some crazy specs that I'm missing, it seems seriously overpriced to me.

Little of both. The SSD is a very fast 1TB model running on Apple’s custom controller (so you can’t just compare to a random one on Amazon). It’s also an obscenely high priced upgrade.

Probably more column B (expensive) than A (good)

Apple charges +$600 (USD) for a 0.25 → 1TB SSD upgrade.

I heard some complaints, but was all like "Yeah, but modern Apple SSDs are 3GB/sec, that is pretty good, bros..."

My coworker clued me in, though:

    1TB samsung 970Pro M.2 (3GB/s) 
    was as low as AUD$304 here just
    yesterday.   Thats ~USD$215.  I
    don't usually mind paying the 
    _AppleTax_ but that is ridiculously 
    overpriced.

I buy all sorts of overpriced Apple shit, but that is so overpriced it's kinda offensive.

There is a hefty premium on top of any upgrades from the base model, but Apple SSD with the T2 chip is insanely fast - check out the benchmark for the iMac Pro and MacBook Pro 2018.

Plus I don't really see why a crazy-spec SSD is really key here. It's not going to be the bottleneck for most use cases in a Mac Mini that has an integrated graphics card (at $2.5k...) A regular SSD would do.

>it seems seriously overpriced to me.

I havent bought Apple products, but the obvious anti-consumer and anti-developer practices are a no brainer.

This sounds like it’d make a decent development machine - better in many ways than a MPB.

> ... not a low end product anymore...

Apple is clearly pushing everything towards a more luxury high end. More than ever, they're pushing the market to see how far they can go.

They're pricing me out. I can afford their stuff, I just find it hard to justify it.

Having a user serviceable M.2 slot would have made this the perfect Mac for me. Lets say I have Applecare for the first 3 years and the SSD dies on the 4th year, what are my options? Replace entire logic board with new CPU & SSD?

I'm impressed, but I am also not sure how accurate the benchmarks he's using are for replicating real-world load.

I actually think it's pretty cost effective if you go for 32GB RAM instead of 64GB, and keep the baseline 256GB SSD storage. It comes out to $1,899. With 64GB RAM and 2TB storage, it comes out to $4,099, which is a huge markup for things that can be self-upgraded on a PC.

Even $2,699 for the 64GB version doesn't seem that bad for effectively the best MacOS running computer you can get currently.

How hard is it to upgrade yourself?

Can't replace the SSD? Pass.

I can upgrade the ram, the most useful piece of information in the review. If I could upgrade the SSD too, I'd be tempted.

How is it compared to Intel's Hades Canyon? I'm thinking between those two mini-sized computers.

I have the Hades' predecessor, one advantage of this line is a pair of M.2 slots in RAID that will later hold 4tb, 8tb, etc NVMe sticks allowing massively more capacity at similar speed to the Mini's storage.

The AMD graphics in the Hades' is vastly better, but still significantly inferior to anything you will connect via eGPU. A lot of casual usage will not require the Hades' GPU but you'll always pay a power/thermal price for it. As resolutions increase, or depending on your requirements now, you'll probably be forced to pair it with an eGPU because it really only excels at 1080p for 3d stuff afaik.

One nice thing from the Hades' predecessor is fanless cases, I don't know if they've emerged yet for the Hades Canyon but going fanless is really amazing. Prior to that it could be loud, and the Hades added a second loud fan for the GPU.

It doesn't seems Apple is interested in using AMD CPU / APU in their products, otherwise they would have a decent iGPU along side.

I was expecting the Intel + AMD GPU combo to end up in this Mac mini, turns out not.

I’m pretty sure I would rather buy an iMac than a Mac mini. An iMac at least comes with a display, and the base 4K version is competitive in price and features as far as I can tell.

I bought an iMac last year and regretted it. The performance was fine, but I ended up disliking the fact that it was an all-in-one. The fact that you can get iMac performance without a display attached is a big feature of the new Mac mini for me.

Can anyone explain the market for this to me? In Ireland Mac Mini: 8th Gen i5 Processor/8GB RAM/256GB SSD €1269

Dell XPS 13 with: 8th Gen i5 Processor/8GB RAM/256GB SSD €1189

Unless the XPS can run macOS the comparison will be useless to the target audience of the Mac Mini. Furthermore both are very different product categories.

I bought my first-ever Mac just over three weeks ago, a refurbished Mac Mini (2010 version, with Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, upgraded by seller to 8GB and 240GB SSD and High Sierra).

Pretty happy so far.

I would have liked to see performance compared to the 2018 15” MacBook Pro, since they are around the same cost. The 13-inch really got its butt kicked.

I'm just waiting for the same article but for Macbooks.

I can't wait to throw my money at Apple when they bring back MagSafe and scissor switches.

Not holding my breath though.

>Apple lent me a high-end configuration for review

Is this common, for a company to lend a product for review, instead of just giving it to the reviewer?

The new mac mini seems like a straightforward improvement from the other versions with few things getting worse. I love that.

I'm looking forward to see server blades made out of those Macs. It's just satisfying to see how they are built

Best display to buy with the new mini is probably: Eizo Flexscan ev2785 4k 27"

I am eagerly awaiting iFixit's teardown of the new mac mini.

I wonder how it'll perform as a "super" Apple Tv.

I wonder how long the Mac mini will stick around

> $2499 (much of which is the SSD)

Where 'much' is approximately 5-10%.

In terms of the retail price. More like 30-35%.

The 1TB SSD is a $800 option on the 128GB base model, and a $600 option on the 256GB model.

The 2TB SSD is an even more eye-watering $1600 option from the base model.

Configuring a mac mini on Apple.com now: +$600 for the 1TB, so, 40%. I'd say it qualifies as "much" :)

I think it refers to the fact that if you configure it on Apple.com, a 2TB SSD adds +$1,600 to the price tag.

Stop using Geekbench for reviews :(

What would you recommend instead?

Why?

Apple’s new strategy seems to be, instead of having products that sell themselves for their clear benefits, just flood either YouTube casuals or Twitter “celebrities” (depending on target segment) with the highest end config machine and expect praise.

Please point me to a succesful hardware company that has ever let their products sell themselves. I simply don't understand what your gripe is. Providing review units for members of the press is completely standard. Every company does it, and Apple has done it always. The only difference is that it is now bloggers and YouTubers customer's look to for buying recommendations, instead of the Walt Mossbergs of yore.

True, I used to go out of my way to find unbiased and honest reviews from "real" people that weren't "seeded" by manufacturers.

The problem is that many others did the same, so these honest reviewers gained followers, that gave them exposure and eventually they get approached by the PR departments which would like to "lend" them top end review samples for an undisclosed amount of time. Well before the press NDA, of course. Lately I find myself buying paper magazines again.

That being said the new Mac Mini does seem like a great product.

Pretty much every computer manufacturer provides review units, and always has. In fact, if anything, Apple's known for being a little on the stingy side here; for some of their product releases only the biggest publications have gotten early review units, whereas some vendors hand them out far more freely.

Can't say there was too much criticism on this review.

That has always been Apple's MO. Ever since their "Think Different" marketing campaign, where they realized they can convince the sheep to follow if they associate with the brightest minds and celebrities (e.g., put an Apple logo next to Einstein, next to an astronaut, etc.) without actually offering a better product.

It's always been a fashion statement to own an Apple product...

What bothers me is how the technical community, both software engineers and academics, have fallen into this trap.

A new Win10 pc is a much better development machine. Sorry, but I do prefer to Think Different and don't care about what is fashionable, but make my choices based on specs, utility and value.

As a side note, it is a good thing that Apple is supporting 16Gbit DDR4 on time and schedule. (this was not always true in the past)

TLDR - Overpriced. Buy something else.

The pricing is a joke.

Refurbised Mac Pro with dual GPUs and SSDs are much better value.

Off topic, but Marco has lost a bunch of weight! Not sure I love the beard though.

A 2500$ windows desktop will give you.

1. A much better discrete GPU which can run titles in 4k.

2. Ability to run games cause windows has DirectX.

3. Ability to run Linux natively using WSL.

4. Expandability - You can add components like more RAM or an additional GPU.

> 3. Ability to run Linux natively using WSL.

But what are you doing in WSL that you can't do on a Mac (or, of course, a Linux machine) without a 'subsystem'?

Sincere question, because the 'Mac is not Linux' things that wind me up tend to require X11 to fix, WSL would be no different.

Yet it doesn't have the one thing someone would care about: macOS.

The review was good but I'm honestly surprised that Marco, of all people, would have such a badly dubbed video. Get Casey Liss to help you, his audio in videos isn't as good as your audio but it matches his voice at least. #AccidentalBadVideoDubbing

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