I bought a previous rev of the Mac Mini in 2014 to use mostly as a media server. It fits in a small media closet. It's quiet. It was relatively inexpensive. It's more than powerful enough to do the job so I have no need to upgrade.
The only goofy thing was that I had to buy a doodad[1] to stick in the HDMI port to get it to switch into certain resolutions even though I'm running it headless. While not a big deal, that seems like kind of a bug.
Overall, I continue to be very happy with the purchase.
I think that use case was a very good one for the Mini, but with the price hike I just don't see why anyone would choose this latest model. You can pick up a HP MicroServer Gen8 for ~$150 or the latest ones for ~$450, and those offer tons more variety on configuration, more storage expansion capacity, and they're extremely easy to maintain (I'm far from a HP fan, but they sure can build a solid server).
No one should have ever bought the $499 Mac Mini before with 4Gb of RAM. The cheapest Mac Mini that anyone should have bought was at least $699 with 8GB of RAM and you still had a slow hard drive.
FWIW, I have a HP Microserver Gen8 with the dual-core Celeron and 16 GB of RAM, including 4 3 TB HDDs I paid about 800 bucks. I have had this machine for three years now, and it has given me no trouble whatsoever. It is quiet, reliable and for my use case, it performs well (I use it as a file server, DHCP and DNS server, plus I run a few low-end VMs on it).
The one thing that was a little annoying is that it does not have UEFI firmware, and the BIOS cannot deal with GPT, so I cannot boot off the HDDs and need an additional USB flash drive for that. Other than that I cannot say a bad thing about it.
I rigged mine to boot off an SSD wedged into the "CD Drive" bay at the top. Cheapy connector to power it off the CD power connector and a SATA cable and it works great. There's an option in the BIOS to swap the disk controller to a dumb version, which works much better for me (I use ZFS anyway so any built-in RAID stuff just gets in the way), and that picks up the SSD and lets you set it as a boot drive.
I might think about rejigging my setup soon to use that SSD as an L2ARC cache and instead boot off a pair of USB sticks. 16GB of RAM max on the Gen8 is a bit of a pain with ZFS, so that might be a sensible evolution before I eventually look to get a newer model :)
I considered that option, but as far as I could find out, that would force the SATA controller in to RAID mode, making it impossible for ZFS (I use ZFS, too) to get at the SMART data from the disks.
My server runs FreeBSD, and I have restricted the ZFS ARC to 8GB, so I have some RAM left for the other stuff, performance has been okay for me. Then again, a) a home network with about half a dozen client devices is not that big a challenge, and b) due to a combination of laziness and stupidity, my home network still is 100MBit, so I do not have to worry about any bottlenecks on the server. ;-)
Ah I've only used one of those unfortunately! I'm sure there must be some other similar models about :D
My Gen8 has an upgraded Xeon E3 in it and runs a ZFS array; works extremely well as a media server, and transcodes very well (works pretty well with the base processor, but for multiple simultaneous streams I opted to upgrade).
I've been debating my next "laptop" purchase actually be a Mac mini. Ie, every day I'd throw it in my backpack, head to work (when I go into office), and plug it in there.
Why? Well, I already do that. I have a MacBook Pro 2017, and I treat it like a MacMini. I don't use it like a laptop. Partially because I have monitor/keyboard setups that I prefer at both work and home, but also because I simply don't trust the laptop to withstand any real usage. The keyboard, mainly. I have two friends with the same laptop, under sane conditions and both have experienced problems (with the keyboard).
So what do I do when I actually need a laptop? I travel with my trusty 2014 (or whatever year it is) MacBook Pro. I love it to death. And when it dies I guess I'll upgrade it. But I've realized I prefer a lesser, small and portable machine for my travel laptop. My "main" work machine is too expensive to feel safe traveling with. My travel laptop is in a separate category.
So when the need occurs, I'm debating hauling a Mac mini between work and home as my daily driver. For travel, it will be a smaller, much more cheap laptop that if I lose/damage I won't be out $3.5k. It just seems to fit my needs better.
On that note, anyone think a Mac mini will survive daily hauls like that? I am concerned that it will be too much movement for a non-laptop. Thoughts?
Just because they're solid state doesn't mean they're not still susceptible to impact and thermal shock between the PCB and components.
Obviously the failure rate won't be anywhere near the same as a spinning disk, but it still is a possibility for a system that was designed to not move.
I've got a Mini right now, i7, 64 G ram (upgraded myself), it's a beast. Light as well, attached a bluetooth monitor for when I'm on the go, no messy cables. It just works. Ditched my MBP 2015 for it, well worth it.
I'm seriously considering asking my employer for a Mac mini next. My iMac is rather old now (2011) and I need an upgrade anyway.
I also have a MacBook Pro 2015. I'm doing lots of Java/JVM languages development including Android from time to time and using Parallels for VMs. The MBPro feels considerable slower to work with than the 2011 iMac.
The big plus of a mini is that, just like you describe it, I can put it in the backpack and bring it with me pretty much anywhere and plug it in. I do travel and work remotely from time to time, so this would be of a benefit to me. Right now I have to always keep my iMac and MBPro in sync and that costs time.
Yeah, I was thinking about that. If you commute to work via public transport and use your MBP on the go then a MM isn't an alternative. However if you travel by car you cannot use the MBP on the go anyway. I currently use an Intel Compute Stick as 'mobile laptop'. There are tons of other (more capable) devices out there which could do the trick however I use it together with a HHKB and an Apple Magic Trackpad 2. Both of which are also usable together with a tablet or smartphone. Monitor-wise I'm roaming, but I've seen some neat 720p and 1080p screens. Even touchscreens.
I can see this working for going between home and office, where you have keyboard/mouse/monitor already setup at each. But for other travel where you don't have that setup at your destination, are you going to lug keyboard/mouse/monitor along with your mini?
Have done that for 3 straight years without a hitch. Yes, you might feel the weight a bit, but the only time I had to carry it was from home to home parking and office parking to cubicle.
For portability (think making presentations in a conf room), I would just have Screen Sharing & Remote access enabled. Worked fine.
I used Carbon Copy Cloner for bootable backups to 2 disks, the second disk being my bootable volume for the Air. When traveling and updating my Air volume, I would just use Chrono Sync to sync my home folders on the mini and the Air.
This was at my earlier workplace, and hope this helps.
I'm in the same boat. I bought a new MBP several months ago and I'd be surprised if I've used the Touch ID or Touchbar more than a dozen times. I don't travel much these days, and I can't seem to focus on work unless I'm at my desk, so my laptop is more or less permanently connected to its power brick, 2 external monitors, and an external keyboard and mouse (which probably explains why I haven't had many qualms about the purportedly bad MBP keyboard).
I think I would've bought the equivalent Mac mini had it been out at the time I got my MBP. Would've saved me about $1,200, while seeming to offer many more ports, more options for self-upgrade, while taking up less desk space. My main hesitation is the lack of discrete GPU, but I suppose that's not much of a concern with the Mac's support for external GPUs.
Unless the Mini has a hibernate mode then it's missing one of the key fundamental reasons to use a laptop instead. Namely, you close the lid then open it again to resume work. A machine that boots from scratch doesn't generally provide that.
This has to be my favourite comment regarding the keyboard debacle.
I hope Apple is not seriously thinking that the laptop market isn't worthwhile because sales are poor. No, sales are poor because people were/are terrified of keyboard issues! Myself included.
Edit: At least you're guaranteed you won't have keyboard issues with the Mac Mini!
Is there some reason you don't just get two Mac minis, one for home and one for work? I used to bring my laptop back and forth between work and home frequently, but now I just have two work laptops, one that lives at work and one that lives at home (and comes with me when I travel). I find it a lot more convenient. Everything is in the cloud these days anyway, so it's not like I need files stored on the local machine.
You're not going to get top spec at all in laptop formfactor if that's what matters to you.
Two decent desktops are each going to be individually more powerful than a good, expensive laptop.
But realistically we're probably not working on a fixed budget. My job is how I get almost all of my income, so I will do whatever is necessary to continue being able to do it. If that means spending more money on another computer so be it -- what that money is buying is less hassle from having to move a computer around twice a day, and reducing risk of forgetting it or not having it at the right place, as well as reducing risk of damage or theft in transit.
I don't pay for these extra computers anyway, though. I simply have two work laptops. The refresh cycle here is two years long, and the first laptop I had was a top spec 15" ~2014 gen Macbook Pro, so it's still way more than adequate. I simply didn't turn it in when I got another laptop two years later, so now I have two -- the powerful Macbook Pro at home, and a lighter Chromebook at the office I carry around and primarily use in meetings (nothing comes close to touching my monster of a workstation in performance anyway).
I guess it depends what you are working with. Some things are just a pain to keep synced, like large files, lots of repos, installed packages, containers, customizations, etc..
For a while I did have an iMac at work, iMac at home and small laptop for whatever. But it was too much hassle.
So use an external HD! A 2.5" usb3 SSD will fit in your pocket. Comes with the added advantage that you save the copy step of transferring files to colleagues.
Additionally depending on OS / hardware similarity at each end you might even be able to make it bootable and carry your toolset everywhere too.
I've tried doing just that, and it's still somewhat inconvenient. There's quite a bit of stuff that resides somewhere in the $HOME dir, from config to application files. I considered symlinking part of it, but then you have the problem that nothing works without the SSD connected.
Partially budget, but partially because I prefer not to have to deal with syncing them. I know there are tools to help, and I also keep all of my configs in a nice dot file setup. It's relatively painless switching to my travel laptop. Nevertheless, I'd still have to change some things. Syncing won't keep app versions in sync, syncing won't keep all my system files in sync. I'd have to work entirely in synced directories, else I miss random files (like ~/Downloads, I'd have to sync that, or perhaps miss a download one day at work), etc.
It's something I do semi frequently currently and it's totally do-able, but there's enough friction that I'd rather not ever worry about it. Hell, I'd rather not have a travel laptop either, but as mentioned I don't want my high end machine to be taken with me.
I did this for a while and found it fine. I did keep 2 verions of all the necessary cords at each destination though.
One benefit of the mac-mini is that monitors usually outlast hardware. Think of how many laptop/iMac screens still look amazing, and amazing you paid for, but have to be ditched with the rest of the machine because the screens is so tightly integrated with the rest of the hardware.
Most monitors don't have to cool the heat from an entire computer so it's probably not surprising that the iMac display has more thermal issues than regular displays.
I have a 2016 13” MBP for work. I love it. But, when I plug it into my external 4K monitor at home and scale the resolution down a notch, the whole thing slows down to a grind. I also have a Mac Mini (2016) at work and contemplating bringing it home to use with the 4K. Giving somewhat the same spec between the 2 I doubt it makes any difference though.
Do you guys have any slowdown experience when hooking up a MBP to a 4K monitor in scale-down mode?
The older plastic Mac mini fit into a camera case I had perfectly. Looking at the new dimensions, I think I can find a case. I too have a setup at home and work, and am considering using the Mac mini in this manner. My MacBook Pro has a bad keyboard, and I don't use the computer on my commute.
>anyone think a Mac mini will survive daily hauls like that? I am concerned that it will be too much movement for a non-laptop.
It will survive. I've hauled my 2011 mini between my home and my girlfriend's home on approx 200 round trips. Sometimes I hike the distance; usually I take 2 buses.
At first I'd haul it in the very-high-quality white cardboard box it came in but a year or 2 ago I stopped bothering. Since then my only precaution has been to try to remember to put the mini in my travel bag with the "holes" (ports) up so that cruft from the bottom of the bag won't work its way inside the mini.
My model of the mini uses laptop components. If Apple has changed that in the new model, then my experience might not apply to you.
Interestingly, it never bothered me that the mini is about an inch thick. I'd rather it weigh a few oz less than it be as thin as a Macbook or an iPad.
If you have an SSD, the only moving parts would be the fan, and that's replaceable. It's largely laptop-style components anyway. It should be more durable than a laptop (hinge, keyboard, display, and trackpad are laptop failure points).
If you remove the hyperbole here, i think a bunch of the author's points are probably right:
IE
"Need a Mac because you're wanting to explore iOS development? Get the Mac mini and continue to use the keyboard/mouse/display that you've already got on your desk. It's no longer the affordable way into the macOS environment that it once was, but it's the best thing Apple really has to offer."
"Apple's refusal to build, y'know, a regular desktop computer means that the mini often ends up being the best option if you really are committed to using macOS."
etc
I've own/owned 5 or 6 mac mini's at this point (including the 2018)
At this point, i buy them to shove them in a closet somewhere.
Size is not a factor in that.
It's big enough at this point (compared to NUC's, etc) that it has no meaningful size advantage.
As a server, you'd want some different tradeoffs.
As a desktop, the only reason you'd use it is, as the author says - you don't have a lot of options in what you can use for MacOS and this checks some boxes the other option doesn't.
It'll probably be the last computer i buy from apple to set up for others - MacOS isn't as bulletproof as it used to be.
For the second time, I had to debug obscure apple bugs for my parents over thanksgiving - which is why i set them up with a mac mini in the first place - to stop having to deal with this on windows or linux.
I have a few Windows 10 machines around, for example, the one that controls my CNC machine, and the one i use for CAD.
So far, zero issues, which is "better than it used to be".
I'll try it for the family and see what happens.
In the past, my dad used to set up Linux server machines for my Mom, which is what was there pre-mac-mini (he's a long time software engineer).
They were just so finicky in practice (IE audio on webcam would stop working so she could never be sure a video chat she started would actually work, etc)
That did not last all that long. My mom started to avoid that desktop like the plague, so it ended up with Dad running Linux and Mom running Windows.
If you can swallow the privacy concerns, Chromebooks/Chrometops seem to be remarkably reliable and 'just work.'
My main experience with them is in Google Hangouts through a 3rd party (Promevo), and the only troubleshooting I've had to do required a total system refresh, which the box itself found it's own OS was corrupted, re-installed from a remote source, and then after a quick 10-min setup was right back to where it was the second it broke.
I would probably not use one personally, but for family computing they seem a right treat.
You haven't appreciated MacOS until your entire family has hosed windows 10 laptops that they've been saving up to bring around so you can fix them at Christmas...
I have no use for a personal laptop. Every job provides a laptop for work and for my personal non developer work, my iPad suffices.
I’m always using a multiple monitor setup anyway and the Mac Mini supports three. I don’t need large internal storage, I can always add external hard drives.
I have a personal laptop that doesn't see much use (though I am using it right now, coincidentally). However, whenever I'm working on non-work projects, I use the personal machine to ensure that there's no question of copyright ownership.
That’s what I am saying. My work laptop moves between two places - my job with a dual monitor setup and my favorite Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and my home office with a dual monitor setup and a separate set of the keyboard and mouse.
So why buy a more expensive, less capable laptop that will only be used in one spot at home for my personal use instead of just buying the Mac Mini?
Second question is usually why not just buy a cheaper PC? I’m slowly moving away from the Microsoft Windows ecosystem - but I still will be using some .Net Core - and the macOS is real certified Unix that just works.
I think the form factor is great. The argument that there is no room for a dedicated GPU is imo simply false. If a mobile VEGA fits in a MBP it will fit in a Mac Mini chassi. Apple decided against it, for whatever reason and that is the only problem I have with this machine.
Physically having room for the chip and having enough space that you can actually run it without running into thermal issues are different things. Laptops have a bigger surface area to get rid of the heat but thermals are still a challenge for laptop design. I don't know for sure that Apple couldn't have pulled it off but the issue is not just physically having space to cram the chip in, it's being able to run it cool enough.
I think they really made this for companies with 100s or 1000s on shelves, a better GPU wouldn't be useful but the lowest-power GPU and keeping the old case sure would.
the author complains that the mac mini has no power brick - why not just have a power brick? he says. but he complains that an external GPU is a dumb idea?
this guy didn't like apple and his review simply reflects his emotion, nothing more.
A power brick is sort of like a real brick - a big chunk of plastic which should be out of sight/mind and can be placed just about anywhere, as most people tend to do, often on the floor/behind the desk, etc... generally communing amongst other forgotten cables and dustbunny colonies.
External GPUs + enclosures are larger and more expensive than power bricks and therefore are probably best kept somewhere relatively safe, especially while connected to a tiny Thunderbolt port - I've personally seen plenty of bent/broken USB/FW ports due to cable management "issues" among friends/acquaintances/colleagues.
No power brick is a huge plus to me. It’s one of the reasons my entertainment center has a 2014 Mini hooked up to it and not a NUC or something like that.
He commends it for managing to not have a power brick, despite its small size. He then criticizes the small size (not the power brick, at least as I'm interpreting it), saying that most users wouldn't mind it being much larger if it meant better specs.
Right. My take is "hey, good engineering to not need a power brick. But to what end? What's the practical purpose of this engineering? Why not just make the system bigger?"
I'm struggling what to get, I largely need a Mac just to test Safari against web-sites I develop, and while you can do that on an iPad, the lack of a real browser development console makes tracking down JS bugs a nightmare (and, yes, I've seen the hacky iFrame websites that "add" a developer console to iPad, it isn't good enough).
So that leaves me with a Mac Mini, Macbook, Macbook Air, or one of those services which claims they can do virtual Safari testing (but I'm unclear how that would work on localhost/internal sites). Is there any real advantage to the Mac Mini aside from slightly more power and ports? For the same money a Macbook/Air comes with its own screen, keyboard, and mouse.
I can't imagine that Windows Safari usage rates were very good. According to the last 90 days of federal website analytics [0], Safari was used by 28.9% of users (Chrome and IE are 46.6% and 10.5%, respectively). But only 14% of Safari visits were from MacOS -- i.e. 4% of all browsers.
FWIW, Browserstack does a pretty good job of testing limited-access sites – traffic appears to be routed back through your local machine when using the Chrome extension, so everything works as expected.
I'd say it's pretty good if you're doing basic functionality checks, but it's ultimately not as nice as having the real thing, especially not if you're trying to debug anything graphically intensive etc.
Get a secondhand Mac mini cheap. Then you can use the iPad to test Safari, and open the dev tools (for the iPad instance) in Safari on the Mac mini. The ability to remotely debug iOS Safari is a really nice feature of Mac Safari.
If portability and usage off the power grid doesn't matter to you, the mac mini is the preferred choice as you get a vastly more powerful computer, in comparable configurations at a cheaper price. Especially if you would use an external screen/keyboard/mouse with your laptop anyway.
The entry level laptop at Apple now is the MacBook Air, which gives you a dual-core CPU and up to 16gig of memory. The mini starts at 4 cores, goes up to 6 and up to 64g. And it has a ton of ports. It doesn't have a keyboard which might be expensive to repair, no battery that can fail, much less likely to fail from overheating than a laptop.
It's indeed annoying that there's a bit of a gap in Apple's product range for a high-end-but-not-excessive machine. I'd go right ahead and buy a higher-end Apple desktop machine, with enthusiast-level components, and the ability to bump the memory, storage, and GPU up myself at a later date. I don't need a tiny enclosure or dual GPUs or built-in screens, so the Mac Pro and iMac Pro are not cost-effective products. I really do miss the old Mac Pro, which fitted this use-case perfectly.
I'm genuinely pretty surprised there's not a market for that kind of thing among software developers in particular.
When I was only 15 years old, I'd received an inheritance from the passing of a relative to the tune of $2000 USD.
I was living with my Father at the time, who worked for Microsoft in networking (he now works at Azure), and he had nurtured my interest in programming from the age of 8 or 9.
He agreed we could put half aside for my college fund, and I could use half to buy or build a new computer, among some other niceties.
So I basically had an $800 USD budget for a computer, including any RAM or HDD upgrades I wanted to do, or any extra peripherals I wanted.
I had a vast interest in moving away from Windows, and a continued interest in audio production/recording already - I fell in love with the original iMac G4, and, while it was definitely out of my price range, being an all-in-one starting at, I think, $1,199 - but all I wanted was to make music with GarageBand, movies with iMovie, and try to explore MacOS and learn about xCode and Objective-C.
So, at $499, the original 1.42ghz G4 Mac Mini was, for me, as a high school student - who literally would've had to save months for it had they not been so lucky - well, it might has well have been a Lamborghini to a 15-year-old.
But, I was fortunate, and, given my desire to explore in the Apple ecosystem, I was willing to invest in what my Father thought was a very underpowered machine for the money.
What makes me sad is that today, that same 15-year-old kid could not have walk into that store and have the same experience.
Today, I'm a professional iOS developer at a major bank, when I'm not running an independent music label with artists that exclusively run on Logic Pro X systems that I configure for them, so collaboration is seamless. Everyone loves them.
But I exclusively use 2010-2013 MacBook Pro hardware for my artists that I purchase, upgrade, shove an SSD and the most RAM I can in them and often experience better performance, or at the very least certainly a more enjoyable experience, than the 2017 15" Touch Bar Macbook Pro I'm 'typing' on right now.
(While I was writing this post, I accidentally brushed the lock screen button and was temporarily locked out.)
The Mac Mini was a very important and crucial product in their product line. Something at least reasonably affordable. Something you could basically justify with, well, hey, it's got a $100-200 Apple Tax on it, but at the end of the day, it's still something affordable for education and low-income markets who may otherwise simply need to turn to other hardware.
The $999 MacBook/Air was also a crucial piece of hardware in this position.
tl;dr: an increase of price of this magnitude would've probably have robbed me of my future career of an iOS developer if it'd happened to me when I was younger.
The best equivalent today is probably the older model MacBook Air (still in Apple's official line up) - new for 800 euros is the lowest Black Friday price around here.
Completely agree, as someone who learned iOS development nearly a decade ago on a $499 Mac Mini. Apple's further crawl into upmarket is leaving devs behind.
Error-correcting code. They're referring to ECC memory, which is more reliable to bit flips than normal memory, useful in cases when sensitive tasks can't afford an unexpected bit flip.
The smartphone market is saturated, the tablet market is saturated, the laptop market is saturated, the desktop market is almost dead and Apple doesn't have (a lot of) users in the workstation market.
So why put a lot of effort in designing new products every year?
What we now see is that Apple is focusing on people with money and on paid services.
And it works. They won't tell you how many iPhones they sold but the profit will be huge.
Of course it’s clear. It’s no great conspiracy. Apple has been emphasizing their service revenue growth for years and they said they are emphasizing making their products last longer. iOS 12 is compatible with the 2013 iPhone 5.
At this point, someone should just make a Space Grey Mac Mini Casing, with 1 or 2 NVMe housing on the side, along with 7nm Radeon Vega. Stack them up and connect the two via Thunderbolt, upgrade the Mac Mini yourself with 64GB Memory. Done!. Apart from the CPU limited to 6 Core, I think this is about as close to "Mac" as most people want.
The only problem is I am not sure about the performance penalty of eGPU, may be two Thunderbolt connection instead of one will help?
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 278 ms ] threadThe only goofy thing was that I had to buy a doodad[1] to stick in the HDMI port to get it to switch into certain resolutions even though I'm running it headless. While not a big deal, that seems like kind of a bug.
Overall, I continue to be very happy with the purchase.
1. https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425
The one thing that was a little annoying is that it does not have UEFI firmware, and the BIOS cannot deal with GPT, so I cannot boot off the HDDs and need an additional USB flash drive for that. Other than that I cannot say a bad thing about it.
I might think about rejigging my setup soon to use that SSD as an L2ARC cache and instead boot off a pair of USB sticks. 16GB of RAM max on the Gen8 is a bit of a pain with ZFS, so that might be a sensible evolution before I eventually look to get a newer model :)
My server runs FreeBSD, and I have restricted the ZFS ARC to 8GB, so I have some RAM left for the other stuff, performance has been okay for me. Then again, a) a home network with about half a dozen client devices is not that big a challenge, and b) due to a combination of laziness and stupidity, my home network still is 100MBit, so I do not have to worry about any bottlenecks on the server. ;-)
My Gen8 has an upgraded Xeon E3 in it and runs a ZFS array; works extremely well as a media server, and transcodes very well (works pretty well with the base processor, but for multiple simultaneous streams I opted to upgrade).
Why? Well, I already do that. I have a MacBook Pro 2017, and I treat it like a MacMini. I don't use it like a laptop. Partially because I have monitor/keyboard setups that I prefer at both work and home, but also because I simply don't trust the laptop to withstand any real usage. The keyboard, mainly. I have two friends with the same laptop, under sane conditions and both have experienced problems (with the keyboard).
So what do I do when I actually need a laptop? I travel with my trusty 2014 (or whatever year it is) MacBook Pro. I love it to death. And when it dies I guess I'll upgrade it. But I've realized I prefer a lesser, small and portable machine for my travel laptop. My "main" work machine is too expensive to feel safe traveling with. My travel laptop is in a separate category.
So when the need occurs, I'm debating hauling a Mac mini between work and home as my daily driver. For travel, it will be a smaller, much more cheap laptop that if I lose/damage I won't be out $3.5k. It just seems to fit my needs better.
On that note, anyone think a Mac mini will survive daily hauls like that? I am concerned that it will be too much movement for a non-laptop. Thoughts?
I'd look into protective bags for DJ gear: some of that has similar sizes and should make a good equivalent to a laptop sleeve.
The storage is but the mini still has moving parts, a fan. Still, I wouldn’t worry much about transporting it daily.
What product is that?
I bought 32 for the one we ordered and will wait on moving it to 64.
I also have a MacBook Pro 2015. I'm doing lots of Java/JVM languages development including Android from time to time and using Parallels for VMs. The MBPro feels considerable slower to work with than the 2011 iMac.
The big plus of a mini is that, just like you describe it, I can put it in the backpack and bring it with me pretty much anywhere and plug it in. I do travel and work remotely from time to time, so this would be of a benefit to me. Right now I have to always keep my iMac and MBPro in sync and that costs time.
To be fair, Apple's hardware seemed a lot more solid back then.
Have done that for 3 straight years without a hitch. Yes, you might feel the weight a bit, but the only time I had to carry it was from home to home parking and office parking to cubicle.
For portability (think making presentations in a conf room), I would just have Screen Sharing & Remote access enabled. Worked fine.
I used Carbon Copy Cloner for bootable backups to 2 disks, the second disk being my bootable volume for the Air. When traveling and updating my Air volume, I would just use Chrono Sync to sync my home folders on the mini and the Air.
This was at my earlier workplace, and hope this helps.
I think I would've bought the equivalent Mac mini had it been out at the time I got my MBP. Would've saved me about $1,200, while seeming to offer many more ports, more options for self-upgrade, while taking up less desk space. My main hesitation is the lack of discrete GPU, but I suppose that's not much of a concern with the Mac's support for external GPUs.
Have you personally used hibernate mode more than a few times?
(I ask because if you have, then I'm willing to try it on my mini.)
I hope Apple is not seriously thinking that the laptop market isn't worthwhile because sales are poor. No, sales are poor because people were/are terrified of keyboard issues! Myself included.
Edit: At least you're guaranteed you won't have keyboard issues with the Mac Mini!
Two decent desktops are each going to be individually more powerful than a good, expensive laptop.
But realistically we're probably not working on a fixed budget. My job is how I get almost all of my income, so I will do whatever is necessary to continue being able to do it. If that means spending more money on another computer so be it -- what that money is buying is less hassle from having to move a computer around twice a day, and reducing risk of forgetting it or not having it at the right place, as well as reducing risk of damage or theft in transit.
I don't pay for these extra computers anyway, though. I simply have two work laptops. The refresh cycle here is two years long, and the first laptop I had was a top spec 15" ~2014 gen Macbook Pro, so it's still way more than adequate. I simply didn't turn it in when I got another laptop two years later, so now I have two -- the powerful Macbook Pro at home, and a lighter Chromebook at the office I carry around and primarily use in meetings (nothing comes close to touching my monster of a workstation in performance anyway).
For a while I did have an iMac at work, iMac at home and small laptop for whatever. But it was too much hassle.
Additionally depending on OS / hardware similarity at each end you might even be able to make it bootable and carry your toolset everywhere too.
It's something I do semi frequently currently and it's totally do-able, but there's enough friction that I'd rather not ever worry about it. Hell, I'd rather not have a travel laptop either, but as mentioned I don't want my high end machine to be taken with me.
One benefit of the mac-mini is that monitors usually outlast hardware. Think of how many laptop/iMac screens still look amazing, and amazing you paid for, but have to be ditched with the rest of the machine because the screens is so tightly integrated with the rest of the hardware.
The external Dell ultrasharp bought at the same time is still in use daily. (but now it's not as pretty on Mojave as it was on High Sierra)
It will survive. I've hauled my 2011 mini between my home and my girlfriend's home on approx 200 round trips. Sometimes I hike the distance; usually I take 2 buses.
At first I'd haul it in the very-high-quality white cardboard box it came in but a year or 2 ago I stopped bothering. Since then my only precaution has been to try to remember to put the mini in my travel bag with the "holes" (ports) up so that cruft from the bottom of the bag won't work its way inside the mini.
My model of the mini uses laptop components. If Apple has changed that in the new model, then my experience might not apply to you.
Interestingly, it never bothered me that the mini is about an inch thick. I'd rather it weigh a few oz less than it be as thin as a Macbook or an iPad.
1tb SSD upgrade + dual 8gm ramses and its currently my favorite machine VS a tricked out windows box, 2014 mbp and the shitpile of 2014 minis I have.
IE
"Need a Mac because you're wanting to explore iOS development? Get the Mac mini and continue to use the keyboard/mouse/display that you've already got on your desk. It's no longer the affordable way into the macOS environment that it once was, but it's the best thing Apple really has to offer."
"Apple's refusal to build, y'know, a regular desktop computer means that the mini often ends up being the best option if you really are committed to using macOS."
etc
I've own/owned 5 or 6 mac mini's at this point (including the 2018)
At this point, i buy them to shove them in a closet somewhere. Size is not a factor in that.
It's big enough at this point (compared to NUC's, etc) that it has no meaningful size advantage.
As a server, you'd want some different tradeoffs. As a desktop, the only reason you'd use it is, as the author says - you don't have a lot of options in what you can use for MacOS and this checks some boxes the other option doesn't.
It'll probably be the last computer i buy from apple to set up for others - MacOS isn't as bulletproof as it used to be.
For the second time, I had to debug obscure apple bugs for my parents over thanksgiving - which is why i set them up with a mac mini in the first place - to stop having to deal with this on windows or linux.
What have you moved on to if I can ask? Windows 10?
I have a few Windows 10 machines around, for example, the one that controls my CNC machine, and the one i use for CAD.
So far, zero issues, which is "better than it used to be".
I'll try it for the family and see what happens.
In the past, my dad used to set up Linux server machines for my Mom, which is what was there pre-mac-mini (he's a long time software engineer). They were just so finicky in practice (IE audio on webcam would stop working so she could never be sure a video chat she started would actually work, etc)
That did not last all that long. My mom started to avoid that desktop like the plague, so it ended up with Dad running Linux and Mom running Windows.
My main experience with them is in Google Hangouts through a 3rd party (Promevo), and the only troubleshooting I've had to do required a total system refresh, which the box itself found it's own OS was corrupted, re-installed from a remote source, and then after a quick 10-min setup was right back to where it was the second it broke.
I would probably not use one personally, but for family computing they seem a right treat.
The world in fact, may still suck elsewhere, but MacOS is no longer so good that i'll avoid trying. It used to be.
Problem? Apple store mate. Go ask there.
I’m always using a multiple monitor setup anyway and the Mac Mini supports three. I don’t need large internal storage, I can always add external hard drives.
So why buy a more expensive, less capable laptop that will only be used in one spot at home for my personal use instead of just buying the Mac Mini?
Second question is usually why not just buy a cheaper PC? I’m slowly moving away from the Microsoft Windows ecosystem - but I still will be using some .Net Core - and the macOS is real certified Unix that just works.
Thunderbolt is PCI express.
http://thesweetsetup.com.s3.amazonaws.com/img/sponsors/2013-...
this guy didn't like apple and his review simply reflects his emotion, nothing more.
External GPUs + enclosures are larger and more expensive than power bricks and therefore are probably best kept somewhere relatively safe, especially while connected to a tiny Thunderbolt port - I've personally seen plenty of bent/broken USB/FW ports due to cable management "issues" among friends/acquaintances/colleagues.
So that leaves me with a Mac Mini, Macbook, Macbook Air, or one of those services which claims they can do virtual Safari testing (but I'm unclear how that would work on localhost/internal sites). Is there any real advantage to the Mac Mini aside from slightly more power and ports? For the same money a Macbook/Air comes with its own screen, keyboard, and mouse.
0: https://analytics.usa.gov/
I'd say it's pretty good if you're doing basic functionality checks, but it's ultimately not as nice as having the real thing, especially not if you're trying to debug anything graphically intensive etc.
I'm genuinely pretty surprised there's not a market for that kind of thing among software developers in particular.
I was living with my Father at the time, who worked for Microsoft in networking (he now works at Azure), and he had nurtured my interest in programming from the age of 8 or 9.
He agreed we could put half aside for my college fund, and I could use half to buy or build a new computer, among some other niceties.
So I basically had an $800 USD budget for a computer, including any RAM or HDD upgrades I wanted to do, or any extra peripherals I wanted.
I had a vast interest in moving away from Windows, and a continued interest in audio production/recording already - I fell in love with the original iMac G4, and, while it was definitely out of my price range, being an all-in-one starting at, I think, $1,199 - but all I wanted was to make music with GarageBand, movies with iMovie, and try to explore MacOS and learn about xCode and Objective-C.
So, at $499, the original 1.42ghz G4 Mac Mini was, for me, as a high school student - who literally would've had to save months for it had they not been so lucky - well, it might has well have been a Lamborghini to a 15-year-old.
But, I was fortunate, and, given my desire to explore in the Apple ecosystem, I was willing to invest in what my Father thought was a very underpowered machine for the money.
What makes me sad is that today, that same 15-year-old kid could not have walk into that store and have the same experience.
Today, I'm a professional iOS developer at a major bank, when I'm not running an independent music label with artists that exclusively run on Logic Pro X systems that I configure for them, so collaboration is seamless. Everyone loves them.
But I exclusively use 2010-2013 MacBook Pro hardware for my artists that I purchase, upgrade, shove an SSD and the most RAM I can in them and often experience better performance, or at the very least certainly a more enjoyable experience, than the 2017 15" Touch Bar Macbook Pro I'm 'typing' on right now. (While I was writing this post, I accidentally brushed the lock screen button and was temporarily locked out.)
The Mac Mini was a very important and crucial product in their product line. Something at least reasonably affordable. Something you could basically justify with, well, hey, it's got a $100-200 Apple Tax on it, but at the end of the day, it's still something affordable for education and low-income markets who may otherwise simply need to turn to other hardware.
The $999 MacBook/Air was also a crucial piece of hardware in this position.
tl;dr: an increase of price of this magnitude would've probably have robbed me of my future career of an iOS developer if it'd happened to me when I was younger.
What does ECC refer to?
The smartphone market is saturated, the tablet market is saturated, the laptop market is saturated, the desktop market is almost dead and Apple doesn't have (a lot of) users in the workstation market.
So why put a lot of effort in designing new products every year?
What we now see is that Apple is focusing on people with money and on paid services.
And it works. They won't tell you how many iPhones they sold but the profit will be huge.
The only problem is I am not sure about the performance penalty of eGPU, may be two Thunderbolt connection instead of one will help?