
Mac mini - tosh
https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/
======
tabs_masterrace
Still no real GPU.

It's the reason I went back to a MacBook. What drew me in is the desktop class
i7. At the time the Mini outperformed all other Macs in benchmarks, and it is
noticeable and fast during compile times etc.

Once you connect a 4k Screen (or even more screens), an eGPU becomes a must
have. The integrated one just can't do smooth UI rendering. For example typing
in IntelliJ always felt laggy, because it takes so long to redraw I guess. Or
things like Google Maps on satellite view in a big browser window will stutter
a lot. All the subtle macOS animations aren't smooth and so on.

Bothered me so much I had to sell it. Was thinking about keeping it as media
center for the TV, but again, no GPU makes it less then ideal, and its way too
powerful for the job otherwise.

~~~
everdrive
Mac Mini doesn't need a real GPU in my opinion -- what they need is a mid-
level desktop that accepts a real GPU. $1000 - $1500 with decent specs. But,
we know they won't move into that space.

~~~
PascLeRasc
You can get a new Mac Mini and a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU for $1500 or less.

~~~
all_usernames
Thanks, I had no idea eGPUs were a thing!

~~~
askafriend
That's the whole premise of the Mac Mini.

It's the only non-Pro designated Mac that has _four_ Thunderbolt 3 ports. I
don't think you'd find this level of I/O in any other machine in this price
range.

That incredibly powerful I/O makes for tons of expansion possibilities.
Storage, GPU, etc.

(Edited to say "non-Pro designated")

~~~
olyjohn
Not all Thunderbolt 3 ports are the same. Good chance that two ports are
sharing a single PCIe 3.0 4x controller. Since PCIe 3.0 is good for
~7.8Gb/sec/lane, you're looking at two 40Gb/sec Thunderbolt ports sharing
about 31Gb/sec of bandwidth on the PCIe bus. Okay, probably not that big of a
deal really.

The point being that a "Pro" system might have 4 individual Thunderbolt
controllers, each getting their own 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes.

I think that's why the specs say "Up to 40GB/sec" on the page. It sadly
doesn't say which controller it has... But I guess my whole point is really
moot in practicality. Good luck saturating that much bandwidth.

~~~
askafriend
Mac mini, iMac Pro, and Macbook Pro all have two Thunderbolt 3 controllers.

The Mac Pro starts with two controllers but can be configured up to six.

The I/O is actually pretty good and provides for a ton of headroom for
expansion down the line (I'm thinking primarily storage and GPU for my use-
case).

I can see a pretty high powered eGPU saturating the lanes.

------
whalesalad
Still got my fingers crossed for a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac Pro and
isn’t a Mac Mini.

Would love iMac Pro firepower without being tied to a set display.

I’ve been alive 30 years. A good portion of that was growing up as a PC user,
overclocker, teenage hacker, etc. My professional career however has been on
Unix and MacOS, and as much as I try to get back to _desktop_ Linux and open
source OS’s I just find them to be so brittle and hacked together.

I tried to daily drive Linux and just couldn't do it, and I am not a newb to
Linux either. I got my feet wet on SuSE (Kernel 2.4!), and then saw the light
of Debian and Ubuntu and have used that primarily since. Remember when you
could order free install CD's for Ubuntu? There were copies of Warty Warthog
all over my high school. I have installed arch by hand, btw. I’ve used Fedora
and RHEL and CentOS and Slackware! Gnome and KDE and XFCE. Remember Compiz? It
isn’t the desktop environments. It isn’t the distributions. It’s just the
unavoidable consequence of an entire ecosystem of desktop Linux being designed
by committee.

So I’ve accepted I’ll be on macOS for a long time to come (not unlike DHH -
[https://m.signalvnoise.com/back-to-windows-after-twenty-
year...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/back-to-windows-after-twenty-years/)) and
have started to seriously consider building a hackintosh. But when your time
is billed hourly and you have a half dozen clients, time is money and the
novelty of a Ryzen-powered hate tank hackintosh for my professional work is
starting to look less realistic.

So how about a Diet® Pro for those of us who want something that isn’t a
laptop in a big AppleTV chassis and isn’t a desktop in a monitor chassis.

~~~
mceachen
Installing and applying security updates on a Linux desktop is fairly
automatic and uneventful.

Keeping a hackintosh updated (for even stuff like graphics card drivers) turns
out to be a lot of time doing research, scrolling through endless forum posts,
and bricking your install quarterly because you "did the wrong thing" (like
absent-mindedly accepting a security update notification).

Yes, you can get it running. But macOS is buggy enough as it is, and is
decidedly not-pleasant if you're relying on it as a daily driver and you just
can't fix the Bluetooth mouse disconnecting after sleep unless you reboot, or
the USB bridge not enabling after suspend, or the diaplayports deciding to not
send signal if there are multiple monitors (fixed in the new GPU driver, but
that driver requires the OS upgrade you can't apply due to other show-stipping
bugs). You shouldn't be relieved every time you step up to your desk that your
computer can turn on.

(FWIW: this was ~> year ago, on a machine built with the "best compatability
with hackintosh" parts list. The landscape with T2 is most likely less
comfortable).

~~~
dr_kiszonka
Is there a Linux distribution that fully supports the desktop version of
Office 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)? I would love to migrate to Linux, but
need Office to work on papers and presentations with the rest of my lab.
LibreOffice doesn't cut it. I tried Wine in the past and it was too buggy.

~~~
rblatz
I’m pretty shocked you haven’t moved to either office 365 or google
docs/sheets

~~~
dr_kiszonka
Popular reference managers, e.g., Mendeley, EndNote, don't support them.

------
rvz
The Mac Minis are still expensive and underwhelming (even when maxed out) when
compared with the top of the range NUCs with even AMD GPUs. The Skull and
Ghost Canyon NUCs are great for Linux CIs or building large projects or I
could even go far to either Hackintosh a few NUCs to surpass the need to buy a
Mac Mini anyway for next 5 years.

Thanks, but I would skip this Mac Mini and go for the latest maxed out NUC
instead.

~~~
Juliate
Are Hackintosh a practical reality? (genuine question)

~~~
mstolpm
They are, but I would only use one as a second device besides a real Mac.
Setup and updates are relatively painless if you choose the right hardware and
store additional kexts not on the system OS partition but the EFI boot
partition.

Biggest troubles are WIFI and Bluetooth (and therefore continuity, needs one
of a few selected cards), graphics (no nVidia) and keyboard and trackpad (for
desktops, use used Apple peripherals) as well as sound in some configurations
(might use a Bluetooth speaker if BT works).

It always can happen that you mess up (or need access to a real Mac for
downloading the OS in the first place), so have a Backup and wait a few days
after system updates appear, read forums about possible showstoppers and
necessary precautions. That said, Catalina is still not perfect and troubles
may not be caused by the hackintosh but the OS.

~~~
_red
>Setup and updates are relatively painless if you choose the right hardware

Agreed. But this is where "I'll pay an extra $200 to not have to worry about
that" comes into the equation

~~~
Hamuko
I wish I could've bought my desktop tower from Apple for mere $200 extra.

------
cjensen
I don't understand Apple's aversion to accessible DIMM slots and off-the-shelf
M.2 SSDs.

It used to be that Apple charged a lot for RAM and Storage, but you could save
a bundle by bringing your own. For example, my 2012 i7 Mac mini has maxed
memory and a 2TB SSD. When Apple began soldering stuff in, they failed to
reduce their punitive prices on expansion, which really hurts reusability and
resale value. In other words, they are far less green than they could be since
they must now be disposed of earlier.

~~~
oneplane
Like any manufacturer, they are trying to bring down the amount of breakage,
and removing electrical connectors and mechanical connections is one way to do
that. And when you want things to be smaller you don't really have much of a
choice anyway.

At the same time, the only reason those slots were there in the first place
was so that a manufacturer could build one main board and then offer different
configurations by just swapping out some elements. That benefit no longer
holds since you can do the same on a single PCB and still offer the same
options. The side-effect of users being able to change it after the fact is
lost, but when it wasn't a selling point for the manufacturer anyway it
doesn't seem to matter to them.

While not ideal for every user, the mass market doesn't really care. They will
probably never upgrade a machine in their lifetime and simply 'upgrade' to a
different machine instead.

~~~
slivanes
If we're being really honest, it is for profit margins and planned
obsolescence.

~~~
oneplane
The electrical and structural design do account for marginal BOM costs but are
hardly useful for some evil obsolescence plan. If only because nobody actually
'upgrades' their systems anymore. The mass market hasn't done that for 10+
years.

People often claim a ton of things but then actually don't have any background
in the industry (either the engineering side or the high level planning side).
Apply Hanlon's Razor instead of making everything that doesn't suit your
context automatically be some evil plan.

Of course a company that stands to make a ton of money with a choice between
to options that only marginally affect users will choose the ton of money
option. It's just that in this case there is no ton of money.

------
chvid
So much naysaying here. The Mac Minis are excellent for certain use cases
(like a home server) and they last forever. Great that Apple is updating them
regularly.

~~~
omni
Intel NUCs are even better for home server use cases. Similar form factor,
much cheaper, and you can put your own memory and storage in them. Just built
my own last week and it idles at 5W, it's great.

~~~
chvid
There is no Mac OS X and Apple's service/warranty.

Also if you try to match the boxes spec by spec; the Mini are usually not that
much more.

~~~
omni
What sort of home server use cases do people need OS X for? The only thing I
could think of is running an Xcode build server but that seems quite niche.

~~~
wtracy
It appears that an OS X server can take any compatible printer and expose it
to the network as a generic PostScript printer. Clients on the network only
need to support PostScript, and the server handles everything device-specific.

I've been tempted to buy a Mac for that alone. If there's any similar options
for Linux, I would be very interested.

------
jagger27
Only up to 6-core 8th generation CPUs, and it looks like the base 6-core SKU
is the i5-8500, which doesn’t have Hyperthreading. Ouch.

It’s such a shame that’s the best Intel can do in that thermal envelope.

AMD is about to ship Ryzen 4000 mobile chips with lower TDP, great integrated
graphics, higher clock speeds and more cores. It would have worked fine in the
Mac mini. Imagine how good the desktop APUs will be when those come out.

~~~
phkahler
>> Imagine how good the desktop APUs will be when those come out.

I'm starting to think there won't be any more desktop APUs. The next logical
step would be an 8 core CPU with better GPU than the 3400G. That would be good
enough desktop for a huge swath of the market and might kill sales of higher
end chips.

I use a 2400G for software development. It's the fastest cpu I've ever owned.
It runs a 4k desktop, 4k video, or 4k gaming (old stuff I'm not a "gamer")
without even running the fan loudly.

The main thing I want is AV1 decode on the GPU.

~~~
hajile
I'd love to see a 4800G chip with 8 cores, 20-30 CUs, and 16/32GB onboard HBM2
unified memory in the $400/600 range (depending on RAM).

~~~
phkahler
>> I'd love to see a 4800G chip with 8 cores, 20-30 CUs, and 16/32GB onboard
HBM2 unified memory in the $400/600 range (depending on RAM).

It will more likely have only 8 CUs like the laptop chips but with a higher
TDP (65W?) and clock. OTOH probably only $200ish. Still a killer desktop
value.

------
PedroBatista
$800 for an quad-core i3 with 8GB, 256GB and the lovely T2 chip.

Business as usual for Apple...

In recent years they became an Intel but without an AMD in sight, they do it
because they can.

------
teilo
This was originally posted with an (updated) suffix in the title. The Mac Mini
has not really been updated. All they did was adjust the storage tiering.
Minimum is now 256G. So this amounts to a price drop.

~~~
webmobdev
> Minimum is now 256G. So this amounts to a price drop.

Looks like Apple didn't learn its lesson with the Mac Mini 2014 that had
soldered everything and was a FLOP. The later versions reverted to upgradeable
RAM again, but soldered SSD.

And that is why these Mac Mini aren't selling as expected - because users want
upgradeable computers. And aren't as much of a fool as Apple believes to pay
the insane high prices Apple charges for its soldered SSD in these devices.

------
hart_russell
8th gen intel? You gotta be kidding me with this deprecated hardware. How much
is intel paying Apple to subvert AMD?

~~~
kylec
I'm not sure why this was posted on HN today, but the Mac mini hasn't been
updated, it just has slightly different storage configurations. This is the
exact same computer the debuted in late 2018.

------
mysterydip
Looks nice. I wish they would use numbers on these things, though. It's
difficult to find support when searching "mac mini" could bring back results
from multiple generations of different hardware and software.

~~~
rpvnwnkl
They use the year and a model number, but not in the marketing. Everymac is a
good resource: [https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/index-
macmini.ht...](https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/index-macmini.html)

------
tosh
Anyone has experience with Mac Mini + eGPU combo and can share a bit about it
(e.g. as alternative to Mac Pro or iMac?)

~~~
zaphoyd
I use a 2018 Mac mini with an OWC Helios FX enclosure with a stock AMD Vega 56
GPU. My workload is some light gaming (Mac only no windows/boot camp) and 3x4K
displays in scaled modes for web/software dev.

The mini itself is compact, fast, and generally great. Handles VM based dev
workloads well. It’s small and quiet (not always silent though).

I used the machine with just the built in integrated GPU for a few months. For
gaming it was bad. For lots of 4K screens it was... doable, in the sense that
you could actually plug them all in, but UI effects would lag and it felt
weirdly disjointed. Some tasks would be very fast then hit a GPU related thing
(scrolling, OS animations, etc) and lag, stutter, making the system feel
slower than it was.

Got the eGPU and it was 100% plug and play. Works beautifully, completely
fixes all the UI issues, games generally run great (as good or better than my
previous hackintosh with the same GPU in a direct PCI slot)

I’ve run into a few very small issues. USB-C connector tolerances are not
always tight enough to reliably move equipment while it is all on, so
sometimes if you grab the mini and drag it around (maybe to position it to
plug in another cable) the GPU can disconnect. This generally falls back
“gracefully” to the internal GPU but can be a bit annoying. You also have to
think a bit more about heat management in your space. The GPU and mini all get
hot when under load, you can’t stuff them in an unventilated hole. Overheat
behavior is generally that the GPU shuts off and needs to be power cycled.

Compared to an iMac... The iMac is probably a better standalone deal and
experience. However, in my case I have many machines and many displays.
Mini+GPU lets me share generic displays across multiple machines in a way that
an iMac simply can’t. Especially if you have existing windows gaming hardware
where you can “recycle” the previous gen GPU in the Mac it can be way more
cost effective. The GPU I am using is more powerful than you can get in any
mac other than the Mac Pro.

Vs the Mac Pro... well the Mac Pro is better, but costs 4-a zillion times as
much. kind of different ballparks. If you want a headless desktop and don’t
need the Mac Pro crazy, a mini+GPU is a good option.

As a budget option? Mini+enclosure+GPU isn’t particularly cheap. My setup was
~2k without displays and I have a fairly simple spec setup (512GB, 16GB ram,
slowest 6 core).

Where it shines is in modularity with other equipment. I can share the eGPU
with laptops, share the GPUs with other windows machines, and share displays
with other machines, in that environment it is cheaper and more flexible.

~~~
askafriend
> For lots of 4K screens it was... doable, in the sense that you could
> actually plug them all in, but UI effects would lag and it felt weirdly
> disjointed.

This is probably because the integrated GPU is dipping into your system RAM to
drive those displays. I think people who've upgraded to 32GB of system RAM
have far less issues running the stock GPU and 4k/5k screens.

I myself am using a stock GPU with a 2018 Mac Mini and an LG 5k Ultrafine +
another 2k screen with no issues at all. Amazing machine.

------
paul7986
Is Apple at present time announcing new products?

Been waiting to hear about an iPhone SE 2.

~~~
pensatoio
iPhones are always announced in September

~~~
PascLeRasc
The original SE was announced March 21st, 2016.

------
cpr
Looks like both RAM and SSD are upgradable? I thought they had gone to
hardwired everything in the Mini.

~~~
kylec
RAM yes, SSD no

------
sparrish
What the heck does this mean?

"Up to 7.8X faster than 16GB"

~~~
stan_rogers
It means that some typical processes are run entirely in RAM rather than
having to swap to disk. Specifically, the tests they used were common image
manipulations (rotations and so forth) in Photoshop.

------
jiveturkey
LOL at the row of 10 of them, about 2/3 down the page. Those things would
catch fire in about 5 seconds. You'd have to be blowing high pressure ice cold
air at the intake side to even hope keeping them running at that density.

------
alexellisuk
I'm using the 2018 Mac mini with 32GB RAM and the i7 + 4k monitor, it's great,
however compiling Go's Kubernetes client still stresses its CPU. What's the
main changes here?

The UK site is showing an 8th gen CPU

~~~
stephenr
It's just a bump in the default storage at each "level".

------
gnrlst
Any music production geeks have a recommendation on whether a relatively maxed
out new Mac Mini could be a worthy DAW? Keep in mind I need macOS to use
Logic, and don't want the hassle of a Hackintosh.

~~~
tnolet
more than easily. Fantastic albums have been made with way less CPU / Mem
grunt than these new Mac minis.

~~~
zimpenfish
Some of them without any CPU horsepower at all!

(I jest, I know what you mean. I made one with pretty much just an iPhone
although it's definitely not fantastic.)

~~~
PascLeRasc
Steve Lacy recorded his entire debut album on his iPhone into Garageband, and
it's definitely fantastic.

------
mahoho
It's really convenient that I was able to use my scroll wheel to adjust the
text opacity! Sometimes I prefer a 50% fade just to add a little extra
challenge to my read.

------
Foivos
Considering how Apple prices its products, $100 for 10 Gigabit Ethernet seems
very cheap. Actually it is cheaper than most PCI-e cards.

~~~
chx
Yes, I saw that too, it's using an AQC107 (because it's supporting 2.5 and 5)
and the card is 100 bucks [https://camelcamelcamel.com/Gigabit-Ethernet-
Express-Network...](https://camelcamelcamel.com/Gigabit-Ethernet-Express-
Network-XG-C100F/product/B07VLC7LT3) pretty steadily and so Apple only asking
for the same price is indeed surprising.

------
klodolph
ECC would be cool for using these for remote builds. Don't know if that's ever
going to happen.

~~~
silviogutierrez
Curious, why does ECC matter for remote builds? Any explanation is
appreciated!

~~~
klodolph
If there is a bit flipped in your build, you then propagate the bad bit to
potentially millions of machines. Bit flips in non-ECC memory are common
enough that this is a concern in practice.

------
m0zg
This used to be a good value Mac model years ago, but nowadays if you
configure it well the pricing is on the kooky side for what you get. IMO they
should consider discontinuing it, and instead introducing something like Mac
Pro mini, with a real GPU at this point.

------
elpacino
Found this concept about a modular Mac Mini "Pro" the technology is not there
yet but could be developed in the future

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuZlMROiSXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuZlMROiSXQ)

------
uzername
I'm still hoping, against all the odds, of a Mac Mini Pro or a Mac Pro Mini. I
don't need a Xeon, but I don't want a thermally constrained chip either.

------
vault
I hope wikipedia has not been updated yet... The specs are the same as the
2018 model except for the storage! No reason to buy the new one

------
_red
So is RAM upgradeable in this? Only offering soldered ram / SSD is reason to
not buy these.....

~~~
H1Supreme
I assume it still is. The only thing that changed here was a bump in the
default storage.

~~~
donatj
> still is.

While the RAM _technically_ was replaceable on the previous model, it's a
major pain that requires you to basically tear the entire thing down. I was
hoping for something as easy as it used to be.

Here's a "professional" video of it being done, note the person even breaks
the cable for the LED indicator in the process.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQq4hLKv1Cc&feature=emb_logo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQq4hLKv1Cc&feature=emb_logo)

~~~
FineTralfazz
Having never taken a Mac apart before, it took me less than half an hour to
upgrade mine, and I had zero issues. It was definitely more work than
upgrading a normal computer, but I think it's definitely worth doing if you're
a student or otherwise unable or unwilling to pay Apple's exorbitant RAM
prices.

------
dzonga
apple, they have a pro phone without 3.5mm headphone jack. n a pro ipad too.
But quick to highlight a 3.5mm headphone jack on the new mac mini. the new mac
mini looks like a wonderful machine though. glad they doing the long needed
upgrades.

------
drcongo
You need something more powerful than this Mac Mini just to be able to scroll
that webpage.

~~~
acdha
This is not true - even a 10 year old MBA handles it fine. Try disabling your
extensions – especially any ad blockers which aren't simple domain blocking.

~~~
denimnerd42
well adding that last statement is ridiculous. expecting to toggle an
adblocker for web page performance..

It's pretty slow on my recent MBA too.

~~~
acdha
Read the whole sentence: ad blockers which do simple host / path filtering are
fast but there are many which inject huge amounts of code into the target
pages with unknown impact. There were years where a big fraction of the people
complaining about Firefox performance were ABP users.

------
mm89
I broke my 2016 15" Macbook Pro display while attempting to replace the
Macbook logo bezel (I know, stupid of me...).

Anyone have suggestions on what the best option is going forward? Looks like
~$700 to pay Apple to fix, less to DIY but that's a risk in itself, Apple
trade-in would give me $310 with damage or $890 without damage (so basically
the difference is price to repair).

The cheapest option is of course to not repair at all and just continue using
the laptop with an external monitor.

Definitely want to stick with Apple. I only use this computer for DAW / home
music studio.

Anyone been in a similar situation and what did you do?

