
A look at the 2014 Mac mini - mwexler
http://blog.macminicolo.net/post/100240431773/a-look-at-the-2014-mac-mini
======
koralatov
In the various laptops, soldered-on RAM is a trade-off for the increasing
thinness of the machines. Whether it's worth it will depend on the
individual's needs.

In this case, the Mac mini is the same size as the previous generation, which
had had user-replaceable RAM. Soldering it on the RAM in this new generation
is just a dick move on Apple's part. It's hard to think of a legitimate reason
for them to do this except to make more money from you.

~~~
computerjunkie
I agree. I was really looking forward to what apple would do with the Mac Mini
as I wanted it to be my first apple purchase. To be fair,the update seems like
a _downgrade_. Even on the keynote, the product seemed neglected.

It looks like I am going look for small form factor cases and stick Linux on
them and probably get a Mac book Pro when I save up enough money.

~~~
cdr
Intel NUCs are really interesting small form factor PC kits - a nice medium
between completely from scratch (which can be a real pain in SFF) and
completely prebuilt. i3/i5 Broadwell NUCs are announced for early 2015.

~~~
dragontamer
NUC sucks however. Its way too small.

I think I prefer the slightly larger mini-PCs from Zotec. If I build from
scratch, the AMD-based AM1 platforms are superb. $30 socketed miniITX
motherboards and $20 chips are great.

------
ddod
I can't help but think this offering is designed to make people not miss the
Mini when it's discontinued in a year or two.

This article read really positive despite basically saying the Mini is a
terrible purchase. If you want a toy Mac with no concern for performance, most
models from the past few years will suit you if you can find a good deal on
Craigslist.

I was on the fence because I really wanted a Mini and the new $700 version
didn't seem terrible, but now with the knowledge that they put tamper-proof
screws on it and bundled it with a 5400rpm HDD ($200 minimum to get an
upgrade), I feel like they're not interested in customers like me.

I found an Asus form factor prefab ([http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VivoPC-
VM40B-02-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VivoPC-
VM40B-02-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B00KU54KPQ)) that should handle the
HTPC/Plex/quiet/price/value minimum requirements I have in case anyone else
was looking for alternatives.

------
JohnBooty
The news about the non-upgradable RAM is tough to swallow.

About the only remotely positive spin I can put on it is that, relative to the
2012 Mac Mini, the "Apple tax" you pay for 16GB of RAM on the 2014 Mac Mini is
somewhat offset by the reduction in the price of the base hardware.

The Mac Mini matters to me, because they make nice servers - companies like
MacMiniColo and MacMiniVault will host your Mac Mini for $50 a month or less.

From a pure "computing horsepower per dollar" perspective, it's superior to
virtual hosting - try hosting a 200GB database on a virtual host with 16GB of
RAM and virtual CPUs anywhere near the performance of those in the Mac Mini.
It gets real expensive real fast.

Obviously, virtual hosting has a boatload of other advantages, and it's the
right solution for most situations. But Mac Mini hosting fills a niche for
small companies with data < 1TB.

~~~
MoOmer
For $50/month you can get a Xeon E3 1225v2 with 32GB ram and 3-120GB ssds and
300mbps pipe nowadays.

~~~
zaroth
I doubt that in the US you could get 1U, 300mbps unmetered, and 2amps for
$50/mo. Forget about it if you throw in the hardware as well.

Now if you said 1U, 1amp, and 10TB of metered bandwidth, then $50/mo sounds
more like it.

[1] -
[http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=131](http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=131)

~~~
STRiDEX
[http://www.soyoustart.com/us/essential-
servers/](http://www.soyoustart.com/us/essential-servers/)

OVH pricing gets you pretty close.

------
monstermonster
No sale. This has to stop somewhere. They're not smartphones.

------
walterbell
For a home server, consider the Dell T20 instead. $299 for low-power version,
$499 for quad-core Xeon & 4GB ECC, officially supports Linux, no OS bundled.

[http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/pc-
mac/peripherals/serve...](http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/pc-
mac/peripherals/servers/dell-poweredge-t20-mini-tower-server-1257381/review)

As for size, unless you're living in an RV, put it under a desk. Just Say No
to being hypnotized by shiny rectangles.

Consumers and small businesses can have an affordable server with incremental
upgrade to many TBs of storage and 32GB RAM, plus OSS software to take low-
latency, surveillance-free advantage of all that computing power and local
storage/cache. HP and Lenovo sell similar models. With virtualization, it can
run more than one operating system, replacing several boxes.

Why settle for a neutered and overpriced shiny rectangle?

~~~
JohnBooty
Those Dells would be better than Mac Minis for a lot of things, but not
others.

Clearly the Dell is more expandable and potentially more powerful depending on
config. 32GB RAM ceiling is fantastic too, especially for virtualization.

Physical size is an issue for some applications but not others. Either one of
these would be fine as a workstation, but I know which one of these boxes I'd
want in my living room. Size also matters if you're racking these things up,
or having one colo'd somewhere.

The Mac Mini kills the Dell in terms of performance/watt, especially when you
move past the base CPU models of either the Mini or the T20. That _alone_ can
erase the price advantage of the Dell (over several years of ownership) if
you're using them as always-on servers and you factor in the cost of providing
cooling for them as well. Again, this is an issue in some scenarios but not
others.

~~~
walterbell
If the priority is performance-per-watt, then an Intel NUC offers user-
upgradeable disk and RAM, plus a range of processors from low-power Bay Trail
Atoms to i7 vPro, at a smaller size than the Mac Mini.

The next version of the NUc will support Broadwell (Core) and Braswell (Atom)
with a much-reduced power envelope that beats the Haswell processors in this
"new" Mac Mini. And it will support 4K graphics with integrated GPU.

[http://www.extremetech.com/computing/188533-intels-
nuc-2-0-l...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/188533-intels-
nuc-2-0-leaks-the-next-unit-of-steam-machines-and-home-theater-pcs)

------
gumby
Non-flame question here: what does running Mac OS as a server buy you?

I love my apple hardware and depend on my mbp as my primary computing device,
but don't see the appeal of mac os X as a server environment. The things that
make the mac great (for me) don't add value -- and in fact get in the way. I'm
much much happier using Linux on my servers and much much happier NOT using it
on my day-to-day machine.

I can imagine there could be some specialized cases in which running services
on the mac make sense but I am astonished there are enough that macminicolo
can make a business of it (and congrats to them for this by the way!). I
assume this is a failure of imagination on my part, thus my question

~~~
rcchen
My assumption was that these Macs were primarily used for automated headless
testing of iOS applications; as a (relatively) cheap Mac that is able to run
the simulator and whatnot, this could make sense.

------
adolph
In comparing the low and medium end minis, I'm reminded of the below
Arstechica article about the then-new low end iMac. It seems as if it's
primary purpose was to meet a price point and make the next jump up look good.
It'll be interesting to see how the various benchmarks turn out.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/07/1099-imac-review-
lose-5...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/07/1099-imac-review-lose-50-of-
your-performance-to-save-18-of-the-money/)

~~~
JohnBooty
Anecdotal, but the original $499 G4 Mac Mini -- along with iPods -- was my
"gateway drug" when it came to switching from Windows to Macs.

~~~
Joeri
Same for me. Bought the entry-level g4 mac mini, and it led to another mini,
two macbooks, and ipod, iphone, and 3 ipads.

------
emsy
I've always considered using Mac only software a risk, because I have to
depend on a single company. That's why I've mainly used software that is
either free or available on cross platforms (Except of course software like
XCode). What if my Mac suddenly stops working? I need to get another Mac to
continue working. With non-Mac Computers, I can at least get a cheap temporary
replacement to continue working. This move makes me even more dependend not
only on their software, but now also much more on their price policy. For
instance, say I need at least 16 gig of RAM for serious web development with
VMs. Now I can't simply replace my broken MBP with an Mac Mini and upgrade
with cheap RAM but I have to completely buy in. What if they suddenly hard
solder HDDs as well? I can't even replace my broken hard drive quickly. As a
freelancer, this dependency is too dangerous and I really hope that this move
leads other customers to consider their dependency on a single vendor.

~~~
computerjunkie
_What if they suddenly hard solder HDDs as well?_

I have a somewhat weird feeling that this is going to happen in a couple of
years.

~~~
rcarmo
It already has, in a way. The Air's SSD already fits that description.

~~~
jdboyd
All versions of the MacBook Air appear to have upgradable storage, even though
none of them have upgradable RAM.

I base that on MacSales.com offering storage upgrades for all 5 generations of
MBA.

------
pionar
I have a 2012 mini with 16GB RAM (I play some games on it). I won't be buying
one of the new ones because of this.

------
austinz
I like Apple a lot, but I find it more and more tiresome the fact that, if I
want an OS X desktop that doesn't try to squeeze underpowered, overpriced
laptop components into a tiny chassis, I would have to buy a Mac Pro. The fact
that you can't even replace the RAM on these newest models is pretty
grotesque.

------
kylec
I can live with soldered-on RAM - there is a bit of an Apple premium to the
RAM they sell, but at least you can get the configuration you want. I'm much
more disappointed by the lack of a quad-core option. I was planning on picking
up a high-end quad-core Mac mini when they updated the line, but after the
announcement on Thursday I ran down to the nearest Apple Store and bought a
2012 quad-core Mac mini instead.

I wish I could have bought the 2.6GHz quad-core as opposed to the 2.3GHz, but
that was a build-to-order option only. Still, the 2.3GHz is much faster than
the top end 2014 Mac mini when it comes to multithreaded performance:

[http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/19/mac-
mini-2014-benchmark/](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/19/mac-
mini-2014-benchmark/)

~~~
LordIllidan
The problem with the current Apple approach is that it forces you to make the
decision about how much RAM you may need beforehand, and charges you extra for
the privilege. Making the RAM on a desktop machine non configurable is a
greedy move, and allows them to announce that their machines are affordable,
while disguising the fact that most people have to buy the more expensive
options.

~~~
koralatov
That's exactly my problem with it. Every machine I've ever bought, I've
upgraded the RAM later in life when I genuinely needed the upgrade and
benefitted from much lower pricing. Now, that cost is needlessly frontloaded;
either I pay much more for the RAM I won't need for at least a year or two, or
I live without it and potentially have to upgrade sooner. It's definitely a
greedy move on Apple's part.

------
thrownaway2424
What kinds of workloads are out there that people are willing to run on
machines without ECC?

~~~
krzyk
You mean RAM with error correction? If so, I don't think many home users have
such memory, it is mostly used on servers.

~~~
monstermonster
* and workstations.

It's one of the reasons I do a lot of my work on a proper machine with ECC and
SAS disks.

Due to some duff RAM a few years ago I lost a week of work. It silently
corrupted filesystem buffers.

