
Mac mini review–a testament to Apple’s stubbornness - okket
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/mac-mini-review-a-testament-to-apples-stubbornness/
======
asdkhadsj
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?

~~~
CydeWeys
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.

~~~
akvadrako
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.

~~~
cbzoiav
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.

~~~
mercer
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.

~~~
crtasm
Install macos + your environment and data to the external drive and boot from
it?

~~~
mercer
> ...but then you have the problem that nothing works without the SSD
> connected.

------
DannyBee
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.

~~~
setquk
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...

~~~
DannyBee
Yeah, i only mean "i'm gonna try something else".

The world in fact, may still suck elsewhere, but MacOS is no longer so good
that i'll avoid trying. It used to be.

~~~
setquk
I just make sure people get iPads if I don't want to deal with shit :)

Problem? Apple store mate. Go ask there.

------
pasta
I think it's clear what Apple is doing here.

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.

~~~
scarface74
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.

------
nik736
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.

~~~
mattnewport
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.

~~~
nik736
I doubt that's the reasoning, but even if they could've made it slightly
larger. No one cares if their mini is 5mm larger on one side.

~~~
scarface74
Well, anyone who has a rack of Mac Minis probably appreciates them keeping the
size the same. I know Mac Mini Colo does.

------
nakedrobot2
> "there isn't a PCIe slot to be found across the entire range of systems"

Thunderbolt is PCI express.

------
nakedrobot2
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.

~~~
cgh
Peter Bright is Ars’s Microsoft guy and is known for his Apple antipathy. Not
sure why he’s doing this review.

~~~
gumby
To be fair he called this out up front (although until your note I didn't know
what he was taking about -- but I got the idea).

------
scarface74
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.

~~~
organsnyder
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.

~~~
scarface74
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.

------
matthewmacleod
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.

~~~
thirdsun
There is and Apple already announced that they will fix their mistake with a
new, modular Mac Pro in 2019.

------
ksec
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?

------
hellofunk
> And if you're a suspicious sort who wants ECC in their build farm, then a
> Xeon or an AMD processor of some kind would be a better fit.

What does ECC refer to?

~~~
mantesso
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory)

------
Someone1234
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.

~~~
lostgame
For you, it must be annoying that Apple killed Safari for Windows, but I
always wondered why they did that to start.

~~~
danso
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.

0: [https://analytics.usa.gov/](https://analytics.usa.gov/)

------
harryh
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.

1\.
[https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425](https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425)

~~~
robotmay
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).

~~~
asdkhadsj
I've been looking for small closet servers, this looks neat! Thanks! Any other
brands/models you'd recommend?

~~~
krylon
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.

~~~
robotmay
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 :)

~~~
krylon
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. ;-)

------
lostgame
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.

~~~
ableal
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.

------
dmtroyer
yawn.

