dogslobber
macrumors 601
Sounds like your new Mac keyboard is almost certainly coming.
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Any downsides to El Capitan for an older Mac Mini?
- Thread starter Micky Do
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Sounds like your new Mac keyboard is almost certainly coming.
George Dawes
Suspended
Everything
El crapitan essentially bricked my 2011 mini 2.7 as the amd card has issues with it , it won't show any video
Apparently it's a known issue with el crapitan's os energy saver over riding the energy saver control panel and sleeping the video out.. so you have to do a hard restart to get a picture again
Stick with Yosemite
El crapitan essentially bricked my 2011 mini 2.7 as the amd card has issues with it , it won't show any video
Apparently it's a known issue with el crapitan's os energy saver over riding the energy saver control panel and sleeping the video out.. so you have to do a hard restart to get a picture again
Stick with Yosemite
Mine works just fine with the same Radeon card yours has. Mine is the 2.5 GHz model though.
Went from 10.9 to 10.11 on a 2010 (nvidia) mini with 8/1000 ssd. Did my normal clean + migration install with wonderful results. Speed is better, as are a number of functions including 1080p/60 support (for some reason 10.9 didn't like 60 and preferred 30). Only down side is the font, a little hard to read!
Next up: 10.8 to 10.11 on an 08 iMac!
Next up: 10.8 to 10.11 on an 08 iMac!
GameGuru38
macrumors regular
It's arrived, and it suits me fine.
Meanwhile things to seem to have become a little ragged on Mountain Lion. The calendar icon in the dock used to change to tell the present date. Now it is stuck on Jul 17….. has been the last week or so.
For several months now on trying to name a picture in iPhoto has caused it to crash; used to be fine.
Maybe it is time to do the update to El Capitan regardless. It will be the last OS update available for an early 2009 Mac Mini…… which was more or less expected.
Not sure if you still need feedback. But it does not run fluently on my early 2009 mac mini with 4GB of RAM and a HDD. So like others said, you'll need at least an SSD.
jpietrzak8
macrumors 65816
Hmm. Jul 17 is the default icon for the calendar app (even on El Capitan, which I'm running); maybe there's a preferences setting as to whether it displays the current date in the dock or not?
Standard warning: modern versions of OS X consume a lot more RAM, so you may find that you'll need an upgrade to avoid swapping. Also the modern Photos app is a lot more annoying than the old iPhoto; that "upgrade" was kind of a bummer. But otherwise El Capitan will run just fine on a 2009 Mini.
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I disagree. 😉 El Capitan does run fluidly on a 2009 Mini with 4GB of RAM, if you don't run any memory-intensive apps. Most likely, you'll want more than 4GB, though.
But El Capitan doesn't run any slower (or faster) on an HDD than does any other version of OS X. Therefore, an SSD will not improve El Capitan any more than it would improve any other version of OS X. If you can't live without an SSD, don't blame the OS for that fact.
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Odd then that on my Mini the date did change. Actually now I do recall it came as an unexpected benefit with Mountain Lion… now gone it seems. C'est la vie.
Other than a little play in a shop, I haven't really checked out Photos. Some things seemed OK, but others seemed a bit fiddly compared with iPhoto.
I have 5 GB RAM (1GB original plus 4 GB added) in my Mini, and the original 120 GB HDD.
jpietrzak8
macrumors 65816
Oh, well, the date does change (on my El Capitan machine) on the dock icon when you are running the app. But the date is fixed when you examine the icon in the Finder.
dogslobber
macrumors 601
Try reinstalling the OS.
iPhoto isn't installed by default under el cap so you'd need to install lion then iPhoto and do an OS upgrade to el cap.
Fwiw, el cap gobbles memory due to sand boxing in safari so be aware where you could get a dozen tabs in the memory footprint, you now get only one.
El cap also wants an SSD so if you have a spinner then it might feel slower than lion.
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I wouldn't call the base OS a "memory-intensive app". El cap really needs 8gb ram to exit the starting grid.
jpietrzak8
macrumors 65816
Solution: Don't use Safari. 😉
El Capitan works absolutely fine with a spinner. I use it every day with one. Given sufficient RAM, it is no slower than Lion.
Hmm. Not sure what you're saying here. El Capitan does require more RAM than Lion, no question. However, my mother is using El Capitan with just 4GB of RAM in her 2009 Mini, with no trouble at all. It's just that the applications she uses work just fine in the ~2GB of RAM left over for them once the OS is loaded. (And yeah, she's not using Safari. 😉 )
^Then she is also not using mail... Safari and mail both run horrible on my early 2009 mac mini.
jpietrzak8
macrumors 65816
I had similar problems but under 10.10. SOMETHING, and to this day I am not sure what, kept eating memory to the point where the fans went on ultra high speed. I used a program from the App Store called Memory Clean (a gui for the memory purge command) to get the memory down to a point where this didn't happen anymore.
The next step was to go up to 8 GB of RAM when I could afford it, since I am a poor, starving teacher. That made 10.10 quite bearable.
The next step was to go up to 8 GB of RAM when I could afford it, since I am a poor, starving teacher. That made 10.10 quite bearable.
jpietrzak8
macrumors 65816
??? Ok, bit confused here. Generally speaking, fans go up when the CPU is being pegged -- that's usually the way excessive heat is generated in a Mac.
On the other hand, when the machine runs out of RAM, it has to start paging memory to long term storage. Which means, the CPU has to sit and wait while paging occurs. And this means that the CPU is not generating heat.
I would be highly surprised to find that memory usage leads to high heat generation. I would expect a runaway process to be the cause instead...
Well, something did it and did it regularly under 10.10. I knew when the fans sped up to check/run Memory Clean to get rid of the crap.
I think you understood that I was talking about the program "Mail" the standard mail program of Apple 😉. My point however is that it is logical to say that a mac mini with 4GB of RAM is not suitable for the last OS if it does not run two of its core programs well, even if you can use other software instead.
jpietrzak8
macrumors 65816
Well, yes, I was kind of playing off the ultra-generic name of Apple's e-mail program. 🙂
You know, I've gotta disagree here. In general, Mozilla makes software that is not known for being all that efficient; however, the whole point of their existence is to get their software onto as many machines as possible. As such, they generally do try to skimp on resource usage where possible, and although Firefox and Thunderbird can in many circumstances grab enormous quantities of RAM, it is possible to use them (sparingly) in low-RAM environments.
Apple's software, however, is generally bundled with their hardware. You pay for their software by buying their machines. Therefore, Apple has no incentive to make their software run well on old hardware. Indeed, they have an incentive to make their software NOT run well on old hardware, in order to push users to upgrade. Therefore, I would not only not be surprised, but would in fact expect that their applications will run worse and worse on older Macs...
While I agree with most of your thoughts, I do not agree with your conclusion. Making software run bad on older computers is bad for sales, as it will let people reconsider the OS they use, and maybe switch (back) to Windows. Rather making it impossible to update seems more likely to promote people to buy new macs as people still see macOS as something that runs fluently ("it just works" was their slogan for a reason) but they would like the new features (split screen in El Capitan for example) that are in the OS, or third party software (or internet content, instead of the browser) begins to run slow. That to me seems like a more healthy strategy. Also, giving your opponents the chance to win the user over with software that runs better than your own software would in my eye negatively promote your OS as well 😉 Though both "solutions" have their benefits and downsides, and I can see how your reasoning works as well, but probably only on people that do not consider switching to Windows an option.
jpietrzak8
macrumors 65816
I agree completely. And, in fact, this is at least part of the reason why I'm switching back (to Linux in my case). Non-Apple software is, simply, running better on a given set of hardware than Apple software currently is. Non-Apple operating systems are performing better and using less resources than OS X on the same hardware. OS X, er, macOS, is probably still the most user-friendly desktop OS available (although Windows 10 has made huge strides in that regard), but I don't think that aspect is enough anymore to keep me tied to Apple.
dogslobber
macrumors 601
I doubt there's an intentional desire on Apple's part to make their software run poorly on lesser hardware. It's likely more a reality that they simply don't focus resources on testing older configs beyond a cursory glance to make sure it's supported. The reality is that Apple users upgrade more readily than the Windows 10 target audience. In other words, there's limited ROI for Apple to optimize software to be fast on those older configs as there are less numbers of them in use. Apple has the data so can do the analytics and decide where to concentrate test resources.
Windows 10 set a low bar for supported hardware so it knows where to aim as a lot of users are using retro hardware which they haven't upgraded for almost a decade. Microsoft knows they won't buy new hardware but wants them running Windows 10 as it's free.
I've bitched about the resources that El Cap consumes relative to Win10 but it's all down to different target audience, IMO.
Crosscreek
macrumors 68030
I think Apple is sitting on some big decisions with where the Mac is going. We know that laptops are their main client followed by the iMacs.
If they do not refresh the Mac Pro this year then they no longer will support the pro market.
I see the fall event as pivotal and have little faith they will continue with such a large Mac line up and may just ignore updating desktops including the Mini.
I really don't comment on things too much anymore because I will be moving away for a Apple appliance to a normal PC.
There are just as good OS's and as you said more efficient than OS X which I may hack in the future but I have no apps that require it.
jpietrzak8
macrumors 65816
The reality is that Apple users are forced to upgrade more than the Windows 10 target audience. We've already seen how Microsoft has had to beg, plead, and resort to rather underhanded tactics to get folks to upgrade their OS on their older machines; Microsoft needs to do this to have any chance at all of monetizing their products in the future.
This is because Microsoft makes its money by running on the widest range of machines possible. Apple, on the other hand, need only say "Macs produced in the year X or before are no longer supported." Poof, users now have a huge incentive to buy new hardware, as their existing hardware has suddenly become obsolete, whether or not it is still performing well. And this is because Apple has tied its revenue to hardware, rather than to software.
And so we now have the extremely strange situation where a 2009 Mini will in the future receive more active support from Microsoft than it will from Apple. 🙁