The next version will probably have a T3 chip which will correct most of these issues. I doubt Apple will ever admit it if there are hardware issues with the T2.
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Any T2-related crashes with 2018 Mini?
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The next version will probably have a T3 chip which will correct most of these issues. I doubt Apple will ever admit it if there are hardware issues with the T2.
I hope i'm wrong but i'm beginning to think that Apple is going to treat macOS version upgrades like it does with iOS. Downgrading a Mac to a previous release might/could be a thing of the past in the future, again I hope i'm wrong. I based that on what we have seen with Mojave. All previous versions of OS X and macOS disappeared from the purchase accounts and was noted on several Mac fan websites.
I'm not holding out any hope that my 2012 Mini will see the next release of macOS. And loading the next version of macOS will probably be next to impossible.
From a hardware standpoint, I'm willing to bet that T2 issues are related to heat as it is not equipped with a heat-sink or active cooling. Considering the throughput of data while encryption/decryption of normal data and video streams, a significant amount of heat generation is likely.
Has anyone looked into how hot/cool this chip is running?
Has anyone looked into how hot/cool this chip is running?
I've got a powerful FLIR camera at my work site. I'have considered buying a MM to replace my laptop and take it to the site, but I'm just afraid that I'd end up spending my money for a large problem. Even tho it would be a really nice project I just can not afford to spend so much money on a machine that has high potential to be a lemon.
To say that I am disappointed is a massive understatement.
I am desperate.
And I am thinking of going the wrong route - which is not very satisfying thought.
[doublepost=1542610797][/doublepost]Looking at YT videos where iPad encodes videos faster than the i9 MBP I certainly feel proud of Apple's work on that field.
The chip with no active cooling does what ultrabook laptop breaks a sweat for...
But all that effort is lost in my eyes when I can not walk in a Store and buy a product, sit on a BFR and take it to the Moon if I had to. Macs used to be built that way. Just like a hammer - every time I needed my old mac to work it did just that. Like a hammer.
I'm praying to the spirit of Steve Jobs to enlighten the Mac team with wisdom and provide them with strength, focus and ingenuity so that they can make a computer that deserves Mac's name, badge and colour.
Amen
I think you may be right both of the failures I experienced where after long and heavy use of the processor. This may not be a problem with the t2 itself but with the design.
Probably not. Zero iOS devices can boot off an external drive ( e.g., a black up clone ). All Macs can. When there is one and only one drive over the devices entire existence then can stop boots from "other drives' because the single drive is probably pretty full ( APFS and snapshots aside ). [ even there those "restore from backup" still should be able to to boot. The 'the old', device unique signatures can be held in the secure enclave]. Macs come from much different background. Apple disable external boot by default now, but that's a separate dimension from the from the boot authorization check.
Getting it from the Mac App Store is different from cutting off. Apple allows people to mack Insteller USBs. Just make one. Then don't have get it from Apple store later. There is a difference between lazy and free approach and 'can't do'.
If have a running backups then rolling back to previous OS shouldn't be a problem. In short, if you want a previous OS version then keep it (i.e., deadicate some storage to it. ), then you'll have it.
There is also "Shift Option Command R " which can install the 'original' macOS the device shipped with.
How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery
That's different from what has been the MacApp store , but Apple is on some track of taking the basic system upgrades out of being items in the AppStore. ( It isn't really an App so that makes some sense).
[quite]
I'm not holding out any hope that my 2012 Mini will see the next release of macOS. And loading the next version of macOS will probably be next to impossible.[/QUOTE]
There is a decent chance it won't since it has been 5 years since it was superseded ( Apple Vintage and Obsolete ). Hardware which is being dropped from support is likely to get dropped from software support also. Hit that hard obsolete limit of 7+ years since superseded and almost everything goes on the unsupported by OS software list also. (paying more or less doesn't change that pragmatic hard timeline milestone. Lower stuff tends to fall off before because had less wiggle room to start. )
The Mini is a high candidate for 'early' software drop due to the limits of the iGPU and the pervasiveness of the HDDs configurations (and macOS moving away from HDD only being a 'good' configuration. ). However, I suspect Apple is eek out one more iteration for 2012. First, it was late 2014 for the replacement ( so pragmatically 10.15 may appear before the anniversary of end of manufacture. ). There was no 2013 replacement so effectively get a small 'extension'.
Frankly with a Mini 2012 even if there is an upgrade it is probably better to just wait if something does come out. If there are lots of 2012 problems then simply don't upgrade (and hence don't have to worry about reverting). The other options is to get an external drive and upgrade it. ( again, basically dedicate some storage to the old OS. )
P.S. Going forward APFS should be taking snapshots on major upgrades. Your immediately previous OS instance is right there on your disk if you have a reasonable about of empty free space available. Boot to revocery, pick the snapshot you were using before the upgrade , and set that as the 'front active' instance of the OS. ta-da right back to previous version. ( loose new data created but in terns of easy "jump back" is doable. )
[doublepost=1542915949][/doublepost]
Neither does the processor (red outline) in that picture. That is the board stripped. Not the board as it exists in the machine.
The T2 NAND does have a passive cover ( perhaps also for RF controller but it is covered with something else). Square like gray outline about half way out in picture (T2) and rectangle at the furthest end of the board.
From iFixit Teardown . step 5
The fan sits over the T2 and has some inlets on the bottom. (step 4 )
The mini does have to pull air in and then around fan and then past the NAND and T2 so it is a round-about non linear path but the board is under active cooling. What may be missing is another sensor on the board to measure temp (or feedback from the T2) that gets incorporated into fan controller. Which is kind of ironic since the T2 is the direct fan controllers. It would be more than kind of goofy if the fan controller cannot crank the fan to control its own temperature.
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Just set T2 settings to 'Medium Security' and you can boot older macOS or Windows: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s-with-2018-mini.2153202/page-3#post-26810980
-> Apple T2 Security Chip: https://www.apple.com/mac/docs/Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overview.pdf
An update:
After traveling for the holidays, I returned home to have my new MacMini (attempt #2) waiting for me. Over the last ~30 hours, i've thrown just about everything at the Mini trying to cause a panic similar to the ones my first machine was encountering. I tried running a number of cpu intensive applications at the same time, throwing a couple videos on top, etc.
Glad to say that this machine seems solid. Haven't had a single issue with it to this point. Fingers crossed!
After traveling for the holidays, I returned home to have my new MacMini (attempt #2) waiting for me. Over the last ~30 hours, i've thrown just about everything at the Mini trying to cause a panic similar to the ones my first machine was encountering. I tried running a number of cpu intensive applications at the same time, throwing a couple videos on top, etc.
Glad to say that this machine seems solid. Haven't had a single issue with it to this point. Fingers crossed!
From what I gathered, most T2 related kernel panics are induced by I/O, particularly when the microphone and camera are used, which the mini fortunately does not have. The 2nd are Thunderbolt devices like docks and hubs, and then external displays and sleeping and waking. I don't think purely running CPU intensive tasks or grinding the machine in general is going to get T2 acting up. Though this 2nd unit of yours definitely is better than your previous one which refused to boot up after restore IIRC?
With my first Mini, there seemed to be a correlation between a compute heavy task and the initial kernel panics. I have a feeling my first machine had a hardware issue that became a bigger hardware issue. Perhaps the machine cooked itself or something. Maybe it wasn't able to regulate the cpu temperature as well as it should've -- no idea.
I/O wise, this new machine is now plugged into my entire setup:
2x 27" Dell Ultrasharp Monitors (U2719DC) (via USB-C)
1x MOTU 828x Audio Controller (running firmware v1.08) -- I offload 100% of my audio to this.
1x Guardian Maximum RAID-1 Array
1x SanDisk 500GB SSD (time machine!)
1x Apple Magic Keyboard
1x Some random USB mouse lol
If you have successfully been grinding your mini with such variety of TB I/Os attached then congrats, it must be free of being a T2 lemon this time. I was looking over in various audio interface discussions, not only the mini but all T2 equipped macs have been reported to be extremely unstable, due to 3rd party drivers and kernel extensions.
I've noticed very few issues with the MOTU 828x after updating the firmware to v1.08. Every once in a while there will be a small blip in audio, maybe once every 3-5 hours but I can live with that for now.
My new mac mini (replacement) has not had a crash or shut down.. I think a lot of my problem may have been caused by the Blackmagic eGPU what was connected from day one. Wonder if anyone else here has a BM and what their experience is too.
In my eyes Mac Mini is an option for my work but only when coupled with an eGPU. So how does one consider a MM if eGPU causes it to panic... ?
At this moment there is little to no benefit of choosing Mac compared to PC hardware & Hackintoshing it.
With Apple you get the T2 which panics all the time. You got to have it's features disabled in order for your machine to support your work and even then it gives you a random crushy looks of Apple's love.
With a hackintosh you are probably going to get some problems with updates and initial setup and a bulky tower but you'll be able to snap in the GPU and have the computer use it. Snap some quiet Noctua cooling and it will be cool and quiet for years to come.
Dear Apple,
Please start building Macs, not junk!
At this moment there is little to no benefit of choosing Mac compared to PC hardware & Hackintoshing it.
With Apple you get the T2 which panics all the time. You got to have it's features disabled in order for your machine to support your work and even then it gives you a random crushy looks of Apple's love.
With a hackintosh you are probably going to get some problems with updates and initial setup and a bulky tower but you'll be able to snap in the GPU and have the computer use it. Snap some quiet Noctua cooling and it will be cool and quiet for years to come.
Dear Apple,
Please start building Macs, not junk!
I have to concur. The out-of-the-box nature of being headach-free is a virtue of Macs that is seriously lacking recently. It used to be that, if in 3 hours I were jumping on a plane to a 5 week Africa trip, I could confidently drive by an Apple Store, pick up a stock config MBP, expecting it to survive the trip and beyond. Nowadays I have to pray to not having to be
When a keyboard needs babysitting, security settings need to be turned off for a chip to function properly, disks and data inside are soldered and be gone together with the machine, every little thing adds up to keep the machine from being reliable. I am fine with them changing Macs into disposable liabilities, but the asking price need to reflect that as well.
Modern Apple is simply asking to not be taken seriously, in the traditional professional computing context.
Same here. I've worked on oil rigs in west Africa for years.
Back in the days Macs were just the machines to buy if you needed a reliable one. I have bought loads of Apple products when traveling to Houston for courses and never had a problem.
Buy one today and you are facing a return flight within 28 days. That is not for me.
I've had bridgeOS related crashes since I bought my 2018 Mini. I think I might have solved them (on my mini), but first a couple of things. I don't think it's actually the T2 chip or bridgeOS that is crashing. Since everything goes though the t2 chip now, I wonder if a bridgeOS crash, bug_type":"210" is a generic catch all.
Anyway, after a couple of weeks of crashing, I discovered if I disabled my wifi adapter the crashes went away. Recently I had to reenable the adapter to do some AirDrops. Left it on, and the crashes came back. So I started doing some more digging. Came across a couple of posts from various forms that had different recommendations for fixes (on iMac and MacBooks). A couple of days ago, I disabled "Wake for network Access" (I already had "Enable Power Nap", and "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" disabled also have "Prevent from computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" enabled) in the Energy Saver settings. I also went into Disk Utility and ran first aid, on both my internal drive and the 1TB SSD I leave connected to my Mini. The external drive had some errors, but you wouldn't see them unless you clicked the arrow for more details. So I reformatted the 1TB drive and copied over the files from TimeMachine.
So a couple of days ago, I found errors on a drive. Reformatted the drive. Then I disabled "Wake for network Access" and rebooted my Mini. Since then I have not had a crash. So I'd say disable everything in the power savings settings except for "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" (enable that) and check your disks for error, and reformat/reload as needed. See if that fixes the crashes.
Anyway, after a couple of weeks of crashing, I discovered if I disabled my wifi adapter the crashes went away. Recently I had to reenable the adapter to do some AirDrops. Left it on, and the crashes came back. So I started doing some more digging. Came across a couple of posts from various forms that had different recommendations for fixes (on iMac and MacBooks). A couple of days ago, I disabled "Wake for network Access" (I already had "Enable Power Nap", and "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" disabled also have "Prevent from computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" enabled) in the Energy Saver settings. I also went into Disk Utility and ran first aid, on both my internal drive and the 1TB SSD I leave connected to my Mini. The external drive had some errors, but you wouldn't see them unless you clicked the arrow for more details. So I reformatted the 1TB drive and copied over the files from TimeMachine.
So a couple of days ago, I found errors on a drive. Reformatted the drive. Then I disabled "Wake for network Access" and rebooted my Mini. Since then I have not had a crash. So I'd say disable everything in the power savings settings except for "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" (enable that) and check your disks for error, and reformat/reload as needed. See if that fixes the crashes.
Do you have any external drives hooked up to it? It seems, on pretty much every thread I view, these issues are hit or miss.
Yes. I have one external for time machine and I also have a drobo connected to it.
I wonder if the crashes are related more to the APFS snapshots/file system errors I saw in Disk Utility. Once my mini is done doing a time machine backup (deleted old time machine backups and started fresh). I'll reenable some of those wifi options I disabled and see if the crashes start happening again. On a side note, this isn't the first time I've had issues with wifi cards Apple puts in their devices. I previously had a 2015 rMBP, and suffered from random networking lockups (would say it was connected but no network traffic). Tracked it down to an issue with connecting to access points/wifi routers using the Qualcom QCA988x chipset family.
So I've re-enabled "Wake for network Access" in the Energy Saver settings. I've had it re-enabled for a few days now and I haven't had a crash. For those still following this thread, check your disks with "First Aid" in the Disk Utility and reformat/reload to correct any errors.