Good question (except for the disparagement), My old 2012 Mac mini server didn't noticeably throttle, the fans would kick on, but were very quiet. intel has lowered tdp (the upper chips are 65 w) dramatically and the thermal system has been redesigned, so I would bet there is not much noise and not much throttling. In fact, one writer was complaining about no 8-core option, but the 8-core just released by Intel, are 95 w chips, they might be too hot for the design.
Just remember that Intel's TDP figures these days are kind of meaningless, as was discovered with the 2018 15" MBP. When pushed, they take a lot more power and generate a lot more heat.
But, I'm hoping with the added cooling capacity, and lack of a dGPU, it will be able to keep itself cool enough. (Note: personally, I'm more concerned about longevity/reliability than throttling... I've had a couple MBPs kill themselves over the years from pushing them a bit too hard. I've not heard that with minis, and this one should be even better in that regard... I hope.)
My point is - know what you are getting into. If you have the time and inclination it's great. I now have a toddler and between a busy job, and family commitments I wouldn't dream of building a Hackintosh again.
Exactly. If you don't enjoy tinkering with the technical aspects of it, it kind of un-does some of what we pay extra to get out of Macs. The problem had been that Apple really had nothing, but now, hopefully they do.
At $999 CAD for the entry-level Mac mini, I'll be buying zero of them. Sorry Apple. Not a budget computer. Try again?
Umm, I'm not sure it is meant to be a 'budget computer' and Apple isn't marketing it that way. That said, when you consider that it appears to be faster than anything but the $5800 CAD (lowest refurb price) of an iMac Pro, it suddenly doesn't look all that bad any more, especially at under $2000.
Prior to this announcement, I had been resigning myself to having to spend $2-3k on a fairly old Mac Pro, or $3k+ on a 13" MBP + eGPU. Now, I get to save the money on the aspects of the MBP I wouldn't even use, and have a more powerful (probably quieter, more reliable) machine as well.
It might not be a great deal for an ideal 'budget computer' but it certainly is what a lot of we prosumer-pro users have been wanting for a long, long time.
I am wondering if consumer i7 CPU could sustain long hours of run! Last time I computed hundred of thousands of prime numbers on Macbook Pro 15", it stopped in the midnight!!!
If this 2018 mini could do the job, it could saves many hours for those who need Xeon Linux backebd.
Yeah, that is the big question. I'm sure hoping so, but am going to wait until some of the hands-on reviews are able to put it through its paces in that kind of way. Unfortunately, I've lost a couple MBPs in the past by pushing them too hard. I don't want a repeat of that.
I have a lot of my group running MBPros tethered to a screen the whole day. For them, they would probably be better served by keeping their laptop at home for when working at home and travelling and having a base config mini for work use, syncing relevant files via Dropbox or using our network.
Exactly, I wonder how many current (especially professional) MBP owners hardly ever use the keyboard, screen, etc. because they are always docked. And, I wonder how many of them would now buy the mini given the choice? It will be interesting to see what happens.
My MacBook Air pretty much sits in clam-shell 95% of the time. So, I'm hoping to replace it with one of these, and then get an iPad for mobile use (or, I'd just keep a laptop for mobile use if I needed what it provides over an iPad).
I honestly don't understand the allure of the mini for existing Mac users. It's too expensive to be a reasonable media server choice, too under-powered to be a pro workstation, and obviously lacks the portability of a laptop. It honestly seems like most experienced users would be better off with either waiting until Apple releases new Pro towers or going an entirely different route for their particular needs.
Well, I sort of agree with your use-case scenarios, but there are whole other segments of use where it is quite perfect.
Yes, it's kind of an expensive media server considering some of the other options out there - IF you have another machine to be the server or do the crunching. An Apple TV, etc. doesn't do that kind of thing. So, what's the other choice? Non-Mac?
Yes, while it isn't an iMac Pro or upcoming Mac Pro, it also doesn't cost $5000+. There are a huge segment of pro and prosumer users who don't need a workstation, but still need reasonable performance.
Yes, it isn't as
usably portable as a laptop (though it's quite portable), a lot of people don't need that either. If it isn't needed, you're paying a lot of extra money for the screen, keyboard... not to mention compromise in the cooling system or other aspects to have that portable setup. As I mentioned above, I bet a lot of these MBP owners have it in clamshell hooked to a monitor a large percentage of the time anyway.
If one didn't need to work on the train, for example, a mini might be easier to toss in one's bag and just have a monitor/keyboard/trackpad at work and home. In that sense, it's pretty portable.
But, as a few others have already chimed in, there are tons of other use-cases for which it is quite ideal.
