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Mac mini 2018 Reviews Roundup: Long-Awaited Update Should Impress Fans and Pro Users, But Upgrade Options Can Get Pricey

NMBob said:
A $15 toaster is an appliance. A $1000, $2000, $3000, $4000 computer is not, it's an investment, unless he had plans to make computers for $15.
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No computer is an investment. It's a good that will lose value with time. That's not an investment and should NEVER be thought of as such. You'd be an idiot to invest in something that is recognized to depreciate quickly with time.

One MIGHT argue that a historic computer like the Apple I could be seen as an investment but even then any decent investor would remind them that it's a very poor way to invest your money and the return isn't anywhere near as certain as traditional investments.

Please don't tell others a computer is an investment. It most certainly is not.
 
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rumz said:
If all you want is 1tb of storage and don’t care about speed / performance, run an external ssd. (I know. I’d rather have that be internal too and not hanging off the back of my machine). I would bet money, however, that your $150 won’t buy anywhere near the same level of performance as what Apple is using. Is Apple charging a premium? You bet— they're Still going to hit their margins. But the gap is not nearly as big as you might imagine once you look for comparable parts (Ie not just storage amount but also speed, etc).

Take the RAM for example. $1400 to upgrade to 64gb is crazy, right? Well, if you buy a kit aftermarket it’s still $1100 — and $300 might be nothing to sneeze at, but it’s evidence that, for what you’re getting, the price is not outrageous.
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Good info!

I suspect, however, that the underlying issue is that this machine will be used for a wide variety of purposes. Some people actually WANT the mach-6-with-your-hair-on-fire performance. Many (mini?) people just want a solid office machine that runs MS Office and other apps really well. Is the ePCI storage that Apple is selling really top-of-the-line? I have no doubt. Would I be equally happy with middle-of-the-road? You bet!
 
ChrisMoBro said:
I'm using an old Steve Jobs quote and implying you're not maybe using it for CPU intensive tasks. All Macs have poor cooling capabilities because they were designed that way. Do some research and you'll realise ALL Macs suffer from thermal throttling to some extent (do you even now what TT is?)
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Yup. Do you?

Your turn. Please share your data.
 
I am learning nothing from these reviews. Both Mac Mini and iPad. The Apple keynote and the spec sheet are enough. I already know how fast Intel chips are, so the benchmarks are pointless. I know how fast NVME SSDs are. I already know what the T2 does. Etc etc. People's opinions on price, how "pro" they think things are or how pretty they find them seems like superfluous fluff. Not sure what my point is here. I just feel like I usually learn something new when I read reviews.
 
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The mini supports a maximum of 64GB, and you can upgrade the memory later, but Apple doesn't consider the Mac mini to be user-configurable, and it recommends that memory upgrades be performed by a certified Apple service provider.

Why can't the RAM be installed by the owner - as it was in the previous models?
 
That "caged"
doctor-don said:
The mini supports a maximum of 64GB, and you can upgrade the memory later, but Apple doesn't consider the Mac mini to be user-configurable, and it recommends that memory upgrades be performed by a certified Apple service provider.

Why can't the RAM be installed by the owner - as it was in the previous models?
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I think it's due to a partnership with AASPs. This way they can earn from upgrades, enduring the low margins of repairing products in warranty.
 
now i see it said:
Buying 16GB (2x8) DIMMS somewhere else, then going to all the trouble to take apart the mini to install it yourself — all to save $30 is rediculous.
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For $30 I might consider it. However, in Europe, Apple charges €240 (=$274) for the extra 8 GB. You can buy 2x8GB for 135 euros on Amazon. That's quite a significant difference of €105, plus you can sell the 2x4GB (if anyone is actually willing to buy them that is).

Already the Mac mini i5 starts at €1249 here (= $1426), so any reduction is welcome :p
 
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asiga said:
There's something suspicious with the development of the new Mini: More than a year ago, they said "they were working in it", and that it "wouldn't be so mini anymore"... but more than a year later, we see the same exterior design, with compact internals whose design is a matter of a few months... and it's as mini as always (except for the fact that modern Intel chips are 6 core, and that it's easy to put 64GB in a compact motherboard... but I wouldn't say "it's not as mini as before").

Do they want us to believe that it took several years to design this update? It's like they are designing iPads, iPhones, and iWhatevers all the time, and then in the last month they design a Mac update just to make everybody calm down.
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I honestly believe Apple took a bit of a U-Turn on the Mac Mini design. I think after the backlash from so many Pro users slamming Marketing's proposed product direction, that the product guys at Apple had it out with them, and seemingly won the argument. I'm sure the Mac team at Apple were instrumental at creating the Mac Mini that the user base were clamouring for (rather than the one the Marketing execs wanted to deliver).

I even suspect Phil Schiller got the huff, which is why Tom Boger did the keynote instead...

(This is my conspiracy theory also as to why the Mac Pro is taking so long - they've changed their original product vision - and decided to plot a course more in line with what users want, rather than what marketing wish to deliver).
 
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dmylrea said:
Oh, after a painful disassembly, I'm sure that PCI-e card can be changed, but would Apple take the easy route and use an off-the-shelf NVMe PCi-e card that is already available and blazing fast, or will they spend the time and R&D money and develop their own proprietary connector PCI-e card that has the same performance as an off-she-shelf Samsung, for example, but cannot be swapped out with anything off-the-shelf, nor purchased anywhere?

I'll wager on the latter...
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Because for every person that would purchase a high quality Samsung 970 EVO/PRO m.2 NVMe blade, there are at least 20 people who will buy an AData, Silicon Power or Team Group or some other value brand that may not be 100% compatible with macOS and APFS or does not offer the performance that you can get with Apple's solution.

Some of those people might even end up with an m.2 SATA instead of an NVMe blade because they woke up and saw a New Egg "Shell Shocker" deal, do not understand the difference and then get pissed when it does not work. That ends up being a waste of time for tech support and Apple.

Apple builds its own SSD controller now and what they soldered down is basically just a NAND package that can be swapped in an out. It saves time, money and heartache on the back end for users and their technical support staff. It also provides a consistent experience from Mac model to Mac model, at least within the same model group. I know that when I pick up a 15" TouchBar MacBook Pro that the SSD performance is going to be the same one device to another and so on.

DRAM sometimes has its own issues, but they are generally nowhere near as complex in troubleshooting as drive related issues. Apple has wrote custom firmware for every drive it has every put in a Mac since they time they started incorporating HDDs and SSDs inside of their Macs (March 1987)

Whether you like it or not, the way Apple has approached SSD/Flash Storage since 2010 (revised MacBook Air) or the 2012 15" Retina MacBook Pro has been the correct one. It has allowed them to control the end-user experience performance-wise and to know exactly what they are dealing with as they have switched over from HFS+ to APFS.

Hopefully, the storage in the Mac mini is a removable PCIe package than could be upgraded in the future, even if it ends up being an Apple part and need to be done at an authorized reseller.
 
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ruka.snow said:
In the lifetime the processor will be useful, the GPU will have been surpassed at least 3 times even if it was a top of the line RTX. The system with the minimal GPU needed to get it up with the fastest CPU they can shove in the space is the best use of the space. This way you can get a 580 and I can get a Vega 56 for instance. No compromises.
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Sigh, no.

1) They could have installed Iris Pro graphics instead of UHD which AT LEAST have some GPU dedicated RAM built into the system.

2) The expandability option comes from the ability to (theoretically, since only the Blackmagic seems to work without issues) an eGPU in the future... but that doesn't mean Apple shouldn't have if not included stock, at least offered a discrete graphics card option.
A) Adding an external eGPU on top of a dGPU would only make the computer better, not worse.

3) You're willing to compromise your money by overpaying for what Apple is giving you COMBINED with then having to additionally spend either $699 on the Blackmagic or $1,199.00 on the Blackmagic Pro. The numbers simply don't add up and it has already been demonstrably shown on the MacRumor forums ad nauseam that the new Mac mini is a bad value proposition.
 
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now i see it said:
Everyone having a tizzy about being able to swap out the standard 8GB of RAM with 16GB on their own because they'll be damned if they'll pay the "Apple tax" haven't priced out memory.

Buying 16GB (2x8) DIMMS somewhere else, then going to all the trouble to take apart the mini to install it yourself — all to save $30 is rediculous.

If you want 32GB or 64GB, well then you could save some good money. But 16? Not worth thinking about.
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That was the conclusion i reached when I was doing my research before ordering on 1st November. By then the potential difficulty of diy was being flagged up, and if anything is said to be even worse now.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
No computer is an investment. It's a good that will lose value with time. That's not an investment and should NEVER be thought of as such. You'd be an idiot to invest in something that is recognized to depreciate quickly with time.

One MIGHT argue that a historic computer like the Apple I could be seen as an investment but even then any decent investor would remind them that it's a very poor way to invest your money and the return isn't anywhere near as certain as traditional investments.

Please don't tell others a computer is an investment. It most certainly is not.
Click to expand...

An Apple store employee saw me looking at a MBP and asked if I was going to 'invest' in one. I put him right ;)
 
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OldSchoolMacGuy said:
No computer is an investment. It's a good that will lose value with time. That's not an investment and should NEVER be thought of as such. You'd be an idiot to invest in something that is recognized to depreciate quickly with time.

One MIGHT argue that a historic computer like the Apple I could be seen as an investment but even then any decent investor would remind them that it's a very poor way to invest your money and the return isn't anywhere near as certain as traditional investments.

Please don't tell others a computer is an investment. It most certainly is not.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that its not an ‘investment’ in the strict sense of the word, but since for some people who make money by the work they do, it is a business asset, and a very important one.
So I agree with him in that to call it an ‘appliance’ excessively diminishes its importance to many peoples workflows.
And for that reason I completely agree with him that it should be upgradable.
 
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OldSchoolMacGuy said:
No computer is an investment. It's a good that will lose value with time. That's not an investment and should NEVER be thought of as such. You'd be an idiot to invest in something that is recognized to depreciate quickly with time.

One MIGHT argue that a historic computer like the Apple I could be seen as an investment but even then any decent investor would remind them that it's a very poor way to invest your money and the return isn't anywhere near as certain as traditional investments.

Please don't tell others a computer is an investment. It most certainly is not.
Click to expand...

The only way it's 'an investment' is if you are going to use the computer primarily for revenue generating tasks (i.e. work) and the money generate will make the computer 'pay for itself'. Outside of that, it's a sunk cost.
 
xWhiplash said:
Ok these comments are very irritating. What exactly did you get for the $300 cheaper option? Crappy base processor and way too crappy 5400 rpm drive. Did anyone really buy the base model? Obviously not or Apple would have wanted to still include crappy HDDs to get more money.
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For that price, when I bought my 2010 Mini it included Dedicated ATI Graphics.

Same as when I bought a MBA that included a nVidia GPU in addition to the Intel GPU.

No there’s no dedicated chips on the cheaper Macs.
 
Shivetya said:
the 128G starting storage is not forgivable.
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It's a desktop computer. Adding external storage at your desired price and capacity (HDD or SSD, SATA over USB-C or PCIe over Thunderbolt 3) isn't difficult.

However, it would've been nice to see the switch to desktop processors mean the $799 2018 Mac mini has comparable CPU performance the contemporary base 15" MacBook Pro, as was the case with the $799 quad-core Mac mini in 2012.

Nope, Apple instead solders in literally the cheapest 8th-gen processor they can possibly find, the Core i3-8100. That's a disappointment you're stuck with for the entire life of the Mac.
 
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MacsRuleOthersDrool said:
Price it against a similar-spec'ed "small-form-factor" desktop, like an Intel NUC.

Oh wait. There aren't any!

Their "Enthusiast" model NUC has a 7th Gen i7 (quad core, not hex), ONE TB3 port, and is fugly as the day is long. Oh, and it STARTS at $883. Granted, it has 16 GB of RAM rather than 8 GB; but the rest of the machine is REALLY lame compared with the 2018 mini.
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The HP Elitedesk 800 G4 mini with a i7 8700T, 16GB DDR4 Ram, and 512 NVMe SSD is $1,099.00 on bhphotovideo.com
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1417745-REG/hp_4cb17ut_aba_800_g4_dm_i7_8700t.html

A Mac mini with similar specs, is $1,699.00. So, $600.00 buys Mac OS, a nicer case, and 4 thunderbolt 3 ports.

I've been running Solus on an Elitedesk 800 G3 mini for a year while waiting on the Mac mini refresh. For my office use on a 34" ultrawide display, Solus's desktop environment makes more sense. Instead of pinning menus for all applications to a far corner like the Mac, Solus allows menus to be contained in each app window, and the Solus taskbar can be converted to a dock that includes menubar apps or items. But in general, linux apps lack the polish of Mac OS apps. I'm torn. I'll probably get a Mac mini for my home setup once some real world extended use reviews start coming in. Font rendering and color space/monitor recognition issues were the final frustrations that caused me to jump platforms at the office. At home, the regression in cores and lack of 4k 60hz support on the 2014 mini was the deal breaker.

I would be interested to hear from any ultrawide monitor users how the font rendering is in Mojave now that sub-pixel anti-aliasing has been kicked to the curb by default. Also, whether Mac OS still thinks that any monitor plugged into a Mac mini through HDMI is a television forcing a limited color space until disabling SIP and installing monitor profiles through some python scripts. I'm hoping that Apple's acknowledgement that the mini is used by more than home theater users will have also led them to make different decisions regarding those defaults.
 
Here is an image of the insider:
dBpBWh1.jpg


From the MacWorld video:
https://www.macworld.com/article/3318501/macs/799-mac-mini-review.html
 
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