Be sure to let us know how that works out for you.
At the end of the day, seems like more time will be wasted trying to get audio/video drivers etc. to work than time will be saved by a faster computer
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Aren't we getting a bit obsessed over hardware?
- Thread starter johngwheeler
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Be sure to let us know how that works out for you.
At the end of the day, seems like more time will be wasted trying to get audio/video drivers etc. to work than time will be saved by a faster computer
Ultimately it comes down to knowing ones workload and the applications one uses to complete that work. Generally speaking the 2014 Mini's are upgrades to the 2012 Mini except for those who can benefit from the quad core CPU.
There are many people who have chosen the quad core CPU because the work they perform benefits from it. With the update they no longer have a quad core option. While you can say "Buy an iMac or Mac Pro" presumably people chose the Mini because it offered the best value proposition. Some will move to an iMac but I doubt many will step up to the Mac pro given its entry level price. Others can move to alternative platforms but they prefer OS X. Basically a class of people who were very happy with the Mini find themselves in a disappointing situation. I see no problem with their expressing their frustration.
There are many people who have chosen the quad core CPU because the work they perform benefits from it. With the update they no longer have a quad core option. While you can say "Buy an iMac or Mac Pro" presumably people chose the Mini because it offered the best value proposition. Some will move to an iMac but I doubt many will step up to the Mac pro given its entry level price. Others can move to alternative platforms but they prefer OS X. Basically a class of people who were very happy with the Mini find themselves in a disappointing situation. I see no problem with their expressing their frustration.
Go for it if mucking around with computer hardware and software is your thing.You may finish up with bragging rights to the best specs for a few less bucks. It may even out perform all comers and you may even have a need for such a beast.
I can do without the hassle. Something that just works does it for me.
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While it's true that the 2014 Mac Mini will be faster for most general tasks, it seems unlikely it's true for tasks that use a lot CPU or can take advantage of GPU, such as FCP X rendering and video encoding in general.
The fastest 2-core Mac (13" rMBP w/ 3.0Ghz i7) geekbenches 7190 (64-bit multicore). It would have to bench over 9124 to beat my 8-core Mac Pro. Then there is the GPU: even the lowly 5770 beats any integrated GPU out there in OpenCL performance (correct me if I'm wrong), and the Mac Mini doesn't even have the Iris Pro.
Am I wrong to think my 2007 Mac Pro is the better machine for FCP X?
Based on raw CPU speed alone (700MHz in sheer clock speed plus the 10-20% differential from Sandy Bridge to Haswell), it'll be around 50% faster for everything I do while consuming less power. It will also support things like USB 3 which I care about and 802.11ac which benefits me since I have a current gen airport extreme.
I've gotten a ton of use and value out of my 2011 and expect to get a decent resale value for it. 3 years is a long time to have any PC in my house.
2007 Mac Pro
1.33 GHz FS Bus
667 MHz Memory bus
vs.
2014 Mac Mini
5 GT/s DMI "system bus"
1600 MHz Memory bus
Your 2007 will bottle neck whereas the 2014 Mac Mini will not. Geekbench will not show you that. If I had a 2007 Mac Pro and was looking to "upgrade" I would not be looking at the Mini's as you are actually stepping down rather than up. I would say in real world performance a high end 2014 Mac Mini will encode faster than your current MP.
To me it's not so much the specs, though I do like the quad core and am disappointed that they discontinued that option, as much as it is not liking the direction of everything they make becoming non user-upgradable.
I'm hoping to pick up a refurb, but I am clearly done with the mini lineup if this is a permanent step for Apple, which I highly expect it is. I use several minis as servers and the ability to swap drives, improve RAM etc is important to me.
I'm hoping to pick up a refurb, but I am clearly done with the mini lineup if this is a permanent step for Apple, which I highly expect it is. I use several minis as servers and the ability to swap drives, improve RAM etc is important to me.
Not really. This is a hardware forum. If I want to discuss what I do with the hardware I go over to the Photoshop forum at Adobe.com.
Good to know, thanks. As long as the Mac Mini performs better I'm ok with stepping down. The Mac Pro line is overkill for me, though I'm pretty happy getting 7 years out of this machine. I'm tired of having to do EFI hacks to run current OS X and I want things like USB 3.0 and Bluetooth 4.0 LE (for Continuity / Handoff) without any hassle, otherwise I'd keep using my Mac Pro. The Mac Mini appears to be an easy model to sell, so buying on major refreshes and selling the old one seems like a reasonable way to stay current.
Keep an eye out on barefeats.com. They perform real life benchmarks such as with Photoshop and FCP.
Two different sockets on haswell
The new Mac mini has no quad core option as the dual core and quad core mobile processors use different sockets. This is a production decision.
Secondly the Mac mini was always designed as a small cheaper desktop solution using lower power mobile parts, think of it as a 13 inch laptop without the screen. If you look back over the past Mac mini specs the quad core was an anomaly in the line up. They have just gone back to their original vision for the machine.
Thirdly from apples point of view why would they want to put people off buying their desktop class quad core processor equipped iMacs with a quad core Mac mini.
Lastly no company has to make what YOU want, if you want a quad core equipped small computer go and buy one there are some out there, it amazes me the outrage that some people have when this particular company doesn't cater for their specific needs. Get over yourselves.
The new Mac mini has no quad core option as the dual core and quad core mobile processors use different sockets. This is a production decision.
Secondly the Mac mini was always designed as a small cheaper desktop solution using lower power mobile parts, think of it as a 13 inch laptop without the screen. If you look back over the past Mac mini specs the quad core was an anomaly in the line up. They have just gone back to their original vision for the machine.
Thirdly from apples point of view why would they want to put people off buying their desktop class quad core processor equipped iMacs with a quad core Mac mini.
Lastly no company has to make what YOU want, if you want a quad core equipped small computer go and buy one there are some out there, it amazes me the outrage that some people have when this particular company doesn't cater for their specific needs. Get over yourselves.
I don't max out the cores all the time, but I do some of the time and when I do max them out I want the quad core performance which is significantly higher than dual-core CPU performance.
My 2011 Mac Mini Server has quad-core. It's not due for an upgrade but my 2009 Minis are getting quite old now.
A Mac Mini with more than 4 cores would be nice.
Comical! I am guessing you aren't aware how to run a business. I've never known a company that has lasted that has released a perfectly good entry-level product (these are not pro or semi-pro machines) and then felt the need to apologize for that.
Personally, the entry model is a pretty decent entry level model, and the mid-range model looks to be the bang for the buck model. I'm much less impressed with the high-end offering but I'm positive it will fit the bill for some consumer.
If you don't like it, spend your money else where. Good luck!
Perhaps I missed it but I was under the impression you were only using this as a remote RDP server. That's not a very compute intensive workload and a new system wouldn't improve on it.
RDP or no, applications like Office, simple web browsing, etc will overall be faster due to a faster CPU and (at least the potential for) improved disk transfer speed.
Contrary to what may be popular belief, increase in IPC per core and clock speed actually do produce measurable positive impact in applications that aren't thread limited. Increasing core count isn't the only way to increase performance and since I'm not doing anything all that thread intensive, this should be a notable upgrade in performance whether I'm sitting at it or connecting remotely, the inherent latency of RDP not withstanding.
I appreciate your interest in my use case, however.
I almost pulled the trigger on one of these last night. Glad I didnt. The mid range model is a bit pricey. Education store, with a 256 SSD mid range model was coming out to $900. Seems a bit pricey. I'd rather wait for refurbs of these to show up than pay full price. I picked up a 2013 2.6 rMbp with apple care till 2017 on ebay for 1k I'll use that with a hinge dock, then look at the next upgrade.
Actually, the dual core CPUs that Apple picked suit your needs better than the alternative quad cores. Why? Because they see a LOT less power.
I'm in a similar boat. Your 2011 mini and mine have the exact same upgrades (although I added the CalDigit TB dock a while back to gain 3x USB 3.0) I went to my local Best Buy today to grab one of their last two 2012 2.3Ghz Quads. Alas, they were no where to be found in the store!
It was a bit of an impulse decision, because I'll probably be better off with a mid-level 2014. Yes, I'll pay the premium to get the built-in SSD and RAM. I had more beachballs than I would have liked when I first installed the Samsung SSD, and even the RAM. When you get it from Apple, you're odds of beachballs and general bad behavior from the hardware decrease quite a bit. Plus, I don't like that they (effectively) zapped TRIM support for aftermarket SSDs with Yosemite.
I'm kind of counting on a performance boost from PCIe vs. SATAIII, and maybe faster memory, vs. a 2012 Quad. Transcoding video is only 5% of my Mac use, and I do have a pretty powerful Windows 7 box if I'm in a hurry to transcode. I think the Iris graphics in the mid-level 2014 will give you a bit more longevity than the HD4000 graphics, for standard computing uses.
Seconded... my 2011 Mini still works great. Only issue is that the HD3000 struggles with the 27" monitor at times, although Yosemite seems to have actually improved UI performance somewhat on the old GPU.
The other thing I want is USB 3.0, but other than that my 2011 is still speedy.
I'll trade up my 2011 for a faster 2012 model (even my current one is quad-core) and give my wife my 2011 to replace the old 2007 mini she's currently using.
Everybody gets an upgrade!
I noticed this as well. My HD3000 used to sputter on fast web page scrolls, both in Chrome, as well as Safari. But now, it is silky smooth. I am using a 24" 1920x1200 Dell U2410.
Fair point, but what I was referring to was the tendency to only look at specific benchmark results (e.g. Geekbench) when making decisions about hardware.
Most of us know that whilst a common benchmark is a useful tool for comparing some aspects of a system, it does not reflect every aspect of a computer's performance.
To illustrate, I have a 2011 quad-core Mini (2GHz) and a 2013 i7 MacBook Air.
The Mini will do a Handbrake encode about 20% faster than the MBA - and that's with all 4 cores maxed-out. it's a useful increase if you do a lot of heavily multi-core work.
However, the MBA feels quite a lot faster for most productivity tasks. General responsiveness and graphics performance are noticeably better than the Mini. I put this down to faster single-core speeds (3.3GHz turbo vs. 2.6GHz for the Mini), faster PCI-e SSD (vs a first generation SATA 3 SSD in the Mini), faster memory and buses in the MBA, and HD5000 graphics vs HD3000 in the Mini.
If I'm running multiple VMs or server processes (web & application servers, database, Java apps etc.), then the Mini is better (all cores utilised). I also have 16GB on the Mini and only 8GB on the MBA - this is very important for VMs, which run like a dog if they start to use swap space.
So it's horses for courses. The MBA is a great go-to machine for non-multi-core apps that don't eat too much memory. The Mini is slower but has more grunt when running lots of parallel services.
I actually use the two together, using the MBA as the screen and "workstation", and remote connecting into the Mini to run the server processes.
It would be nice to have it all in one machine, but I guess I could always do that with rMBP 15 if I wanted to pay for it! (but then I lose the super-portable MBA....always a compromise!)
"Spec chase", really? Expecting reasonable hardware is a spec chase? Apple tends to have some seriously low spec/$... people aren't expecting the world. But 5400 RPM hard drive and lack of quad-core CPU on a $1000 desktop strikes me as a little too far.
While you say they are appliances that do a job very well, it's debatable. They now do less than they could before due to lack of CPU power. How is that progress? Even the iPad RAM issue you mentioned... Safari tabs reloading constantly cause for a less usable/enjoyable experience, all for the sake of a little spec (and programming).
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I'm not convinced that people cross-shop Mac Mini and iMac (or Mac Pro, for that matter). Apart from base price alone, none of the reasons the Mini appeal to buyers really apply to the others.
Of course they don't. However, you're going to see even more of this as "ecosystems" become more solidified. People are upset precisely because they want to stay with Apple, and are likely engaged in their products and services. That's why it upsets them that there is now a massive hole in the lineup (headless, <$3k, quadcore) that was previously filled.
We're talking about tech, in a tech forum... people who have been dedicated to and supporting Apple for decades are allowed to be disappointed by moves that they feel are disrespectful to their customers. Charging $300 for a very minor CPU upgrade, soldered RAM, eliminating capability, etc... can all be seen that way.
As for your fourth argument you are right. No company has to but in the long run they ought to. Why is this even a point of discussion? Because apple is pushing (the price of) a new screen through their customer's throats. Agreed, if you just want to write a letter you can go mini. More demanding users are being pushed towards iMac and pro. When they decide on a new machine they are forced into buying a new screen, speakers, cam, etc = iMac or a pro which specs they do not need. A truly customer focused firm would launch a great screen along. Apple did not even bother to. Some smartly remarked apple sees a computer as an appliance and for some it is. Others though are willing to spend apple tax for an apple screen and an apple mini. They however feel the current compromise is a heavy price to stay in the ecosystem. Do take a look at what an i7 iMac costs. So every upgrade you MUST buy everything new. Apple could offer insane compatibility among their screens and their computers, sold apart and as a whole. Forcing customers is mostly a bad idea. So yes, some customers feel exploited. And the golden rule of doing business is to exploit your customers but never let them realize being exploited. If it weren't for macOS's stability only an apple religion would justify this approach of some of apple clients. And the people needing the appliance? They would probably never have upgraded the mini so apple would not have seen a major shift from iMac to mini. Sorry, the downgrade left some people out of a reasonable choice. Hence, in the long run it is a bad move.
People are upset not because they are "spec chasing". Spec chasing would be demanding higher specs just because the competitor has higher specs, or just for bragging rights.
The step down from quad core to only dual core in the mini yields a significant and tangible performance hit. Yes, the average consumer won't notice or care for their everyday facebook and email, but a large portion of the Mac mini consumer base are actually people that will USE the extra CPU power, and not just want quad core because it sounds better on a spec sheet.
And no, the Mac Pro at over 4x the cost is not a viable or sensible option for these buyers.
This is not the same as people crying about the specs of an iPhone or iPad. In the case of the iDevices, the SoC is custom designed to work in tandem with the OS to extract the most performance, and in the real world it works just as well as the competitor's off the shelf 2.x Ghz quad core chips, if not better.
The step down from quad core to only dual core in the mini yields a significant and tangible performance hit. Yes, the average consumer won't notice or care for their everyday facebook and email, but a large portion of the Mac mini consumer base are actually people that will USE the extra CPU power, and not just want quad core because it sounds better on a spec sheet.
And no, the Mac Pro at over 4x the cost is not a viable or sensible option for these buyers.
This is not the same as people crying about the specs of an iPhone or iPad. In the case of the iDevices, the SoC is custom designed to work in tandem with the OS to extract the most performance, and in the real world it works just as well as the competitor's off the shelf 2.x Ghz quad core chips, if not better.
I think a computer like the Intel NUC D54250WYK would have been a far cheaper solution for you while at the same time being a lower power machine than the Mac Mini you've bought (the i5-4250U in the NUC I mentioned has a max TDP of 15W, while the i5 and i7 in the two higher-end Mac Mini 2014 models have a max TDP of 28W).