Audacity on a 2009 Mac Mini

[bobcat3000]

Hi,

I'm involved with using the program Audacity for narration and I'm interested in recommendations on which Mac Mini to purchase, purely for editing.

All recordings are made in my 'studio' (lol, hall cupboard) on a 2013 base model Macbook Air. I currently have an Intel Nuc for my day-to-day desktop use, but I would like to be able to edit within Mac OS at my desk and use the magic trackpad, which really helps with editing.

The first gen Magic Trackpad requires Mac OS X Snow Leopard v 10.6.4, which limits me to the 2006 models and newer. However the 2006 - 2007 Mac Mini models use Intel GMA 950, which I'm guessing will be woefully inadequate in outputting to my 2560x1440 Dell UltraSharp U2515H.

Would the 2009 Mac Mini provide a smooth experience in usage of Audacity alone (no other programs would be used) and would the Nvidia GeForce 9400M be able to cope with output to a Dell UltraSharp U2515H, or should I consider a newer model?

Not sure if it matters as we're talking Unix here, but some of the files being worked on will regularly be 20 - 30GB in size.

 

[now i see it]

The 2010 Mac Mini runs Snow Leopard. It's the last Mac Mini that does. SL is the OS it was shipped with. The 2010 a SUPERIOR machine compared to the 2007/2008 Mac Mini in many ways. I had one of those. Don't buy one of those... even if it's free. The fastest 2009 Mac Mini was also good, but the graphics and wifi are faster and better on the 2010.

You can partition the drive in half: one partition with Snow Leopard, the other with El Capitan. The best of both worlds. You can easily boot into either one. That's how I've done it on an internal 500 GB SSD and it works great.

You need to get the original Snow Leopard 10.6.4 Mac Mini restore DVD that came with the 2010 Mac Mini if you buy one. eBay.