I've been hoping to replace my aging Mac Mini Server from 2012 for some time (really, an SSD would do wonders for it alone, I'm sure as hard drive operations are the only part that feels a bit "slow" at times (a quad i7 from 2012 really isn't terrible in 2018, oddly enough).
The new one looks good until I see the price of replacing my existing one with similar (albeit updated specs). For example, I paid $1100 for the one I have with a quad-i7, 8GB Ram and 2TB RAID 0. For 2012, this was nearly maxed out, I believe. $1100 was quite reasonable, IMO. To get the 6-core i7 with 16GB of Ram and a 2TB SSD, I'm looking at $2899 (a nearly even $3K with 10-Gigabit Ethernet) (take $200 off for only 8GB ram if you want a more even comparison). That's about 3x as much for mostly updated specs (16GB Ram is the new real minimum, IMO) and a modern hard drive instead of a rust drive (same storage, not more). After 18 years, it's about time they updated Gigabit to 10-gigabit (my WiFi is faster at close range now than regular Gigabit).
So while it's a nice computer, it's priced closer to what "used to be" the old Cheese Grater Mac Pro prices, only without all the expandability and upgradeability it came with. That questions in my mind what this new Mac Pro that's supposed to be expandable is going to cost.... (through the stratosphere, I imagine). And there's still the fact that even at $3000, this thing still basically has crap graphics compared to a PC with some gaming specs at a much lower price (you'd probably need to dual boot with Windows 10 to play games as gaming support has gotten a LOT WORSE the past 3-4 years since "Metal" was introduced as most companies don't want to bother to rewrite massive libraries of code for a handful of Mac gamers. And just when Steam was offering a LOT of gaming choices back in 2012-2014 for the Mac...a waste really).
Basically, it would need the external Thunderbolt III graphics card to make it even "decent" for PC gaming (in Windows really). So keep on adding to that $3000 price.... (e.g. $600 for a Sonnet Puck using the one card we know Apple supports fully). You're now pushing close to $4000 for a Mac Mini.... WOW. JUST WOW! And you wonder why people say Macs are overpriced. My god....
(And yes I have external storage connected already has well to the tune of 10TB so don't talk to me about the internal drive space; you need fast storage for things like apps and games, not rust speeds; RAID 0 made rust tolerable and OS X was much more tolerant of the rotators back in 2012 than it is now, IMO)
The new one looks good until I see the price of replacing my existing one with similar (albeit updated specs). For example, I paid $1100 for the one I have with a quad-i7, 8GB Ram and 2TB RAID 0. For 2012, this was nearly maxed out, I believe. $1100 was quite reasonable, IMO. To get the 6-core i7 with 16GB of Ram and a 2TB SSD, I'm looking at $2899 (a nearly even $3K with 10-Gigabit Ethernet) (take $200 off for only 8GB ram if you want a more even comparison). That's about 3x as much for mostly updated specs (16GB Ram is the new real minimum, IMO) and a modern hard drive instead of a rust drive (same storage, not more). After 18 years, it's about time they updated Gigabit to 10-gigabit (my WiFi is faster at close range now than regular Gigabit).
So while it's a nice computer, it's priced closer to what "used to be" the old Cheese Grater Mac Pro prices, only without all the expandability and upgradeability it came with. That questions in my mind what this new Mac Pro that's supposed to be expandable is going to cost.... (through the stratosphere, I imagine). And there's still the fact that even at $3000, this thing still basically has crap graphics compared to a PC with some gaming specs at a much lower price (you'd probably need to dual boot with Windows 10 to play games as gaming support has gotten a LOT WORSE the past 3-4 years since "Metal" was introduced as most companies don't want to bother to rewrite massive libraries of code for a handful of Mac gamers. And just when Steam was offering a LOT of gaming choices back in 2012-2014 for the Mac...a waste really).
Basically, it would need the external Thunderbolt III graphics card to make it even "decent" for PC gaming (in Windows really). So keep on adding to that $3000 price.... (e.g. $600 for a Sonnet Puck using the one card we know Apple supports fully). You're now pushing close to $4000 for a Mac Mini.... WOW. JUST WOW! And you wonder why people say Macs are overpriced. My god....
(And yes I have external storage connected already has well to the tune of 10TB so don't talk to me about the internal drive space; you need fast storage for things like apps and games, not rust speeds; RAID 0 made rust tolerable and OS X was much more tolerant of the rotators back in 2012 than it is now, IMO)
