The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

[jpietrzak8]

Keep on trying to convince yourselves that spinners are still OK. It is fun to watch. Yeah blah blah blah big storage cheap blah blah blah. But that is not the point.

Oh, SSDs are great! They are much faster than spinning drives in general, completely remove the seek-time delay in specific, and are far more resilient to kinetic damage (bumps, drops, etc.).

What I've kinda gotten sick of, however, is the "Cult of the SSD" here on MacRumors. Yes, an SSD will vastly improve long-term storage performance. Activities like bootup and application loading will improve as a result. But no, it won't make everything run faster, nor will it fix bugs in your software, nor increase the resolution of your monitor, nor cure hair loss nor remove unsightly acne from your skin.

People seem to think of an SSD as some sort of true Panacea, that you can drop this one device into a machine with a crappy CPU, a crappy GPU, and a minuscule amount of RAM, and suddenly it will perform as if it were a high-end machine. An SSD can only improve on what an HD does, no more and no less.

 

[EightyTwenty]

People seem to think of an SSD as some sort of true Panacea, that you can drop this one device into a machine with a crappy CPU, a crappy GPU, and a minuscule amount of RAM, and suddenly it will perform as if it were a high-end machine.

Well, it does kinda work that way.

 

[jpietrzak8]

Well, it does kinda work that way.

So, can I ask, what the heck do you do with your computer such that you spend all your time transferring data to and from long-term storage? You're not spending any time crunching numbers, or viewing graphics, or typing? Just sitting there watching progress bars move back and forth, back and forth?

I've got this theory that since Apple has constrained CPUs in their devices to only older, laptop-quality items; that they only provide integrated GPUs, or at most very low-power discrete GPUs; that they no longer allow you to upgrade RAM -- that Apple users have clung desperately to the only portion of the computer that Apple does allow them to upgrade, the storage drive. That no matter what pile of ancient, low-end components Apple hands you, if you can just upgrade that one single part, you'll have a machine that just screams. And so, the Cult of the SSD was born...

 

[therealseebs]

Anecdotally: I have a mini with a spinning-platters drive. Haven't used it much in ages, but I needed to have a mac to restore a backup to. Backup was originally from a laptop.

It is amazing how much slower it feels. It really is. CPU's not horrible, it's got 16GB of memory. So, say I click on the Firefox icon. On the SSD machine, I'm unlikely to notice a delay before Firefox is up and loading pages. On the old moving-parts machine, it takes long enough to notice and get annoyed. Booting takes roughly forever.

Once things are up, there's not that much difference, but I would never try to use this for, say, a mail client that's going to have 50k+ messages in a message store. It would be unusable.

And keep in mind, even on machines with SSD, drive access is still the slowest part of most activities. If you're using one of the reasonably-fast compression algorithms, for instance, compressing and decompressing are both going to be faster than disk access. (That's been true for a very long time; on a 68030 machine, I had a binary-compressor that would replace binaries with basically self-extract-to-memory archives of the binaries, and it made a lot of things load 2x-3x faster.)

And if you make the slowest part of most activities 10x slower or more, that's pretty noticeable.

 

[jpietrzak8]

It is amazing how much slower it feels. It really is. CPU's not horrible, it's got 16GB of memory. So, say I click on the Firefox icon. On the SSD machine, I'm unlikely to notice a delay before Firefox is up and loading pages. On the old moving-parts machine, it takes long enough to notice and get annoyed. Booting takes roughly forever.

Yup. You've definitely hit two instances of when you are forced to use long-term storage: loading the operating system, and loading an application.

So, let me ask what I ask what I ask everybody who likes to perform those two operations over and over and over again: why do it? The last time I booted my machine was, lets see... three days ago. Had a problem with my UPS, so I had to unplug the computer. Booted it up after that, and left it running. I generally only turn off the machine when I have to update the operating system, or when I have a power outage, so I normally only reboot about once a month.

Let's see... Chrome has been running now for 72 hours, 49 minutes. Thunderbird also 72 hours. iTunes for 26 hours.

I just don't understand why everyone seems so fixated on starting up an app, running it for five or ten minutes, shutting it down, and then starting it up again a few minutes later. Leave your computer running, leave your apps up, and voila! The pain of startup time only occurs once in a blue moon.

Once things are up, there's not that much difference, but I would never try to use this for, say, a mail client that's going to have 50k+ messages in a message store. It would be unusable.

Let's see... My Thunderbird e-mail client currently has about 100000 messages indexed (going all the way back to 2001). Some of these are archived locally, some stored on my IMAP account. Thunderbird does a decent job of indexing, and does so in the background; I never notice it while I'm using it.

And keep in mind, even on machines with SSD, drive access is still the slowest part of most activities.

I gotta say, drive access is not a significant part of most of my activities. Once my browser is loaded, it doesn't need to access the drive. My e-mail client may occasionally access the drive, but generally does so in the background; I'm fetching most of my non-archived mail over the net from my IMAP account. iTunes does access the drive, but only to stream audio files, and an HD can do that without breaking a sweat. My IDE can consume a lot of RAM and a lot of CPU, but rarely is it bound up accessing the drives.

Let's see... I can't recall any games, even serious ones, that spend a lot of time accessing the drive after they have loaded. Watching movies is the same as playing audio, it's streaming media that even HDs can handle easily.

I think the only activities I've ever seen in common use that are seriously bound to the drives are database-oriented ones, such as accessing a very large collection of photos. Something too big to fit entirely into memory, yet not easily indexed. Something where you really do need quick access to random areas of storage. I just don't run into these situations all that frequently.

What involves "most activities" for you?

 

[cypriot]

Yup. You've definitely hit two instances of when you are forced to use long-term storage: loading the operating system, and loading an OS.

So, let me ask what I ask what I ask everybody who likes to perform those two operations over and over and over again: why do it? The last time I booted my machine was, lets see... three days ago. Had a problem with my UPS, so I had to unplug the computer. Booted it up after that, and left it running. I generally only turn off the machine when I have to update the operating system, or when I have a power outage, so I normally only reboot about once a month.

Let's see... Chrome has been running now for 72 hours, 49 minutes. Thunderbird also 72 hours. iTunes for 26 hours.

I just don't understand why everyone seems so fixated on starting up an app, running it for five or ten minutes, shutting it down, and then starting it up again a few minutes later. Leave your computer running, leave your apps up, and voila! The pain of startup time only occurs once in a blue moon.



Let's see... My Thunderbird e-mail client currently has about 100000 messages indexed (going all the way back to 2001). Some of these are archived locally, some stored on my IMAP account. Thunderbird does a decent job of indexing, and does so in the background; I never notice it while I'm using it.



I gotta say, drive access is not a significant part of most of my activities. Once my browser is loaded, it doesn't need to access the drive. My e-mail client may occasionally access the drive, but generally does so in the background; I'm fetching most of my non-archived mail over the net from my IMAP account. iTunes does access the drive, but only to stream audio files, and an HD can do that without breaking a sweat. My IDE can consume a lot of RAM and a lot of CPU, but rarely is it bound up accessing the drives.

Let's see... I can't recall any games, even serious ones, that spend a lot of time accessing the drive after they have loaded. Watching movies is the same as playing audio, it's streaming media that even HDs can handle easily.

I think the only activities I've ever seen in common use that are seriously bound to the drives are database-oriented ones, such as accessing a very large collection of photos. Something too big to fit entirely into memory, yet not easily indexed. Something where you really do need quick access to random areas of storage. I just don't run into these situations all that frequently.

What involves "most activities" for you?

It seems like what you do with your mac can be easily done with an iPad. Some of us actually do work with those machines. I open and close excel, word, powerpoint documents, edit photoshop files, acrobat pro pdf files at the same time and render/edit audio files where I join them in those office documents. While doing this i copy and paste thousand times. On my second screen a safari browser and a chrome browser is open for reference.

I can count more things being done in an instant. You know what i really don't need mac pro because if my hackintosh with an ssd and a mediocre gfx card is capable any mini with ssd should be. I tried first with a hdd drive and it was a pain in the ass to wait between every action. This is based in my experience not some benchmark. I don't understand; why defend an old technology when a company has "courage" to remove headphone jack it should have courage to go all ssd. But wait they triple the price don't they? Just open your eyes man.

 

[Partron22]

It's not as if a Mini pulls much power; 6 watts idle, 15 or so under load.
Many people have wall warts in their house that pull that much.
My stereo Amp pulls 40 watts, silent. 15 is in the range where you can hang a solar panel/batterypack in the window connect it to an inverter and run off the grid.

 

[Miat]

So, can I ask, what the heck do you do with your computer such that you spend all your time transferring data to and from long-term storage?

Video processing. Average maybe 2-3 hours a day of Page Outs. Adds up.

Look forward very much to the day I can afford a 1TB SSD for my Mini.
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...almost certainly! It's always almost certainly!

It's almost certainly almost certainly.

 

[Cloudsurfer]

Oh, SSDs are great! They are much faster than spinning drives in general, completely remove the seek-time delay in specific, and are far more resilient to kinetic damage (bumps, drops, etc.).

What I've kinda gotten sick of, however, is the "Cult of the SSD" here on MacRumors. Yes, an SSD will vastly improve long-term storage performance. Activities like bootup and application loading will improve as a result. But no, it won't make everything run faster, nor will it fix bugs in your software, nor increase the resolution of your monitor, nor cure hair loss nor remove unsightly acne from your skin.

People seem to think of an SSD as some sort of true Panacea, that you can drop this one device into a machine with a crappy CPU, a crappy GPU, and a minuscule amount of RAM, and suddenly it will perform as if it were a high-end machine. An SSD can only improve on what an HD does, no more and no less.

Doesn't sound like you do much video editing. Moving to an SSD has vastly improved my FCPX experience.

 

[jpietrzak8]

Video processing. Average maybe 2-3 hours a day of Page Outs. Adds up.

Doesn't sound like you do much video editing. Moving to an SSD has vastly improved my FCPX experience.

Ok, you've got me there. I've never done video editing in my life. I mostly write, compile, and test C++ code, and yeah, most of that can be done without hitting the HD much...
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It seems like what you do with your mac can be easily done with an iPad.

I've yet to see a C++ compiler on an iPad (although I'm sure somebody's set one up by now). Recent iPads seem to have fairly hefty processors, so maybe you can do serious work on them; certainly, Tim Cook seems to want to push people in that direction...

Some of us actually do work with those machines. I open and close excel, word, powerpoint documents, edit photoshop files, acrobat pro pdf files at the same time and render/edit audio files where I join them in those office documents.

It's true that I've been avoiding the Microsoft Office applications; so, I'm guessing you either don't or can't keep Office up and running constantly? You can't keep all your documents loaded? And, messing with audio files is for some reason a disk-intensive process? (The only media processing I've ever really done is with Handbrake, and that is a CPU-bound process, not a drive-bound process...)

While doing this i copy and paste thousand times. On my second screen a safari browser and a chrome browser is open for reference.

That's... quite a lot of copy/paste. Also, why both Safari and Chrome at the same time? There's a lot of overhead involved in running two different browsers at the same time.

But in any case, yeah, it does seem that your work involves having a whole lot of memory-intensive applications all open at the same time. Certainly, more than I've needed to have open in most of the jobs I've had. So yeah, you'd get a lot more use out of an SSD than I would.

 

[Nospig]

What involves "most activities" for you?

I use mine for Xcode development but mainly as a build slave for building Unity projects. Involves thousands of small files that are always changing. On a 2011 Mini fitting the SSD knocked 25% off Unity build times. I think it would have been more on a faster machine but the CPU is pegged at max for 80% of the build.

 

[jpietrzak8]

I use mine for Xcode development but mainly as a build slave for building Unity projects.

While a very cool thing to do, I kinda suspect this is not the most common use-case for an Apple computer. (I think I would have instead given that task to a headless Linux-based white box optimized for that task...)

 

[JamesPDX]

I just received an email from Fry's Electronics advertising the base mini for $429, and the next one up for $579.

I was getting ready to jump in the car and head down to grab one, but then I started looking at the specs.

4th Generation processor? Thunderbolt 2? traditional hard drives? two years and no revisions? The last revision only upgraded the USB 3 and 802.11ac. The rest seems like downgrades.

All that aside is anyone happy with the base model with 4gb of ram and a 500gb drive? Or the 2.6 with 8gb of ram and a 1TB traditional drive?

Nope! Dream Vienna Symphonic Library/VEP6 server/Pro-Tools Mini for me: The fastest Skylake Quad-core or better, 32GB RAM, Dual Gb Ethernet, 3x-Thunderbolt, 5 USB 3, discreet graphics (or separate mobile graphics and optional Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth on BTO.)

 

[Nospig]

While a very cool thing to do, I kinda suspect this is not the most common use-case for an Apple computer. (I think I would have instead given that task to a headless Linux-based white box optimized for that task...)

I need to build iOS versions, still need a Mac.

 

[cynics]

Oh, SSDs are great! They are much faster than spinning drives in general, completely remove the seek-time delay in specific, and are far more resilient to kinetic damage (bumps, drops, etc.).

What I've kinda gotten sick of, however, is the "Cult of the SSD" here on MacRumors. Yes, an SSD will vastly improve long-term storage performance. Activities like bootup and application loading will improve as a result. But no, it won't make everything run faster, nor will it fix bugs in your software, nor increase the resolution of your monitor, nor cure hair loss nor remove unsightly acne from your skin.

People seem to think of an SSD as some sort of true Panacea, that you can drop this one device into a machine with a crappy CPU, a crappy GPU, and a minuscule amount of RAM, and suddenly it will perform as if it were a high-end machine. An SSD can only improve on what an HD does, no more and no less.

Lol @ Cult of the SSD.

Generally it's people trying to justify a purchase, I guess. It seems like a lot of people don't just prefer SSDs but literally despise HDDs (as if they aren't on a server right now that isn't using one lol).

SSDs have their shortcomings as well. Surveillance for example, a surveillance rated HDD is a requirement. HDDs are still better for use in a NAS specifically a NAS rated HDD. Generic media storage that can't play any faster then an HDD can read. Etc etc

In a Mac it's the preferred option but my next iMac will have a 3tb fusion just because I value capacity.

 

[now i see it]

The doubters of SSDs only doubt because they've never swapped out a spinner for a SSD. Once you do, the difference is night and day for everything. Sure, booting and app launch are way faster of coarse, but every time you open a folder of do -anything- (except something like 3D rendering), the SSD is soooo much speedier.

It's like real sex. Once you've experienced it... then you understand the rave reviews.

 

[Micky Do]

The doubters of SSDs only doubt because they've never swapped out a spinner for a SSD. Once you do, the difference is night and day for everything. Sure, booting and app launch are way faster of coarse, but every time you open a folder of do -anything- (except something like 3D rendering), the SSD is soooo much speedier.

It's like real sex. Once you've experienced it... then you understand the rave reviews.

I doubt that anyone doubts the benefits of SSD for many situations, but it's annoying the way SSD zealots overlook the benefits of HDD for a different scenario.

While snappy boot and app opening times may impress some, for others gigabits stored per buck are a more interesting metric. For many uses, once an app open there is little difference in use between SSD and HDD equipped computers because almost everything happens in the CPU and RAM. For others, where there is frequent delving into storage while in use, and/or many apps open with frequent changes between them, an SSD equipped computer will offer a significant advantage.

For me, with only a few apps open, and not being particularly demanding of any, coughing up a couple of days pay for a 500 GB HDD gives me the storage I need. It is also more cost effective than spending a couple of weeks pay on an equivalent SSD for performance I don't need.

For folks on the move with their laptop, the ruggedness of an SSD is attractive. For those whose desk top computer is seldom moved, it it is not an issue.

It is good to have the choice that some SSD zealots seem to want to deny others, for reasons best known to themselves.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404258,00.asp

The new Mac Mini will almost certainly continue to offer both HDD and SSD options, and probably Fusion Drive to cover the middle ground.

 

[robotica]

My main gripes with hard drives is data loss due to hard drive failure.
Not a problem if you back up regularly, but I am sure most of us have had a hard drive fail at some point that's resulted in data loss.
No moving parts is a huge bonus but negatives are higher prices for the same capacity.

 

[Boyd01]

The new Mac Mini will almost certainly continue to offer both HDD and SSD options

If there is a new Mac Mini.

 

[Nospig]

My main gripes with hard drives is data loss due to hard drive failure.
Not a problem if you back up regularly, but I am sure most of us have had a hard drive fail at some point that's resulted in data loss.
No moving parts is a huge bonus but negatives are higher prices for the same capacity.

SSD's aint foolproof. The 1 year old Samsung 840 EVO in my Windows PC died 2 days ago. No warning, no chance of any data recovery, just dead. I got to test out my backup strategy for real.

 

[jpietrzak8]

My main gripes with hard drives is data loss due to hard drive failure.

Can I ask, does this happen to you frequently? I agree that platter-based drives are far more fragile, and I wouldn't want one in a portable device if at all possible.

But I've gone through dozens of HDs in my life, and I can only remember three that have died on me (at least while I was using them; I haven't tested the ancient ones in my back room that have been gathering dust). Most have lasted me for a decade or more, long after I've switched over to a much larger replacement drive. If you are good to your HD, it can last for a very, very long time. (And I think that's true for pretty much any tool or device; treat them well, and they will treat you well. )

 

[Micky Do]

My main gripes with hard drives is data loss due to hard drive failure.
Not a problem if you back up regularly, but I am sure most of us have had a hard drive fail at some point that's resulted in data loss.
No moving parts is a huge bonus but negatives are higher prices for the same capacity.

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-hardware/ssd-and-hard-drive-reliability-1.html

A simple summary is that flash drives experience significantly lower replacement rates than hard drives. However, flash drives experience significantly higher rates of uncorrectable errors than hard drives. This can mean the potential loss of data, so steps should be taken to ensure no loss of data.

Other reports suggest the same. HDD or SSD, back up is advisable.

If there is a new Mac Mini.

Almost certainly coming, albeit not so frequently as in days of yore, and more likely to evolutionary than revolutionary. The same can be said for all personal computers these days, as they enter a more mature phase of their existence since they first arrived on the scene some 40 years ago. Nowadays IT encompasses a much broader church too, much to the dismay of some here it seems.

 

[DesertSurfer]

The new HDD vs. SSD is almost certainly coming.

 

[robotica]

Can I ask, does this happen to you frequently? I agree that platter-based drives are far more fragile, and I wouldn't want one in a portable device if at all possible.

I'd say about 20/25% of my time as an IT contractor is taken up replacing failed hard drives.
Some of them are older than 10 years old some of them are much newer and every brand out there. So a very mixed bag really.

I agree with that everyone should have a good backup which would probably be on a standard hard drive due to cost!

 

[cynics]

The doubters of SSDs only doubt because they've never swapped out a spinner for a SSD. Once you do, the difference is night and day for everything. Sure, booting and app launch are way faster of coarse, but every time you open a folder of do -anything- (except something like 3D rendering), the SSD is soooo much speedier.

It's like real sex. Once you've experienced it... then you understand the rave reviews.

I can't speak for everyone but I don't think anyone is doubting the performance of an SSD, at least I'm not (I have them) just its difficult to illustrate the benefits of an HDD around here.

For example, I have 14 tb of storage in my NAS. Would it make sense to use SSDs? Even if you were filthy rich its still nonsensical given the limitations imposed by a network.

I have over a terabyte in iTunes as well. Does it really make sense to use an SSD? Its not like it will offer better movie playback performance, albeit initially copying the movie into iTunes would be faster. But even then Apples PCIe SSD's are EXPENSIVE, imo hardly worth the cost of purely media storage.

Don't get me wrong the benefits of an SSD are very pronounced just not the perfect solution for all circumstances.

One needs to ask themselves where their bottleneck in performance is. For me its with the CPU since I encode so much videos, even the fastest CPU commercially available can't out write a HDD's read speed (assuming you arent just repackaging the video).

I still stand by a Fusion drive being a good alternative if capacity is important to you.