There's an old 2011 Mac Mini driving a big TV that I use for writing, whiteboard, and watching videos.I have another Mac Mini, a 2012 model, that I use for writing in our family room. The best Samsung phones: Which model should you buy?On any given day, I regularly use four Macs. Six reasons I'm replacing my Surface Pro 7 with a Surface Pro 8 Ring, Echo and Astro: Everything Amazon just announced Microsoft warning: This malware creates a 'persistent' backdoor for hackers Another important consideration is what type of device, or form factor, you want: a laptop, tablet, desktop, or 2-in-1.That's a fully-equipped 27-inch iMac that I bought back in 2013. My main machine has always been the one where I produce the bulk of my work output. It's a nice machine, but I made the mistake of configuring it with an i5, so it's a bit of a lightweight.Also: No, Apple hasn't activated a secret Mac repair kill switch - yetAnd then I have my main desktop machine. I lived off this machine for three months last year when we evacuated Florida for hurricane Irma, and for the many trips back and forth to our new house here in Oregon while it was being fixer-upper'd.
Do I Have Room For Ms Office On My 128Gb Air? Upgrade For AboutIt does one 4K stream reasonably well, but just choked with four camera feeds.Giant PowerPoints: I make big PowerPoint briefings containing lots of graphics, slides, and data. This is what finally killed my iMac. But I use my main machine for seven main workloads:Video production: I use Final Cut Pro X to do multi-cam 4K video. Your workloads determine your computing needsI use all my machines for light writing, web browsing, keeping up with social networks, and email. To be fair, it's desperately needed an upgrade for about a year, but the hurricane and the big house move took precedence and I just didn't want to get a new machine until we were moved back into a permanent place. The iMac lasted five years.![]() Fortunately, running Parallels, I can cut and paste between both environments, which saves a ton of time.With a lot of my bigger projects, I've been craving a wider screen. I'm not doing quite as much work with this now, so I usually don't need more than four VMs open at once.Windows: From Windows Excel (which has features the Mac Excel doesn't) to a wide-range of Windows-only products, as well as Windows-based product testing, I use Windows almost as much as MacOS. I used to have four screens on my iMac and even that wasn't quite enough screen real estate to see everything.Coding: I support a number of open source projects, one of which manages donations for more than 10 thousand non-profits.3D modeling: With all the 3D printing and desktop fabrication projects I'm doing and documenting on ZDNet, I need to build some relatively complex 3D models.VM simulations: I used to do network simulations of up to 16 simultaneously-running VMs. That put me in wait-and-see mode for new Macs.As I discussed a few weeks ago, there were four scenarios for a new machine to meet my workload. The Mac would run Windows, and since I need to run applications on both, I couldn't just run out and buy or build any old Windows machine. The best fitFor me, the best fit was a Mac rather than a Windows machine. Here's what I boughtThe 2018 Mac Mini starts at $799 with an i3, 8GB RAM, and 128GB storage. It'll arrive on Wednesday. And I bought one last week. The MacBook Pro screen is too small for desktop use, and the iMac screen is unwieldy and heavy for most standard monitor stands.I really wanted a headless computer, and since the Mac Pro is missing in action, that meant a Mac Mini - if Apple ever upgraded it.To almost everyone's surprise, they did. When I have an assignment to work on, it's sometimes very time-sensitive and I need a machine I can rely on.Since I wanted an ultrawide monitor, the screens that come with an iMac or a 2018 MacBook Pro would have been more pain than gain. Download mac emulator os on windows 7The new Mac Mini also lags behind the 8-core Xeon iMac Pro, but that's five grand, just to start.Beyond the two hugely expensive pro machines, the new Mac Mini with the processor I chose appears to be faster in multicore performance than all the other Macs. Apple still sells that model for $3999, but everything else about the machine is totally out-of-date. In single-core performance, that's about 25 percent faster than my old iMac.Also: Here's why Apple doesn't really care about the Mac or iPadIn multicore performance, it still lags a bit behind the old 2013 Mac Pro 8-core Xeon processor, but not by much. To be honest, I would have liked an even higher performing processor, but this will still be a huge boost.Early Geekbench scores put the 2018 Mac Mini at 5512 for single core and 23516 for multi-core.In terms of single-core performance, that puts the Mac Mini at just below the 4.2Ghz 2017 iMac and above everything else. That added $200 to the price, bringing me to $1399. The Apple spokesperson I spoke to last week told me, "Yes, Mac Mini is configurable up to 64GB and uses industry-standard DDR4 SO-DIMMs. My preference is usually to buy gear when my workload needs it.Fortunately, the new Mac Mini allows for RAM upgrades. So, given a choice, I'd rather not spend on 64GB. I haven't pushed past about 24GB in any of my recent workloads. Right now, I need 32GB RAM. Apple charges way too much on storage, but it's not internally upgradeable. I'm honestly not entirely sure what I'll encounter when the Mac arrives, but I'm sure it'll be interesting.Stay tuned, because once the machine arrives, I'll do a piece on what it takes to add the RAM.Next is storage. That set me back $288 instead of $600.While Apple has not been entirely clear on what it means by "service providers," Tim Cook did go out of his way to state that the Mac Mini supports SO-DIMM modules. I then went over to Amazon and picked up some Corsair Vengeance Performance 32GB (2x16GB) 260-Pin DDR4 SO-DIMM (PC4 21300) RAM. This time, though, it was not about price, but about reliability. That machine was equipped with 1TB and I found that quite workable.So, while I certainly would have preferred to avoid paying the Apple storage tax for overpriced storage upgrades, I did pony up an additional $600 to bring my Mac Mini's flash storage to 1TB.Finally, there was another big decision. Even so, it was under 500GB. I also have a very large NAS with most of my other resources.Also: Storage on Apple's new devices for 2018 is more expensive than you might think CNETI checked my various machines and, as might be expected, the main workhorse iMac used the most. I use an external direct-attached RAID array for my video production and assets, so I don't need a huge amount of on-system storage. Quicken for mac digital download8GB RAM (to be upgraded with third-party sticks)All told, the bill for the machine itself was $1999. Also, worst case, since the machine has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, the worst case scenario is to throw an Ethernet adapter on the Thunderbolt and use it that way. I decided to go for it anyway, because it'll help future-proof the machine. I spent the extra hundred bucks and configured the Mac Mini with 10Gb.My only concern is that since Apple only has such a port on the iMac Pro and now the Mac Mini, will it work properly? Apple just doesn't have that much experience with this new port. But my NAS is capable of 10Gb Ethernet. I paid a buck less.It's rare (okay, never before) that Apple builds a machine that's pretty much exactly what I specified as what I need. And, finally, I suggested Apple price it at $2,000. I even suggested Space Gray (and got it, although I don't really care about shade of gray). I asked for a 10Gb Ethernet port (and I got it). I asked for Thunderbolt and USB-3 (and got it).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMary ArchivesCategories |