Apple Announces Major Update to Mac Mini with up to 6 Cores, 64GB RAM, and 10GBE.

[Tamerlin]

If you want to be factually accurate, then quite simply the Windows world gives you significantly more powerful personal computers for the money than the Apple world.

Work is about getting tasks done and not a specific set of tools. When measuring the tools themselves then there will be an advantage to a PC.

The tools are there to help get the tasks done...

From a task perspective I can ingest, organize, edit, grade, render and export on less hardware and with less time dedicated per project.

And that's actually why I stopped caring about FCPX: it wasn't up to snuff for my work. Editing was fine, but for the rest I found it too limiting. At least until FCPX insisted on randomly offlining one or groups of clips that I'd been editing in the same project just the day before. The next day, a different group of clips... I got tired of dealing with that and just gave up, since I knew I wasn't going to be color grading in FCPX anyway. There's too much in the color grading suites for color grading that aren't in FCPX (which is far ahead of Premiere) for me to be willing to color grade in FCPX. That might change if FilmLight added a plugin for it.

Performance wise, it wasn't bad, but Resolve was faster on both my mac and on my HP... but most of the footage I work with is Redcode. I don't use ProRes or DNx much.

 

[homerc67]

Well I can say I'm not impressed with the new mac mini and the user experience has not been good, hopefully I just got a bad unit. Picked up one on release day and was downloading my iTunes library and all of sudden, no network connection (I'm hardwired in, not using WiFi). So I check my connection on my PC and no issues, connected just fine. I wait a few minutes and it seems I'm up and running again on the mac mini, resume my downloads and a few seconds later it is down again! I go through this process a few more times with the same results. I thought maybe my Ethernet cable is bad so I try another cable and get the same thing again. Ok, something is wrong here. How about downloading a 2 gig file from Google drive? Nope, fails about 1 gig into the download and the mac mini won't connect to the internet again. I hope my unit has a faulty Ethernet controller or Apple will be dealing with recalls or a firmware fix.

For reference I bought the base i3, 8GB model with 128GB of storage. Plan on taking it back and trying again with a new sample and will see how it goes.

 

[homerc67]

So far so good today, spoke to Apple on the phone and they said it might have been due to a bad install of the OS that was causing the issue.

 

[homerc67]

Really enjoying the new Mac mini after some initial difficulty. I am loving how quiet it is, I'd just gotten accustomed to the fan noise of my PC workstation but it sure is nice to put on my open-back headphones and not hear fan noise anymore.

 

[Guest]

Apple RAM is so crazy expensive. it is the only thing that keeps me from buying back in to Mac. I am sure there are rationalizations for it, but that is where I am at. I don't mind Mac being more expensive, but the RAM and to a similar degree, the storage are dizzingly expensive upgrades. I could buy two mac mini's for less than adding 32GB+ ram to one.

 

[Batutta]

Apple RAM is so crazy expensive. it is the only thing that keeps me from buying back in to Mac. I am sure there are rationalizations for it, but that is where I am at. I don't mind Mac being more expensive, but the RAM and to a similar degree, the storage are dizzingly expensive upgrades. I could buy two mac mini's for less than adding 32GB+ ram to one.

I have never bought Apple RAM. I always got the same specced ram from somewhere else and installed it. The last Mac Mini I bought had a nice removable bottom panel that allowed easy installing. The newer ones are a bit harder to open, but it can be done. The first Mini was a nightmare to open and install ram without breaking anything.

 

[homerc67]

Yeah, if I was going to max the RAM out I would go the aftermarket route. I bought it to use for enjoyment so it’s plenty of machine for that.

 

[puredrifting]

Apple RAM is so crazy expensive. it is the only thing that keeps me from buying back in to Mac. I am sure there are rationalizations for it, but that is where I am at. I don't mind Mac being more expensive, but the RAM and to a similar degree, the storage are dizzingly expensive upgrades. I could buy two mac mini's for less than adding 32GB+ ram to one.

Nobody buys Apple RAM unless they are forced to or uninformed. I bought 64GB of RAM from OWC for my new iMac for $619.00. The Apple option was $1,400.00 for the same. If you want an iMac Pro, you don't have a choice. But the Mac Mini now supports user upgradeable RAM and external T-Bolt 3 SSDs make for a fine, inexpensive system operating drive update.

 

[Thomas Smet]

where one buys the ram really depends on how much a user actually needs. Since the ram is upgradable in the future one doesn't need to lock in what they may use five years from now. Worry about it at that time which is the entire point of user upgradable ram. Get what you need today and expand in the future when the need arises.

16GB is only $30 more from Apple vs OWC. Due to the complexity of taking the entire Mac mini apart its not worth it to save $30.00. If one uses 16GB currently and its more than enough then just pay Apple for the 16GB now.

32GB is $270 more form Apple vs OWC. Thats a much higher premium but how many of us are that hard up to save $270 on a system that we use daily for work? I think we get sticker shock when we see the cost of the ram but we have to keep in mind 32GB and 64GB are expensive from a lot of places. Yes Apple charges more but then again they are doing the work and they are doing a custom build which takes more human resources vs an automated system meant to hit the store shelves and warehouses. If you had to take your computer to a shop to replace the ram how much would they charge you for the labor to do so?

64GB is $320 more from Apple vs OWC. Very high premium again but also not a value thats about to put people out of business or break the bank. I'm not even sure why anybody feels the need to have 64GB right now. No matter where you buy two 32GB sticks to have 64GB of ram its going to be expensive for decent quality ram. when it comes to a system we want 100% stability and skimping on the quality of ram is the absolute worst decision anybody could ever make.

Right now I only view the 32GB option as a tough pill to swallow. Any person that legitimately needs 64GB of ram probably isn't a person that even pays attention to an extra $320 or for that fact is even considering buying a Mac mini. Its cool we can upgrade to 64GB in the future when there is more of a need for it but honestly I think by the time we get to that point we will all be discussing a future computer anyway. Thats why I consider the 32GB the only difficult point right now. $270 is a lot of money but at the end of the day is it really that painful? I mean its just money and after a few weeks I'm sure most don't even feel it anymore. I know very few people that even really think about it after. I tend to have more important things to worry about then $270 for a system I plan on using daily for the next 5-6 years. Thats an extra $0.15 a day for the life of that computer.

As for the 2TB of flash storage why on earth does anybody need that on a desktop computer? Heck most editors won't even use 2TB of SSD for an edit drive. Especially the kind of flash storage at the industry leading speeds that Apple is using. Its neat that Apple threw in 2TB SSD as a build to order option but realistically less than 1% of 1% of Mac users would ever buy/need 2TB of SSD storage on a desktop computer. On a MBP one may make the argument that its too hard to mess with external drives while traveling the world but when it comes to a desktop it just sits there and doesn't move. Apple provides the option for those crazy enough to wan it but I'm sure they don't expect a ton of sales with 2TB.

 

[joema]

... I have run Resolve and FCPX on a wide range of macs and FCPX still performs better. From a task perspective I can ingest, organize, edit, grade, render and export on less hardware and with less time dedicated per project...

I also use FCPX but be advised that Resolve 15 has hugely increased performance, at least on the H264 material I've tested. It is the only NLE I've tested on Mac hardware which approaches FCPX responsiveness. It is actually faster at encoding in a few cases. It still doesn't have the deeply-integrated database orientation, so scrubbing through and organizing a big documentary is not as easy, but the Resolve "skimmer" is super fast.

Previously there was a general viewpoint that only Apple using their OS/hardware/app integration could make FCPX that fast, but Resolve 15 is cross platform and it now approaches FCPX interactive performance and exceeds it in a few encoding cases.

 

[AndreeOnline]

Apple RAM is so crazy expensive. it is the only thing that keeps me from buying back in to Mac.

James, I'm not sure what your comfort level is with computers, but here is a nice and clear video that shows you how to replace it by yourself in around 30 minutes or so: