Apple’s new Mac lineup comes alongside announcements of an updated iPad line, which makes the device extremely more powerful. Additionally, the iMac Pro comes right after Apple told the press that a new Mac Pro was coming in the future. Apple firmly believes, and I agree, that Mac has many years to come.Technical specifications for the Apple Mac mini series.So well, in fact, that it took on a second life for many owners as a home media PC, a NAS server, and even as part of a compute cluster.But the 2018 Mac mini is a different beast. But the Mac mini was simple, it was cheap, and it did its job well. You could of course just buy an iMac, or a display stand for a MacBook Air or Pro. The Mac mini has historically been the budget option Mac for consumers who lived in Apple’s ecosystem, but liked the aesthetics of mini PCs, as well as the benefits of a full mouse, keyboard, and monitor setup. I’ve been using a Mac mini as my primary home computer for the last half-decade, and I love it for its simplicity and the tiny corner of real estate it takes up on my desk.But that’s precisely what makes evaluating the newest iteration of Apple’s smallest desktop computer so difficult.After all, costing pretty much the same amount of money as a Mac laptop, with its built-in display and keyboard, is a much different value proposition than a Mac that used to cost half as much as the next most expensive Apple computer.The most obvious judgement you can make about the new Mac mini is that Apple has smartly retained the design in its entirety. (This time around the RAM is user replaceable, while the SSD is not.)So the important questions now are whether the new Mac mini justifies its higher price, and even in the event it does, whether it offers enough value for the right kind of consumer to still be considered a viable budget option. You can spec out a lowly Mac mini all the way up to $4,199 if you really desire. In fact, Apple’s cheapest Mac has moved from a sub-$500 purchase to a $799 one, and much more if you want a larger solid state drive, a faster processor, or more memory.Choosing between the two, or shelling out for the optional i7, is the hardest and priciest choice you’re going to have to make because you will not be able to upgrade that component whatsoever. You also get a 3.5mm headphone jack and an Ethernet jack.For configurations, you have two options: the not-so-powerful i3 version costing $799, or the decently powerful i5 version starting at $1,099. On the back, you have an all-new port layout: four Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and one HDMI 2.0 port. It is essentially the same weight — it’s put on a couple of ounces — with the same dimensions as the 2014 model. It’s the same old Mac mini, in the familiar frame, but with a new and attractive space gray finish.
What Is The Lineup For The 2017 Mini Mac Lineup Comes(The iMac is bolstered by its discrete Radeon GPU, while the Mac mini relies solely on Intel’s integrated graphics.)The Mac mini’s lacking GPU means it’s slower for tasks like video editingPlus, because the new Mac mini has Apple’s T2 security chip, which also acts as a co-processor, the computer gets a huge boost in SSD performance for reading / writing of files and in the event you’re compiling code. For instance, we were able to export a five-minute 4K video with Premiere in a little under 15 minutes, which came to around 17 percent slower than the same exporting process performed on our 2017 iMac with its 32GB of RAM and an even faster i7. And even then, it became only a bit sluggish, and I never experienced a single app crash or even a pinwheel.Naturally, the new Mac mini outperforms the 2014 model in every single available metric, and it holds its own against mid- to high-tier MacBook Pro and iMac models from this year and last. And it’s been lightning fast in every other regard, choking up only when exporting a 4K file in Adobe Premiere Pro while keeping quite a few other apps open and running simultaneously. It is dead quiet during the most intensive of tasks, like editing 4K video while concurrently running memory-hogging applications like Chrome, Slack, TweetDeck, and my preferred web Gmail wrapper Wavebox. Storage constraints, on the other hand, can always be better managed with external drives.I’m currently writing this review on the i7 model, with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, and almost everything about this $2,499 machine feels like overkill. The new Mac mini can power up to three displays, including two ultrawide 4K displays via ThunderBolt 3 and one standard 4K monitor through HDMI, or one 5K display and one standard 4K. But not having experienced a single hiccup outside 4K video exporting is undeniably a result of the monstrous amount of CPU and memory I’ve been using on my test machine.With regard to ports, I can’t say enough for how pleasant it is to have a computer properly outfitted with the all necessary ports I use. Having not tested the base i3 model, I can’t definitively say whether all that extra juice is absolutely necessary to replicate what this machine does best, which I believe is still mid-tier Mac performance in an affordable desktop package. The Mac mini let you keep iMessage on your desktop, while providing just enough power and versatility to perform light video and photo editing and manage home files and media, all while providing a clean and uncluttered place to work and browse the web. So if you’re in the market for one of those and have your preferred peripherals ready to go, there is no real reason to shell out for an iMac over this new Mac mini unless you really want an all-in-one machine, or you’re especially concerned about needing the extra graphics performance.But the power of the Mac mini is secondary to the bigger-picture questions: who is this thing for at this point, and how much value can you get out of it over a comparable MacBook or iMac without spending thousands of dollars on upgrades?Those looking to upgrade from the 2014 model will be plenty pleasedFor most people, the old Mac mini became a cost-effective way to use macOS without feeling forced into a pricey iMac or MacBook Pro, and it was especially attractive for the class of worker whose office computer tended to be a MacBook Air. Also, the new Mac mini is now currently the only desktop Mac, besides the 5K iMac, that can output to an external 5K monitor using just a single cable. (It gets smoked by the iMac Pro in multi-core CPU benchmark testing and on GPU compute, but even the i5 version of the Mac mini can hold its own against the most kitted out MacBook Pro you can buy.)And sure, this computer is a very powerful little machine if you want to run all the numbers, and those willing to push it to its limits as a proper iMac replacement will certainly be pleased with the performance. But just for day-to-day use, having two USB 3.0 and four USB-C ports means you’ll never need the same cumbersome dongle adapter you’d require if you were simply docking a MacBook Air or Pro to a standalone monitor.This might normally be the place where I’d circle back to performance and tout the benchmark metrics and show off the bar charts, like the fact that the Mac mini has the second-highest single-core Geekbench 4 result, behind only the mid-2017 iMac with a quad-core i7. Setting up gmail for office 365 macAlthough there is one big caveat: I personally would probably find myself on the fence upgrading my own machine if not for already owning the necessary peripherals to unbox the machine, plug in, and be ready to go in minutes. Those looking to upgrade from the 2014 model will be plenty pleased with how much more superior this device is. The 2014 Mac mini was, and arguably still is, a great companion desktop for those on a budget.The 2018 Mac mini does all of that and more.
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