In 2007 I started watching Apple for Mac Mini updates. It didn't happen until late 2008. Every refresh of the Mini has been disappointing. When the form factor change happened it was interesting but the chips were still only coming up to match what other manufacturers already had out for many months. If history repeats it will be the same way again. Though it is time for the Thumderbolt 2 connector to make its debut in the Mini. Will they put a quad-core chip in the base model? We'll see.
OS X, is a wonderful OS, but it's only available on weak systems, systems that because of Intel Graphics have not been terribly capable. This problem extends to the new Mac Pro in that the graphics can never be upgraded.
If the Mini isn't beefy enough, why don't you simply buy a Mac Pro?
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, do not ruin this machine too by making it a little thinner and removing functionality and upgradability. It is small enough, just put Haswell in it and thunderbolt 2. Leave the form factor and functionality.
You have enough money Apple, don't take another money grab by forcing everyone to buy your WAY WAY WAY overpriced upgrades.
I wouldn't worry about that. It looks to me like Apple had plans for a Broadwell redesign and Intel messed them up. That's the only reason I can think of for waiting this long to finally refresh the Mini.
The 'mid-2014' Mini will probably have the same form factor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pmz
And for those that just don't underatand, there will never be a "mid range" tower in between the mini and the Mac pro. Price wise, it would undercut the iMac and Apple would much much much rather sell you one of those.
We run Avid Nitris on HP hardware. No problem with horsepower or speed at all.
I threatened to quit if they tried switching Pro Tools to Windows, but not because the HP workstations are inadequate. They're not.
That is a dedicated system hardware add on and I believe for Mac or PC, and very nice. The nMac Pro though, is an off the shelf, straight out of the box kind of thing. That was my point, which is pretty remarkable.
I've had my fair share of third party systems in Macs going back to the days of Radius when i beta tested versions of EditDV and used to email back and forth with Randy Ubillos (my hero) who wrote the software. Then through Matrox 100 for several years. Now with FCPro X and Mac. Never has a stock Mac been this powerful for video editing in my experience let alone one that is silent and lukewarm while rendering real time ... and 4K too!
The easiest way to tell time is to just leave an egg on your windowsill all year. If you wake up and it’s magically standing on end, you know it’s the...
...wait, do people pretend that happens on solstices or equinoxes? CURSE YOU, WINDOWSILL EGG!
Ah, the siren call of pseudo-science beckons all ye of simple and easily conned minds ... here we have snake oil, say no more, here homeopathy poisons you with memory water and chiropractors X-ray your subluxations, over there pins are stuck in your energy points and low and behold, eggs standing on end, it must be ... hard boiled? No, no , keep the vaccinations we want smallpox back, we read somewhere in a retracted report they were dangerous to one in a million, Please, join our church ... cross my palm with silver ... or make out the check to ...
Though it is time for the Thumderbolt 2 connector to make its debut in the Mini.
You're the third person I've seen mention a desire for a TB2 update on this forum in the last 24 hours. What is it you guys are doing that would benefit from what TB2 offers? What are you doing that exceeds the capability of TB1?
To me it is silent, I can hear the ceiling fan not the Mac Pro, and doesn't even get hot. Quite amazing.
I had to throw a very complicated 3D scene at it... full of trees, bushes and flowers, all individual instances, not replicas. Calculated indirect lighting, transparency, shadows, you name it I switched it on. A full 1920x1080 image that took 5 hours to crank out (not my normal, I was just having fun!). Only then did it raise the fan noise three or four times so that it was noticeable over the AC on the wall (in Japan we use single room slim types), which was set on quiet but can be heard.
Seriously, this baby is a work-horse.
I can only imagine tossing the same image at my Mac mini. It would probably have blasted into orbit within an hour.
My 2011 MacMini with SSD works well in my home theater, but my TV monitor is now 4k and the MacMini is not. It seems more than a little bizarre to buy another MacPro to use for mainly TV watching. How about a white MacMini using the same case as the MacPro with i7 Haswell, PCI storage, and one decent graphics card that can output 4k. A loaded 2012 MacMini will run about $1500. A new MacMini could fit both above and below that amount.
That is a dedicated system hardware add on and I believe for Mac or PC, and very nice. The nMac Pro though, is an off the shelf, straight out of the box kind of thing. That was my point, which is pretty remarkable.
Yes, the Nitris is a dedicated DSP unit, but that wasn't what I meant. Sorry if I was unclear.
For a variety of reasons, our latest Nitris system runs on an HP workstation computer, not a Mac Pro. It's a very capable, powerful computer. A visit to HP's web site will give you an idea of both how well their workstation machine competes with the Mac Pro and how seriously HP takes our market.
Yes, the Nitris is a dedicated DSP unit, but that wasn't what I meant. Sorry if I was unclear.
For a variety of reasons, our latest Nitris system runs on an HP workstation computer, not a Mac Pro. It's a very capable, powerful computer. A visit to HP's web site will give you an idea of both how well their workstation machine competes with the Mac Pro and how seriously HP takes our market.
How well does the HP workstation without any hardware add ons, just an NLE software package, handle 4K?
Though it is time for the Thumderbolt 2 connector to make its debut in the Mini.
You're the third person I've seen mention a desire for a TB2 update on this forum in the last 24 hours. What is it you guys are doing that would benefit from what TB2 offers? What are you doing that exceeds the capability of TB1?
TB2 is the minimum for 4K display output. Some people are buying 4K displays. The lower sized ones are more affordable:
For a variety of reasons, our latest Nitris system runs on an HP workstation computer, not a Mac Pro. It's a very capable, powerful computer. A visit to HP's web site will give you an idea of both how well their workstation machine competes with the Mac Pro and how seriously HP takes our market.
HP's marketing page is funny. They have quotes like:
"Our Mac was taking twelve hours to render one of these like, ten second little graphics, and with our new Z Workstation, the first one we did, it rendered in two hours – at full resolution"
"Comparisons based on rendering time with a legacy 2009 Mac Pro core compared with the current HP Z820 x core Workstation."
If you read the PDF, the main element in the switch to HP was what happened with Final Cut Pro. They didn't like transcoding media like you had to do with FCP7 so they went with Adobe software but the Adobe software runs on the Mac too and the new version of FCP doesn't require transcoding. Not only that they mention a 12-core HP machine with 48GB RAM but on the HP site, they go on about 24-cores and 512GB RAM, which is irrelevant because the spec they use is the same as the Mac. They have 12TB internal RAID, which is fair enough but all that media is stuck on one machine, the Mac Pro's setup means it can be shared very easily with other machines at full speed over TB2.
Even the visual effects case study, the guy here is talking about HP and their experience was using laptops, not the workstations:
He even said the laptops were the HP Elitebooks with 8-core or 12-core processors. You do get laptops with 12-core processors but I don't think HP sells them and Elitebooks especially are Ultrabooks. Yet he says they were doing things the Macs couldn't and it was just transcoding media - converting raw to DPX frames. It sounds like they were again coming from old Mac hardware.
The last guy with the Youtube videos was another FCP guy who switched to Adobe:
He moved to new hardware after transitioning to Adobe but his comparison point is a Retina Macbook Pro and an HP Z820 workstation:
"For years, I’ve been an Apple user however I was open to new hardware that could perform faster. Recently, I stepped into an HP Z820 system and found it performs faster than my current MacBook Pro Retina."
Duh. They wouldn't sell Mac Pros if the Retina MBPs were as fast as them.
As for the Nitris DX hardware, some guy here got it to work on iMacs:
How well does the HP workstation without any hardware add ons, just an NLE software package, handle 4K?
I have no idea, but since it can be ordered with Nvidia Quadro or Tesla graphics my *guess* would be that it's probably in the same league as the Mac Pro.
TB2 is the minimum for 4K display output. Some people are buying 4K displays.
TB1 won't do 4K? Maybe my math is wrong, but it seems like it should handle it with room to spare.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
HP's marketing page is funny. They have quotes like: [snip]
You gotta wonder WHO thinks that kind of thing is a good idea? ESPECIALLY when they don't NEED to do that, because if you look at the specs and pricing it's obvious that the machines stand very well on their own merit. They deliver similar performance at similar cost, with the possible advantage of more flexible configuration options. Resorting to unrealistic comparisons undermines the credibility the hardware probably deserves.
I don't wanna sound like an apologist for HP, particularly when I prefer the Mac Pro myself, but I honestly couldn't fault anyone for choosing one if it was better suited to their particular application.
TB1 won't do 4K? Maybe my math is wrong, but it seems like it should handle it with room to spare.
It can't. The total bandwidth of 20Gibps is fine, but it's only half that capacity, 10Gibps, for each direction, whereas TB2 bonds both channels so it can use the total bandwidth of 20Gibps for a single direction with DisplayPort 1.2 support. 3840 x 2160 with 24bpp at 60Hz is over 14Gibps of bandwidth just for display.
For this reason TB3 is important as it will double the bandwidth to 40Gibps which will allow for faster data daisy chained over the same cables when using a 4K display as well as an option for 240Hz. HDMI 2.0 also allows for 4K UHD at 60Hz since it offers 18Gibps where as HDMI 1.4 only allows 4K UHD at 30HZ, which is less than ideal.
You gotta wonder WHO thinks that kind of thing is a good idea?
The kind of company that made a $12.6b loss in 2012 and currently makes about 1/10th Apple's net income. I don't know why Apple's their target though. Apple has decent marketshare at the high-end workstation level but Dell is a bigger competitor, especially when you consider server hardware. Maybe they're afraid the market will try and make them follow Apple's design route and they know they can't. Remember when Apple's mobile competitors went on about physical keyboards, Flash, decentralized app stores. They don't any more though. HP's just delaying the inevitable. It's for their own good too but they always go through the bitching and moaning first.
ESPECIALLY when they don't NEED to do that, because if you look at the specs and pricing it's obvious that the machines stand very well on their own merit. They deliver similar performance at similar cost, with the possible advantage of more flexible configuration options.
That's the problem though, if you go toe to toe with Apple on spec and price, you're going to lose. The reason Apple can sustain the volume sales of their $650 flagship smartphone is because their brand has a reputation that is very difficult to match. If you have the choice between a PC and a Mac at the same price, most sane people would never buy the PC. Only people with a grudge to bear e.g 'wah, I didn't like the new FCP so I'm buying from HP now'.
3840 x 2160 with 24bpp at 60Hz is over 14Gibps of bandwidth just for display.
I see where I made my calculation error now. I won't mention what it was it because it's embarrassing! Let's just say that 4K at one frame per second would work just fine over TB1.
Comments
In 2007 I started watching Apple for Mac Mini updates. It didn't happen until late 2008. Every refresh of the Mini has been disappointing. When the form factor change happened it was interesting but the chips were still only coming up to match what other manufacturers already had out for many months. If history repeats it will be the same way again. Though it is time for the Thumderbolt 2 connector to make its debut in the Mini. Will they put a quad-core chip in the base model? We'll see.
If the Mini isn't beefy enough, why don't you simply buy a Mac Pro?
Is there a 'copyright lookalike law' out there that can prevent companies like Google to cache your webpages/site?
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, do not ruin this machine too by making it a little thinner and removing functionality and upgradability. It is small enough, just put Haswell in it and thunderbolt 2. Leave the form factor and functionality.
You have enough money Apple, don't take another money grab by forcing everyone to buy your WAY WAY WAY overpriced upgrades.
I wouldn't worry about that. It looks to me like Apple had plans for a Broadwell redesign and Intel messed them up. That's the only reason I can think of for waiting this long to finally refresh the Mini.
The 'mid-2014' Mini will probably have the same form factor.
And for those that just don't underatand, there will never be a "mid range" tower in between the mini and the Mac pro. Price wise, it would undercut the iMac and Apple would much much much rather sell you one of those.
Yep.
Hopefully if they do come out with a new MM it will be the same size as the old ones and not smaller yet.Faster processor also.
To me it is silent, I can hear the ceiling fan not the Mac Pro, and doesn't even get hot. Quite amazing.
That is a dedicated system hardware add on and I believe for Mac or PC, and very nice. The nMac Pro though, is an off the shelf, straight out of the box kind of thing. That was my point, which is pretty remarkable.
I've had my fair share of third party systems in Macs going back to the days of Radius when i beta tested versions of EditDV and used to email back and forth with Randy Ubillos (my hero) who wrote the software. Then through Matrox 100 for several years. Now with FCPro X and Mac. Never has a stock Mac been this powerful for video editing in my experience let alone one that is silent and lukewarm while rendering real time ... and 4K too!
Ah, the siren call of pseudo-science beckons all ye of simple and easily conned minds ... here we have snake oil, say no more, here homeopathy poisons you with memory water and chiropractors X-ray your subluxations, over there pins are stuck in your energy points and low and behold, eggs standing on end, it must be ... hard boiled? No, no , keep the vaccinations we want smallpox back, we read somewhere in a retracted report they were dangerous to one in a million, Please, join our church ... cross my palm with silver ... or make out the check to ...
Though it is time for the Thumderbolt 2 connector to make its debut in the Mini.
You're the third person I've seen mention a desire for a TB2 update on this forum in the last 24 hours. What is it you guys are doing that would benefit from what TB2 offers? What are you doing that exceeds the capability of TB1?
To me it is silent, I can hear the ceiling fan not the Mac Pro, and doesn't even get hot. Quite amazing.
I had to throw a very complicated 3D scene at it... full of trees, bushes and flowers, all individual instances, not replicas. Calculated indirect lighting, transparency, shadows, you name it I switched it on. A full 1920x1080 image that took 5 hours to crank out (not my normal, I was just having fun!). Only then did it raise the fan noise three or four times so that it was noticeable over the AC on the wall (in Japan we use single room slim types), which was set on quiet but can be heard.
Seriously, this baby is a work-horse.
I can only imagine tossing the same image at my Mac mini. It would probably have blasted into orbit within an hour.
My 2011 MacMini with SSD works well in my home theater, but my TV monitor is now 4k and the MacMini is not. It seems more than a little bizarre to buy another MacPro to use for mainly TV watching. How about a white MacMini using the same case as the MacPro with i7 Haswell, PCI storage, and one decent graphics card that can output 4k. A loaded 2012 MacMini will run about $1500. A new MacMini could fit both above and below that amount.
That is a dedicated system hardware add on and I believe for Mac or PC, and very nice. The nMac Pro though, is an off the shelf, straight out of the box kind of thing. That was my point, which is pretty remarkable.
Yes, the Nitris is a dedicated DSP unit, but that wasn't what I meant. Sorry if I was unclear.
For a variety of reasons, our latest Nitris system runs on an HP workstation computer, not a Mac Pro. It's a very capable, powerful computer. A visit to HP's web site will give you an idea of both how well their workstation machine competes with the Mac Pro and how seriously HP takes our market.
How well does the HP workstation without any hardware add ons, just an NLE software package, handle 4K?
TB2 is the minimum for 4K display output. Some people are buying 4K displays. The lower sized ones are more affordable:
http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Computer-UltraSharp-UP2414Q-23-8-Inch/dp/B00HALPPM0
HP's marketing page is funny. They have quotes like:
"Our Mac was taking twelve hours to render one of these like, ten second little graphics, and with our new Z Workstation, the first one we did, it rendered in two hours – at full resolution"
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/mac-to-z.html
Where they conveniently fail to mention that the Mac Pro they're talking about is a 2009 Mac Pro but put it in a subnote here:
http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA5-0362ENW.pdf
"Comparisons based on rendering time with a legacy 2009 Mac Pro core compared with the current HP Z820 x core Workstation."
If you read the PDF, the main element in the switch to HP was what happened with Final Cut Pro. They didn't like transcoding media like you had to do with FCP7 so they went with Adobe software but the Adobe software runs on the Mac too and the new version of FCP doesn't require transcoding. Not only that they mention a 12-core HP machine with 48GB RAM but on the HP site, they go on about 24-cores and 512GB RAM, which is irrelevant because the spec they use is the same as the Mac. They have 12TB internal RAID, which is fair enough but all that media is stuck on one machine, the Mac Pro's setup means it can be shared very easily with other machines at full speed over TB2.
Even the visual effects case study, the guy here is talking about HP and their experience was using laptops, not the workstations:
http://cinemawithoutborders.com/cinema-tech/3478-from-mac-to-hp.html
He even said the laptops were the HP Elitebooks with 8-core or 12-core processors. You do get laptops with 12-core processors but I don't think HP sells them and Elitebooks especially are Ultrabooks. Yet he says they were doing things the Macs couldn't and it was just transcoding media - converting raw to DPX frames. It sounds like they were again coming from old Mac hardware.
The last guy with the Youtube videos was another FCP guy who switched to Adobe:
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/devin-super-tramp-achieves-extreme-youtube-success/
He moved to new hardware after transitioning to Adobe but his comparison point is a Retina Macbook Pro and an HP Z820 workstation:
"For years, I’ve been an Apple user however I was open to new hardware that could perform faster. Recently, I stepped into an HP Z820 system and found it performs faster than my current MacBook Pro Retina."
Duh. They wouldn't sell Mac Pros if the Retina MBPs were as fast as them.
As for the Nitris DX hardware, some guy here got it to work on iMacs:
http://community.avid.com/forums/t/123539.aspx
Avid can make an adaptor for it if they want but they aren't doing so well financially so it can't be expected of them.
Perhaps Apple is waiting on their own 4K UHD display to be ready before releasing the updated Mac mini.
Buying my dad his first mac when the New Mac mini is released. Such a great little machine.
How well does the HP workstation without any hardware add ons, just an NLE software package, handle 4K?
I have no idea, but since it can be ordered with Nvidia Quadro or Tesla graphics my *guess* would be that it's probably in the same league as the Mac Pro.
Check it out: http://www8.hp.com/ca/en/campaigns/workstations/z820.html
It doesn't come cheap, though. And it doesn't run OS X.
TB2 is the minimum for 4K display output. Some people are buying 4K displays.
TB1 won't do 4K? Maybe my math is wrong, but it seems like it should handle it with room to spare.
HP's marketing page is funny. They have quotes like: [snip]
You gotta wonder WHO thinks that kind of thing is a good idea? ESPECIALLY when they don't NEED to do that, because if you look at the specs and pricing it's obvious that the machines stand very well on their own merit. They deliver similar performance at similar cost, with the possible advantage of more flexible configuration options. Resorting to unrealistic comparisons undermines the credibility the hardware probably deserves.
I don't wanna sound like an apologist for HP, particularly when I prefer the Mac Pro myself, but I honestly couldn't fault anyone for choosing one if it was better suited to their particular application.
It can't. The total bandwidth of 20Gibps is fine, but it's only half that capacity, 10Gibps, for each direction, whereas TB2 bonds both channels so it can use the total bandwidth of 20Gibps for a single direction with DisplayPort 1.2 support. 3840 x 2160 with 24bpp at 60Hz is over 14Gibps of bandwidth just for display.
For this reason TB3 is important as it will double the bandwidth to 40Gibps which will allow for faster data daisy chained over the same cables when using a 4K display as well as an option for 240Hz. HDMI 2.0 also allows for 4K UHD at 60Hz since it offers 18Gibps where as HDMI 1.4 only allows 4K UHD at 30HZ, which is less than ideal.
The kind of company that made a $12.6b loss in 2012 and currently makes about 1/10th Apple's net income. I don't know why Apple's their target though. Apple has decent marketshare at the high-end workstation level but Dell is a bigger competitor, especially when you consider server hardware. Maybe they're afraid the market will try and make them follow Apple's design route and they know they can't. Remember when Apple's mobile competitors went on about physical keyboards, Flash, decentralized app stores. They don't any more though. HP's just delaying the inevitable. It's for their own good too but they always go through the bitching and moaning first.
That's the problem though, if you go toe to toe with Apple on spec and price, you're going to lose. The reason Apple can sustain the volume sales of their $650 flagship smartphone is because their brand has a reputation that is very difficult to match. If you have the choice between a PC and a Mac at the same price, most sane people would never buy the PC. Only people with a grudge to bear e.g 'wah, I didn't like the new FCP so I'm buying from HP now'.
3840 x 2160 with 24bpp at 60Hz is over 14Gibps of bandwidth just for display.
I see where I made my calculation error now. I won't mention what it was it because it's embarrassing! Let's just say that 4K at one frame per second would work just fine over TB1.