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The 2018 Mini and why it will be my last Mac
- Thread starter InuNacho
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I use 32 bit apps on Monterey by installing crossover ($60) and then installing the windows version. Works great.
A very healthy attitude. Macs and Apples products aren't the best option for all cases and situations. I keep various hp models running BSD on my network. Would not want to even try replacing those with Macs.
On topic though, yes, Apples willingness to burn the bridges behind them can be really frustrating, but ultimately I think it is the best strategy. Just look at Windows, x86 and various other products where obsessive backwards compatibility has been a source of endless security holes and forced constraints on new functions.
I keep a few old models around for this purpose. Though I have to admit it was a really long time since I powered some of them up. Oh, actually I used an old PowerBook G4 with OS 9 to access an old FireWire disk about half a year ago! Put the files on the BSD file server and then pulled what I needed from the M1 mini.
Unless you need the old devices constantly, or often, keeping an old mini or laptop around isn't that much of a hassle. Put the new mini on top of it. Or put the old computers in a box in the closet. They don't take up that much space anymore.
I have a PowerBook G4 and a PowerMac G4 in the closet. Unfortunately, both are dead now.
Also have a few more recent vintage machines that still work.But I have some very expensive old CAD and 3d Modelling software that doesn't run on anything newer than Mountain Lion. It still runs on my 2012 Mini, but runs much faster in a Mountain Lion virtual machine on my 2018 Mini. Same thing for some expensive database software that I now run in a Sierra VM. Much more convenient to get this all on the newer Mac where it works alongside of my current software. That's the great thing about the 2018 Mini... I couldn't do this on Apple Silicon!
Had a quite lot of old files in a milk crate full of firewire disks that I migrated to a 5tb hard disk awhile ago. I found the fastest/easiest way was to use USB if the old drives had it or to pull the disk from the old enclosure and put it into a newer one with USB. In the end, there were only a few where I needed to use firewire and that was handled with a thunderbolt adapter.
This is interesting, because I was really disappointed from 2016 to 2020. I even had serious thoughts about what other laptop I would be able to use because I didn't want a new MacBook with the shιt keyboard and almost no ports. It was not looking bright at all since I won't run Windows and GNU/systemd, and BSD support is pretty terrible on most laptops. However, 2020 was a turning point. Now Apple seems (to me) to do all the right things. Sure, not all the terrible decisions will be reversed, at least not all at once, but at least I feel like I don't have to get a different kind of laptop and spend 40 hours setting up a working BSD system.
I don't know much about music production (I can play the violin though), so this may be a ridiculous question, but can't you use a virtual machine with the appropriate OS and device passthrough? Or is the latency too high to be usable?
It's not just an Apple thing - happens everywhere. Many of the features in my car, such as Google Maps, no longer work as Google dropped support. I had to replace a perfectly good Brother printer because they decided not to update the software for it.
See no need to keep support for firewire drives, even though think I do have some. It is extremely slow. The number of people still using those drives is probably a percentage with zeros to the right of the decimal point. If I need access to a firewire disk I just remove it from the enclosure and put it in another. Keeping obsolete ports around takes up development resources and hardware space, the latter likely resulting in fewer current, more useful ports.
That's one of the reasons I like Apple. They clean up their garage regularly so that you have space for that new Ferrari.
I actually keep a Quicksilver G4 around to run my Nikon LS2000 scanner and its coveted batch scan attachment. It runs off a SCSI PCI card.
As much as I like the Quicksilver, I'm not a huge fan of keeping around a 22 year old computer running for hours while doing projects. I have upgraded the fans and thermals but with a propriety PSU (at least I believe it is) and other increasingly hard to get parts, it makes my switch to a Dell Workstation with the required PCI slot all the better.
I know there are PCIe-PCI adapters but there is no way to get that on a modern Mac unless its Mac Pro.
Mac mini 2018 runs Mojave and is much better than 2018 MBP.
I still think its the devs fault. 64 bit is common in Android, windows and macOS. It's been 4 years.
OBS dropped 32bit support on its latest version. Apple moves too fast for music industry
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Nothing in life is perfect. Things change. My friend once offered me $1k to switch to an Android full time for a month. I said no, not if it’s full time as in I cannot touch my iPhone. His thing was if I used the Android I would fall in love with it. But I know there are good things about Android but they don’t have the ecosystem. Then he offered the same thing to give up the Mac and solely use a Windows PC. Again I declined. There are apps that I would lose productivity. The $1k wouldn’t help me.
The point is we all have our preferences. If we work with a Windows PC, we may never see the greatness in the Apple ecosystem, but once we buy the iPhone and then see how great the AirPods and iPad all work together, we are going to switch to a Mac.
Forget about accessories unless you need them for work. If you do, buy a really nice cable management system and love the Mac again. The new M1 Macs are amazing. The M2 MBA is incredible. The Mac Studio will run circles around your Mac mini. Just suck it up and make the upgrade.
The point is we all have our preferences. If we work with a Windows PC, we may never see the greatness in the Apple ecosystem, but once we buy the iPhone and then see how great the AirPods and iPad all work together, we are going to switch to a Mac.
Forget about accessories unless you need them for work. If you do, buy a really nice cable management system and love the Mac again. The new M1 Macs are amazing. The M2 MBA is incredible. The Mac Studio will run circles around your Mac mini. Just suck it up and make the upgrade.
Does a Max mini user have that issue? Do you think Apple adds PCIe to the new Mac Pro with M2 Extreme SoC? I say they have something to allow people to change or add things they specifically need. That’s maybe the top 5% of Mac users.
Yeah they brought back the ports(HDMI, magsafe, SD Card reader) with the 2021 MBP. The MBP 14", 16" and Mac Studio have lots of ports.
I am glad they did cause otherwise i cannot stand USB C only macbook
No thats China enforcing rules on Apple and other tech companies to say "Made in Chinese Tapai".
ANY company does busniess in Taiwan and ships to china, the suppliers have follow these new rules.
So AMD, Intel and Nvidia and others like samsung, Qualcomm have to follow these rules as well.
Those articles put Apple in the headline to get clicks and don't forget other companies will do the same.
Blame China or just don't buy new tech cause this is the new "normal".
MIDI murf pedal respond to standard Midi CC which is non-proprietary. You could simply program and control the it through your DAW or even a decent hardware sequencer.
Or you could sell it for $1200 resale prices and make a profit $$$ these days
Or you could sell it for $1200 resale prices and make a profit $$$ these days
Personally, the Mac Mini have been the best value in terms of cost/year and resale price. I'll likely keep my 2018 until it dies and the 2012 as well since they are workhorses and use very little energy. If you ran a full PC, it would cost you way more for the energy costs.
For my Mac mini, I did spend for a good external NVME enclosure ($80) and a nice stacked mini hub ($60). When I upgrade, I just move it over and I haven't lost any money.
The main root cause is that you're trying to game with a Mac/eGPU and it simply won't be satisfying solution for you. Apple Silicon has the capability but the developers aren't looking to support it so it won't happen. I gave up a while ago ... just go with a console or PC and keep the Mac mini for everyday tasks/server duties since the total cost of ownership is so low.
For my Mac mini, I did spend for a good external NVME enclosure ($80) and a nice stacked mini hub ($60). When I upgrade, I just move it over and I haven't lost any money.
The main root cause is that you're trying to game with a Mac/eGPU and it simply won't be satisfying solution for you. Apple Silicon has the capability but the developers aren't looking to support it so it won't happen. I gave up a while ago ... just go with a console or PC and keep the Mac mini for everyday tasks/server duties since the total cost of ownership is so low.
MacOS Mojave debuted September 24, 2018, and most people probably didn't install it until 2019 or 2020. You posted your OP in August, 2022. --Essentially you were declaring a 2yo-old OS "obsolete" because the planned-obsolescence fairies at Apple want you firmly on their throw-away-culture carousel where more and more money is sucked out of you yearly as everything "obsolesces" faster and faster.
Solution: Find a fast i7 machine with an SSD made between 2012 and 2019, Carbon Copy Clone a Mojave installation into an HFS+ partition, and enjoy CS6 Photoshop Extended launch times of two seconds. Then just ignore Apple for another five or ten years (at least until EvilBigTechCo finds some way to kill the internet on Mojave). Then shift to a Linux distro that faithfully clones every last aspect of the MacOS (save the copywritten bitten-apple logo) including the ability to migrate from your old MacOS.
As far as I am concerned, Macs stopped being Macs in 2017 when Apple decreed that there would no longer be a startup chime.
that's... hysterical. am having such a good experience on my silicon macs. i would never go back.
but should be interesting when intel macs no longer get updated apps (3rd-party or apple). & have fun when you can't sign into your bank without updating your OS...
also, you can turn the startup chime back on, if that defines what a mac is to you 🤔
Does your Photoshop Extended launch in two seconds?
Are the silicons "nice"? Opinions vary. See also this, and read between the lines: "...Apple announced their plan to move away from using Intel processors and to develop their own Arm-based System on a Chip, which brings together the central Processor unit (CPU), Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) and Random Access Memory (RAM all onto one chip...." Well that sounds sweet and lovely on the surface, but what does it really mean, in an ulterior sense? I'll tell you: Aside from leaving intel, Apple wants all the money that was formerly going to third-parties for GPU and ram upgrades. It doesn't want you upgrading a base-model dog machine, it wants you spending a thousand extra for a few more miserable gigabytes of ram so their wimp-model SSD doesn't choke (see first link). Meanwhile, the guy with a 27" iMac has four open slots to fill at his leisure.
In short, they are "closing" the Mac architecture, both hardware and software, for good. You computer of the future will be a big, fat, non-upgradable, non-serviceable tablet running subscription-model software.
The smarter boffins of the world aren't taking it laying down.
Interesting timing for this thread to be resurrected. a few days ago I replaced one of my iMacs that died with a base M2 iMac Mini.
A bit of background...
Back in 2013 I bought a base 21" iMac (8GB RAM / 1TB HD). After 4 years (2017) the spinner HD was near death and I bought an external USB-C 1TB SSD, cloned the HD to it, and used the SSD as the replacement drive. It was far faster than when it was new.
Not knowing how well or how long this solution would last, I bought a base 2017 21" iMac (same base specs) and used THAT as my primary desktop system. The older iMac was then repurposed as my Plex server and using target display mode, served as a 2nd display for my 2017 iMac.
This combo worked well, but then in 2020 the HD in the 2017 iMac was exhibiting similar near-death symptoms, so I overrode it with an external 1TB SSD. The result was another success.
Last week, the 2017 system froze. Powered down, reset PRAM and SMC with no change. Booted up recovery and ran some diagnostics... it was toast.
My long-term plan has been to migrate away from Apple products, but I wasn't far enough in my migration to make the jump now (I still heavily rely on Pixelmator and Pages) so I was going to bite the bullet and buy another Mac OS device. $1600 for a base iMac was just insane... I shopped around and found one for $1400 but that was way too much. (I could afford it but it wasn't a good value to me).
That's when i stumbled across the M2 Mac Mini. $549 for the base model. I already had a very nice 24" Samsung monitor, and the Macally keyboard and mouse that I was using on my iMac are still great, so for the price of the Mac Mini alone, I could be back up and running.
Wow. What a very nice setup! I then purchased, and just received, a Satechi dock for the Mini. This gives me all of the ports and placement that I needed... BETTER than the iMac.
Shifting over from Intel to Apple Silicon was not seamless. I lost the ability to run my virtual machines (VirtualBox for Apple Silicon is still in development) so I've had to move the VMs over to one of my Windows systems. But other than that a few other minor apps that aren't support and don't run, it is so far, a very enjoyable experience.
I told myself that I wouldn't buy any future Apple computers, but the Mac Mini offers the type of value that is very un-Apple-like...
A bit of background...
Back in 2013 I bought a base 21" iMac (8GB RAM / 1TB HD). After 4 years (2017) the spinner HD was near death and I bought an external USB-C 1TB SSD, cloned the HD to it, and used the SSD as the replacement drive. It was far faster than when it was new.
Not knowing how well or how long this solution would last, I bought a base 2017 21" iMac (same base specs) and used THAT as my primary desktop system. The older iMac was then repurposed as my Plex server and using target display mode, served as a 2nd display for my 2017 iMac.
This combo worked well, but then in 2020 the HD in the 2017 iMac was exhibiting similar near-death symptoms, so I overrode it with an external 1TB SSD. The result was another success.
Last week, the 2017 system froze. Powered down, reset PRAM and SMC with no change. Booted up recovery and ran some diagnostics... it was toast.
My long-term plan has been to migrate away from Apple products, but I wasn't far enough in my migration to make the jump now (I still heavily rely on Pixelmator and Pages) so I was going to bite the bullet and buy another Mac OS device. $1600 for a base iMac was just insane... I shopped around and found one for $1400 but that was way too much. (I could afford it but it wasn't a good value to me).
That's when i stumbled across the M2 Mac Mini. $549 for the base model. I already had a very nice 24" Samsung monitor, and the Macally keyboard and mouse that I was using on my iMac are still great, so for the price of the Mac Mini alone, I could be back up and running.
Wow. What a very nice setup! I then purchased, and just received, a Satechi dock for the Mini. This gives me all of the ports and placement that I needed... BETTER than the iMac.
Shifting over from Intel to Apple Silicon was not seamless. I lost the ability to run my virtual machines (VirtualBox for Apple Silicon is still in development) so I've had to move the VMs over to one of my Windows systems. But other than that a few other minor apps that aren't support and don't run, it is so far, a very enjoyable experience.
I told myself that I wouldn't buy any future Apple computers, but the Mac Mini offers the type of value that is very un-Apple-like...
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macusers survived the move from the power PC to intel, and seem to be doing just fine with the move to apple silicon.
my mac experience (since the power pc) has never been better than it is right now (some OS bugs notwithstanding). the M2 air and the M2 pro mini are the best macs i've ever owned (and i've owned many).
making things better means change, and change should not be so scary. but use what you want, and the rest of us can move forward...