We're really talking about the operating-system here. (That last link was to a guy setting up Mojave on an M2 laptop.)
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The 2018 Mini and why it will be my last Mac
- Thread starter InuNacho
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
yes, and my experiences on these new macs depend on an operating system... ventura. which is pretty great. i've encountered some bugs, but... surprise! every version of every OS has bugs.
so i stand by what i am saying; i'm having my best mac experience to-date...
I think the new Mini M2 is a great move forward from 2018. I would certainly like one, I just do not need one. I have a 2018 i7 32GB Ram self installed, 512GB SSD.
My use is mostly office apps, CAD file viewing, occasional iMovie project, team center meetings, web browsing. I am going force myself to ride the ride with this machine. It still feels as peppey as day one. Coupled with a eGPU really sets this up into a still very capable computer.
Thsee are my GeekBench 6 I ran a few weeks ago.
My use is mostly office apps, CAD file viewing, occasional iMovie project, team center meetings, web browsing. I am going force myself to ride the ride with this machine. It still feels as peppey as day one. Coupled with a eGPU really sets this up into a still very capable computer.
Thsee are my GeekBench 6 I ran a few weeks ago.
I've learned my lesson about being an unpaid system beta-tester. (When Apple stops "updating" an OS is when I start considering using it.)
Your Mini's i7/32gb/500ssd specs are identical to my 2013 27" iMac, so I'm interested in comparing its results to your five-year-newer machine. Perchance will it run Geekbench 5? (Version 6 won't run in Mojave, and the app states that results from different versions aren't comparable.)
EveryMac shows Geekbench 5 (and older) scores for the 2018 i7 Mini
everymac.com
Your 2013 iMac has an i7 CPU, but it's an earlier generation (Haswell) than the 2018 Mini (Coffee Lake). I'm really not a hardware guy, but suspect these are very different.
Mac mini "Core i7" 3.2 (Late 2018) Specs (2018, BTO/CTO, Macmini8,1, A1993, 3213): EveryMac.com
Technical specifications for the Mac mini "Core i7" 3.2 (Late 2018). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.
everymac.com
Your 2013 iMac has an i7 CPU, but it's an earlier generation (Haswell) than the 2018 Mini (Coffee Lake). I'm really not a hardware guy, but suspect these are very different.
It wouldn't hurt to try one. You might be surprised and if you are proven right, you can always return it to Apple. I have a 2018 i5 Mini upgraded to 32GB with the 256GB SSD that supposedly is much faster than the slowpoke base M2 Mini. Startup times are cut in half and apps launch twice as fast. So you might want to try one and base it on your own personal experience. I actually like the M2 Mini, it still works like an Intel Mac.
when does apple ever stop updating an OS? after the first official release, we see beta updates, followed by official point updates.... until the next OS.
an OS is always a work-in-progress, and there are always bugs. it's the nature of software...
Your Mini is a hex-core versus my quad, and running DDR4 versus my DDR3. In the GB5 results, you're a little over twice as fast by the processor numbers, and so your Mini would be better at long, processor-intensive tasks such as multi-hour video renders where saving a lot of time is very useful. Other day-to-day activities, the machines are probably comparable (boot-up time, application load-time), since those rely on the speed of the SSD.
The Mini's real star is its dual HDMI-2 ports, letting you hook up massive 4k wall-displays.
And the "next OS" is usually (but not always) just the last (finally completely bug-fixed) OS with a pile of flaky new features thrown at it. Part of the reason that Mojave runs so well and is so well-liked is that it's basically just High Sierra (itself a polished Sierra, itself a polished El Capitan, itself a polished Yosemite, itself a polished Mavericks) with "features" you can easily turn off (SIP, MRT, Spotlight, notifications, etc) or evade altogether (such as APFS) if you don't want them. Apple's California OSes from Mavericks to Mojave are essentially similar to Windows 10.x/y/z graduations (but we're smug, so we give our 0.n versions actual names). Mojave was the last OS with a really long pedigree of backwards-compatability. Then Catalina ramrods mandatory APFS and simultaneously kills 32bit, thus representing their first real "new" OS in a long time -- analogous to Windows 11 after a decade of W10. (But wait! W11 still supports 32bit apps! And you can still make bootable-backups!)
yes, apple does throw sometimes 'flaky' new features into a new OS (and still, some people often like & use those things).
i just want my needed apps to work; i want stability and efficiency. and (for the most part), am enjoying those things right now.
Yep. For my part the "needed apps" are 32bit -era software (CS6, and the old Firefox/WaterfoxClassic browser extension TabMixPlus, which you can see below; that thing's multi-row tab feature is indispensable, and no other browser's extension-set includes it).
Attachments
right, but that's your choice, to run old software. and the things you find indispensable are obviously not urgent for most macusers (hence, for example, no 'modern' version of 'tabMixPlus').
EDIT: honestly, whatever that is, i find it terrifying... but glad it works for you, and you have an OS that runs it 😳
"Most (modern) macusers" have no idea what they're missing -- they use a tiny handful of products that Apple sells them through the AppStore, and that's it. To me, that's like never leaving your parents' house.
there are so many apps outside of the app store; the world is filled with people using photoshop, or a web design program, or a 3rd-party writing app. etc etc. and there are tons of widgets, menubar apps, customization apps...
i don't think anyone using a 'modern' mac in the modern world is bemoaning the loss of an app from a decade or more ago (okay maybe a few people) 😉
You'd be surprised how many "first-timer" Mac owners I meet who have no idea that it's even possible to install software on a Mac without going through AppStore. If they're a millennial or younger, they were raised on the closed environment of smartphone OSes and are used to the concept of living in a corporate security-bubble. And the machines are now buttoned up, slot-drives are ancient mythology, and Apple certainly isn't going to tell them how to disable SIP so that the "Allow applications downloaded from (*) Anywhere" setting even shows up in Security & Privacy, let alone is set to default.
I'd kill to have ClarisCAD back. It was the easiest-to-use thing ever, and ran on the side of a bean.
i would be surprised. how many? 10? 1000? a million? how many people do you think you're speaking for? 🤔
your anecdotal stories are no more valuable, than, say... my own. but it is a fact that many macusers run abobe apps, web design apps, music-making apps... ad infinitum. most of those apps don't need security unlocked to install. and if they do need help for some reason, they can call a friend, or apple, or go online... and work it out.
Lol, same thing happened to me. The base M2 Mini proved to be a very good affordable secondary computer for video editing in my small business workflow.
I am pretty annoyed how things changed from Mojave to Ventura but then again I've learned to not care enough since this is strictly a business machine that I use a few times a week. My Dell workstation is my mainstay in the studio with its required expandability and a used SurfaceBook 2 that I can tote around.
From the standpoint of ports, the version of the Mac mini that has the M2 Pro (which directly replaces the higher-end 2018 Mac minis) has the exact same I/O arrangement. No, you won't have eGPU support. No, you won't have the ability to run Windows via Boot Camp, let alone run any version of Windows that isn't Windows 11 Pro or Enterprise for ARM64 in a VM, and no you will not be able to run macOS Mojave or any other Intel release of macOS, let alone one that has support for 32-bit Intel apps.
The Mac runs cooler, and will be way faster. But those are kind of the only of your problems that it solves.
Certainly, as someone who uses both Windows and Mac, as someone who has a couple of 2015 era Macs specifically for Mojave, and as someone who also despises Apple's penchant for deprecating software support far more quickly than any other desktop platform out there and for not all that much end benefit, I greatly empathize. Windows will be better.
I hadn't really been all that involved with Windows until Windows 10 and I will say that Windows 10 is pretty great. Windows 11, with a couple minor annoyances that I've yet to get over, is similar. Provided the hardware you run it on is good (and shopping for that can be a bit of a challenge in and of itself), you will be left with something no less stable than the best of Intel Macs.
Apple Silicon DOES result in faster and more battery-efficient Macs, but that's not to say that the performance on a good Intel Mac or good Intel/AMD PC is bad. Again, provided you buy the right machine, it's generally no worse.
This is a Mac forum and most on here are diehards that will talk trash on Windows. But the fact of the matter is that it's a perfectly viable alternative.
Frankly, I'm jealous that I can't join you in eschewing Apple altogether. (Once my Intel Macs don't serve as much purpose, my Mac usage will pretty much scale down to only really needing a specked out 13-inch MacBook Pro or a binned Mx Pro based 14-inch MacBook Pro and that's it. Windows covers all other needs and, for that, it's great!)
While I don't disagree that it's much easier to stop using macOS or iPadOS if you don't have an iPhone. Not having an iPhone doesn't necessarily mean you're not still somewhat locked into an ecosystem. iCloud is probably the biggest element when it comes to this. But, considering things like the Apple Card, the Apple Watch, AirTags (at least with the ability to update their firmware) all require an iPhone, you're not far off.
In what actually practical ways is Windows held back by backwards compatibility? If you're saying that it takes them 6 years to sunset Internet Explorer and even longer to sunset Control Panel instead of settings, sure, I'll grant you that. But if I'm both a software developer as well as a user that depends on software, I'd much rather my OS vendor phase things out slowly and gracefully rather than the change-for-change's-sake attitude that Apple has. Plus, it's not like Apple HAS to leave certain apps, users, and developers in the lurch just to update, say, Metal. Maybe the hardware.
Toward that end, I think it's fine that macOS dropped PowerPC hardware support in Snow Leopard. But I don't know what it did for developers, consumers, or the platform itself by dropping that first Rosetta version. Similarly, I understand that the days of supporting Intel Macs have to be numbered at this point. While sad, that's also okay and SHOULD happen. But I don't know what a possible dropping of Rosetta 2 does for the platform in terms of its advancement other than force people like the OP to hold onto older hardware that Apple would prefer not be held onto.
Also, Microsoft IS branching Windows out into ARM. They're not forcing a transition because, that's not how they roll and, ideally, people make their apps compatible with both architectures so that users buy the computer they want. I don't see how that's holding anyone back. Even still, that goes back to my first question, what does the Windows platform need to advance to that it doesn't already have?
The key difference is that Microsoft is dropping support for technologies that, through the power of telemetry, they know people aren't using anymore and/or shouldn't still be using if they are. They sunset 32-bit OSes in Servers back with Windows Server 2008 R2 (the server analogue to Windows 7); they stopped shipping 32-bit to OEMs with Windows 7 and 8, and strongly encourage that only business class hardware be given 32-bit Windows 10 drivers at all. There were companies with old legacy software that still needed it, even if the average Windows-wielding consumer had long comfortably transitioned to 64-bit Windows.
Yes, Windows 11 ditched a lot of hardware that was much more recent than the hardware capable of running Windows 10 with full driver support. That doesn't mean that 99% of software that worked in 64-bit Windows 7, let alone 8, let alone 8.1, let alone 10, won't continue to run unmodified in Windows 11. That's the key difference. Since Apple first moved to Intel, I've had to stop using Mac OS 9 apps, then later PowerPC Mac OS X apps, then later 32-bit Intel apps; and you know it's only a matter of time before Apple concocts some nonsense reason to drop Rosetta 2, leaving 64-bit Intel Apps in the cold.
First off, I'm pretty sure that's NOT the reason they dropped 32-bit support. They didn't ever say, to my knowledge. They merely warned developers at the Platforms State of the Union one year at WWDC.
Secondly, every Intel Mac in existence has, in its Intel processor, 32-bit instruction sets. You throw 32-bit x86 instructions at any Intel Mac, and it will know what to do with them at a hardware level.
Thirdly, unlike the massive de-bloat that occurred in Mac OS X Snow Leopard following the removal of PowerPC code, macOS Catalina didn't debloat by removing the ability to run 32-bit software. If anything, the OS got bigger.
For those on an Intel Mac, losing the ability to run 32-bit Mac Apps brought absolutely zero benefit to the Intel version of macOS. None. Didn't streamline anything. Didn't make the codebase better. Did nothing.
So, why did they do it? My money is on the following:
1. Apple produced their first 64-bit Apple Silicon SoC, the A7. Which, incidentally was the first ever 64-bit ARM processor on the market. Apple has stayed relatively ahead of even ARM's own reference designs, ever since.
2. Apple dropped 32-bit iPhone and iPad app support with the 2017 release of iOS 11. Incidentally, releasing at the same time was the A11 Bionic, the first Apple SoC (and first known ARM CPU) to drop 32-bit instruction sets. And to clarify that bit, unlike every single Intel processor put in every single Intel Mac ever produced, devices with the A11 Bionic, namely the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X - devices that shipped with iOS 11 initially, could not run a 32-bit iOS app if it tried. The instruction sets were simply not there. ARM and, by extension, Qualcomm, Samsung, and all of the other ARM CPU/SoC vendors are going to follow suit and drop 32-bit ARM instruction sets. Microsoft is currently trying to make all of its leftover 32-bit ARM code in Windows 11 for ARM64 to be exclusively 64-bit in anticipation of this.
Everything I've said so far is factual and not speculative. Here's my speculation given this.
3. Every Apple SoC since A11 Bionic has been exclusively 64-bit-only. No 32-bit ARM instruction sets whatsoever. Apple starts planning the switch from Intel to Apple Silicon roughly around the time that they're removing 32-bit from their A-series SoCs. Their roadmap from that point to M1, if not beyond, has been clear to them. So, they know that, by the time the Apple Silicon version of macOS and the first M1 Macs launch, there's no 32-bit support. They can build Rosetta 2 to translate 64-bit Intel to 64-bit ARM. They cannot build it to translate 32-bit Intel to 64-bit ARM. And 32-bit Intel to 32-bit ARM is not an option because again, no 32-bit ARM instruction sets are present.
4. If you're Apple, are you going to keep allowing Intel Macs to run 32-bit Apps while positioning Rosetta 2 as only being able to translate 64 Apps, which, at that point wasn't that many? No. That'd be a PR nightmare for your Apple Silicon transition. The original Rosetta wasn't able to translate things specifically optimized for the PowerPC G5 and, to a lesser extent, the G4, but that didn't eliminate support in Rosetta for anywhere near as many apps as would've suddenly stopped working had Apple picked the Apple Silicon transition as the point in time where it cut off 32-bit Intel app support. That would've been disastrous. So, they cut it off one year earlier, with macOS Catalina. They warned developers for at least two years prior to Catalina that Mojave would be the last release to support 32-bit Intel apps, knowing full well that two releases later would be the first Apple Silicon macOS release. By that point in time, the amount of apps that were 64-bit Intel was healthy. And no one would blame the lack of 32-bit Intel app support on Apple Silicon; that was Catalina's fault one year prior. Certainly, those who use commonly updated apps were not affected at all. It's only those of us who use apps that have limited or no support that got left out in the cold anyway.
That's why we lost 32-bit Intel support. Has nothing to do with "Improvement without compromise". Yes, there's no compromise when it comes to using 64-bit x86 or 64-bit ARM over 32-bit. But clearly there are casualties of this.
Lion being download or USB only didn't hasten the death of the optical drive. The fact that displays were well beyond the resolution of standard definition (for DVD movies) and that software, particularly operating systems were starting to bloat well beyond what you'd want to throw onto a DVD is what did it. Plus, you could still easily burn DVDs of both Lion and Mountain Lion. It wasn't until Mavericks that you could only have a bootable USB. And even now, macOS is too large to fit on a DVD. Apps are insane too. DVD drives stopped being practical. This wasn't something Apple hastened, it was simply the reality we all were headed towards.
The ability to run a 32-bit app doesn't have bearing on whether the OS itself is 64-bit. macOS has been a full, top-to-bottom 64-bit OS since Mountain Lion. Similarly, Windows 11 is a 64-bit only OS all the same. The ability to run 32-bit apps does not detract from this. Nor does it have any significant overhead. At least not as far as the software is concerned. Clearly, Apple dropped 32-bit instruction sets from their SoCs ahead of the rest of the collective of ARM chip manufacturers for a reason. That might've resulted in more efficient hardware. But, 32-bit x86 instruction sets were never getting dropped from Intel CPUs, so this is moot as far as Intel Macs are concerned.
If you have money or your needs aren't particularly low-end, you can get away with that. For higher-end stuff, that's often extremely expensive and pivoting to something else isn't just something you're going to be willing to do. That's why a lot of people hold onto old Macs, old OSes, or just switch to Windows where such deprecations won't totally screw them over.
The problem with that approach is that Apple only puts out security updates for the most recent three versions of macOS (with the current one always getting the most attention). Running a version of macOS that isn't getting updates at all is about as bad of an idea as running a version of Windows that isn't getting Windows Updates anymore. Security vulnerabilities go unpatched, then get exploited, and then you become a target for hackers. Yes, it happens to Macs too.
That being said, the updates a macOS release gets when it's one version behind the current are almost always just security related. There's definitely a merit to being consistently one release behind. But waiting until the OS is more than three years old? Bad idea unless your Internet usage is sparing.
If you've been with the Mac since the beginning I'm not sure why now is the time you're jumping off.
The Mac has gone through several transitions the same as this before, except this time there's a truly class leading architecture as the destination.
Yes, old things get deprecated, but if you still want to run say, macOS 9 or even classic macOS you can via emulation on an M1 Mac.
You're likely going to need to re-buy PC software for Windows, and if you think the situation is better there I've got boxes and boxes of Windows games that no longer run. Just update the Mac software and be happy? It will be cheaper than re-buying everything plus the stuff you need to bring windows up to par with built in Mac functionality.
The other flip side is 25-30 year old bits of UI cruft in windows, along with the associated security flaws in said 25-30 year old components. Plus a company that clearly has no direction - they've changed the task bar UI in Windows 11 3 times in the past 5 months, and the end result has not been an improvement unless you like providing revenue to Bing.
The Mac has gone through several transitions the same as this before, except this time there's a truly class leading architecture as the destination.
Yes, old things get deprecated, but if you still want to run say, macOS 9 or even classic macOS you can via emulation on an M1 Mac.
You're likely going to need to re-buy PC software for Windows, and if you think the situation is better there I've got boxes and boxes of Windows games that no longer run. Just update the Mac software and be happy? It will be cheaper than re-buying everything plus the stuff you need to bring windows up to par with built in Mac functionality.
The other flip side is 25-30 year old bits of UI cruft in windows, along with the associated security flaws in said 25-30 year old components. Plus a company that clearly has no direction - they've changed the task bar UI in Windows 11 3 times in the past 5 months, and the end result has not been an improvement unless you like providing revenue to Bing.
Last edited:
Given that the average "modern mac"-user doesn't even know how to enable their own drives showing up on the desktop anymore* or enable scrollbars on desktop windows, and hasn't for half a decade now, a poll-sampling of their opinions is not high on my list of things to give a darn far.
(*Imagine not even knowing how to drag-and-drop files in a GUI interface because the entire concept of mounted volumes, or even file folders, is something that both Apple and Microsoft are now hiding from you whenever possible. They only want you jabbing app buttons now, and nothing but.)
Attachments
Not much point in giving examples if you're just going to say, effectively, "sure, but that doesn't bother me". I'm quite happy with the consumer choice between "move fast and break things" and long-term stability, but they both have pros and cons.
The biggest backward-compatibility issue with Windows, historically, were the security problems from the Windows XP era onwards, caused by everybody needing to run as "admin" in order not to break Win95 era code - and the knock-on effect of "training" users to ignore security warnings. C.f. Apple who managed to completely switch from Classic MacOS to OS X (a completely different OS) within a few years and then make sure that the Classic "emulator" was dumped before the next big transition rolled around...
Microsoft are currently on their 2nd attempt at Windows on ARM (and non-x86 in general) and a couple of years in it really doesn't seem to be making waves with the main complaint being lack of software. The most enthusiastic adopters of Win11 on ARM seem to be Mac users (I'd love to see the stats on how many Surface X computers there out there vs. how many people have activated Windows for ARM on a VM on their Mac...). It really shouldn't be a problem for "modern" Windows software developed with .NET/CLR and compiled to bytecode but here we are... Meanwhile, Apple have almost completed their 3rd successful ISA transition (I'm not counting 6502 to 68k) and in each case the new system has hit the ground running, with most major software usable (if only via Rosetta 2/Rosetta/68k emulator).
Technologies like Rosetta are much easier to pull off if all they are doing is translating code that is otherwise written for the current OS, and not having to provide loads of legacy libraries/frameworks or translate between 32 and 64 bit.
Also, "legacy" code support in OS doesn't maintain itself for free - esp. in the modern era where potential security exploits are continuously turning up in old libraries. Microsoft has a huge number of corporate customers willing to pay for extended support. MS didn't keep rolling out security updates for Win7 until early 2023 out of community spirit - they charged for them. Apple's total MacOS user-base is still a lot smaller than Windows' and the lion's share of that is in end-user laptops and single-user desktops that get replaced every 4-5 years anyway. I doubt there would be many takers for a paid extended support program.
I don't disagree that if you need the ability to run 20-year-old binaries - and some people do - then Mac is not the best choice. I wouldn't bet the farm on Windows being in the same position in the future (the whole industry is gradually shifting towards cloud servers running JIT-compiled scripting languages, and the likes of MS are going to make their money selling cloud services, not traditional operating systems & support contracts). The "safe" option is probably Linux and open source, which might not run 20 year-old binaries but will compile 50-year-old code which, if it is open source, someone will probably have done for you.
i would humbly suggest you stop trying to sum up the experiences of the 'average modern mac' user, since you don't know even a tiny percentage of them, and you're making absolute statements about all of them.
besides, what's the definition? first-time users? people who own modern macs? and in this world where many people have grown up with computers, is anyone really as helpless as you seem to think they are? 🤔
Dems fightin' woids!
Back-in-the-day I owned a PCjr. It was during my career with IBM and they offered a firesale discount on them for employees. It was a criminally underrated system. The sidecar expansion options were the antithesis of Apple's solder-and-lockdown approach.
I didn't need to re-buy any software, I bought all my licenses as multiplatform with the exception of FCPX which I'm glad to finally be away from.
The biggest deal for me is the lack of expansion on the hardware front and the migration from one-and-done licenses to perpetual subscriptions from the likes of Adobe.
My original post is also half a year old. I swung around and bought a base M2 Mini solely for OBS/DaVinci and that is about it. Right out the gate it was giving me issues because of typical Apple choices with its USB port amperage. 900ma USB ports on a desktop in 2022? I don't think any other OEM does that!
Oh and just like my 2018, I can't sleep it either without it force ejecting all my drives. Go figure.
Realistically I'm not an Apple "follower" anymore. I mean why follow a company blindly that has set up its own predetermined barriers to doing what you can do?
My 2010 cMP was the best computer I ever owned minus its energy consumption and heat output which is why the 2018 Mini seemed like a good choice.
At least with Microsoft I can just plug away and be fine. I don't care about company direction, I care about getting a good usable end result. So far my Windows computers can actually do what my 2018 Mini was incapable of doing.