mac mini 2014

[pwalker8]

Just ordered a refurbished mac mini 2014, 1 TB hard drive and 8 GB memory on Amazon. $400 isn't a bad price. You may ask why a 2014 mac mini. I'll tell you (extra points if you catch the reference). 2014 is the most recent mac mini that runs Sierra which is the last version of Mac OS that certain tools I use work with. This is to replace a mac mini that isn't 64 bit compatible, so it will only go up to El Capitan. So the faster machine with a 1 GB Ethernet and 64 bit should be a lot faster. We will see. The tools ran a lot faster on my 2015 iMac before I upgraded to High Sierra, so I have hope.

I ran into a couple of books on Amazon that I couldn't download to my computer. They were not compatible with my Amazon kiindle eInk devices. Sigh. Both books were available on the Apple book store. I was able to download them from Apple and remove the DRM with no problem that way. One of the books, the Princeton guide to Dinosaurs is a lot more readable on a 27 inch iMac.

If everything goes ok, I might use this as my planned media server. I don't actually need a lot of processing power, just something with reasonable speed that can be hooked up to a fairly fast external hard drive with lots of space. First things first, though.

[salamanderjuice]

FYI it is possible to run earlier versions of MacOS in a virtual machine like Parallels or VMware Fusion to run apps stuck on an earlier version. Performance can take a hit in VMs though but if it's something lightweight it shouldn't be an issue.

2014 Minis are somewhat compromised due to the soldered RAM and the fact they are limited to being dual core machines unlike the 2012 or 2018 versions.

[OtinG]

I'm still using my mac mini 2012 running High Sierra. It has 16GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM, 2.5 GHz i5 2-core, and 500GB HDD. It is still a reliable workhorse, albeit not a speed demon. To Apple's credit, it has run 24x7x52 for most of its 9 years of life and never given me any problems. I've never had any other name brand computer last that long without having to replace parts and drives periodically. Of course my MacBook Pro 15" Retina 2014 also has been run almost as hard and almost as long without problems. I would say $400 for your mini is a good buy for a secondary computer.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

FYI it is possible to run earlier versions of MacOS in a virtual machine like Parallels or VMware Fusion to run apps stuck on an earlier version. Performance can take a hit in VMs though but if it's something lightweight it shouldn't be an issue.

2014 Minis are somewhat compromised due to the soldered RAM and the fact they are limited to being dual core machines unlike the 2012 or 2018 versions.

The problem is that you can't run a version of Mac OS on hardware that came out after a later version of Mac OS was released. High Sierra came out in Sept, 2017. Thus gen 4 mac mini's and later that came out in 2018 won't run Sierra. I can't install Sierra on my Macbook Pro, which came out in 2018.

I can boot my iMac in Sierra, but running from an external hard disk is somewhat slow. Running my iMac that way was my back up if the old mac mini went belly up. I prefer to run my iMac with the latest and greatest and I certainly don't have enough space on the internal hard drive to dual boot.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I'm still using my mac mini 2012 running High Sierra. It has 16GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM, 2.5 GHz i5 2-core, and 500GB HDD. It is still a reliable workhorse, albeit not a speed demon. To Apple's credit, it has run 24x7x52 for most of its 9 years of life and never given me any problems. I've never had any other name brand computer last that long without having to replace parts and drives periodically. Of course my MacBook Pro 15" Retina 2014 also has been run almost as hard and almost as long without problems. I would say $400 for your mini is a good buy for a secondary computer.

Yea, my macs have been real work horses. My macbook pro (2018) is my most recent mac. The iMac is getting a bit slow, I really wish I could replace the internal hard drive with a bigger drive (it has a 1 TB fusion drive), but I tried to do that on my previous iMac and trashed the iMac. My eyes just aren't up to fine detail work like that any more. If I ever win the lottery, I would buy a mac pro with nice monitor, only around $17,000 for the configuration I want.

The mac mini that I'm replace is 10 years old. Still works, but a 32 bit machine with a 300 GB hard drive is pretty limited.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

The problem is that you can't run a version of Mac OS on hardware that came out after a later version of Mac OS was released. High Sierra came out in Sept, 2017. Thus gen 4 mac mini's and later that came out in 2018 won't run Sierra. I can't install Sierra on my Macbook Pro, which came out in 2018.

I can boot my iMac in Sierra, but running from an external hard disk is somewhat slow. Running my iMac that way was my back up if the old mac mini went belly up. I prefer to run my iMac with the latest and greatest and I certainly don't have enough space on the internal hard drive to dual boot.

In a VM you can!! You just can't natively boot it. You just need a Sierra install .DMG and parallels or whatever and away you go. You could even run Tiger in a VM on your 2018 MacBook Pro that way if you wanted, although it takes a bit more effort because it's not officially allowed by Apple's EULA like newer versions so Parallels and the like block it.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yea, my macs have been real work horses. My macbook pro (2018) is my most recent mac. The iMac is getting a bit slow, I really wish I could replace the internal hard drive with a bigger drive (it has a 1 TB fusion drive), but I tried to do that on my previous iMac and trashed the iMac. My eyes just aren't up to fine detail work like that any more. If I ever win the lottery, I would buy a mac pro with nice monitor, only around $17,000 for the configuration I want.

The mac mini that I'm replace is 10 years old. Still works, but a 32 bit machine with a 300 GB hard drive is pretty limited.

My mini 2012 isn’t too bad for 9 years old, but I wish I could replace the HDD with an SSD, but my eyes are too bad and I don’t want to spend the money to pay someone else to do it. No big deal though as I mostly use it for my security cams.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

In a VM you can!! You just can't natively boot it. You just need a Sierra install .DMG and parallels or whatever and away you go. You could even run Tiger in a VM on your 2018 MacBook Pro that way if you wanted, although it takes a bit more effort because it's not officially allowed by Apple's EULA like newer versions so Parallels and the like block it.

Would Virtualbox work, I wonder? Thats free and “lighter” than Parallels or VMWare.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

Would Virtualbox work, I wonder? Thats free and “lighter” than Parallels or VMWare.

Yes Virtualbox works too but setup is a bit more involved.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

In a VM you can!! You just can't natively boot it. You just need a Sierra install .DMG and parallels or whatever and away you go. You could even run Tiger in a VM on your 2018 MacBook Pro that way if you wanted, although it takes a bit more effort because it's not officially allowed by Apple's EULA like newer versions so Parallels and the like block it.

It's easier and faster simply to have a cheap box that runs it natively. Plus, I can be doing other stuff on my iMac while the mac mini is doing it's thing.

[pwalker8]

The mac mini showed up a day early. Got it set up yesterday. It came with Catalina so I had to use Carbon Copy to get Sierra set up on it.

It's much. much faster than the other mac mini. It should serve it's main purpose well. I'm not as sure that the media server side is going to work quite the way I want it to. I'll need to experiment with it after I finished deDRMing the most recent batch of movies that I bought from the iTunes store.

There is a price point where if a movie goes below it, I'll buy it on the iTunes store, even if I already have it in blu-ray, simply because it's more convenient to stream and I generally save ripping a blu-ray for those movies that aren't available for purchase from the iTunes store. Apple frequently has bundles where if you buy the bundle, the individual movies drop to that level. I just happened to notice the Indiana Jones bundle and Star Trek (not the reboot) bundle this weekend, so decided to spurge.

[OtinG]

I saw an article a few days ago where a guy who had purchased well over $10,000 worth of videos and music and games through iTunes somehow angered the god of Apple and had his AppleID shut down. As a result he lost access to all the digital content he had purchased, so of course he sued Apple. Apple is arguing that you really don't purchase digital content and that if you don't play by their rules they can shut off your access to it. Morals of the story: Don't anger the worm god that lives inside the Apple, and burn as many DVDs/BluRays as you can!

Joking aside, I rarely buy BluRays anymore, though I tend to get them as gifts from time to time. But of course now that I have a 4K TV it would be better to have a 4K BluRay player and 4K BluRay disks than the old HD model I have, but I haven't convinced myself it is worth shelling out $200 or more for one. But since I mostly buy digital downloaded files from Amazon and Apple, I can get those in 4K, if they or offered in 4K. Apple kindly updated all the HD purchases to 4K after they released the first ATV 4K box. Amazon however, is too cheap to do that. I guess Bezos is focusing on paying off his ex and regaining wealthiest person in the world status!

[ilovejedd]

This is why I remove DRM from Kindle and Kobo purchases.

Only movies I have on iTunes/Amazon are digital copies redeemed from Blu-ray purchases.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I saw an article a few days ago where a guy who had purchased well over $10,000 worth of videos and music and games through iTunes somehow angered the god of Apple and had his AppleID shut down. As a result he lost access to all the digital content he had purchased, so of course he sued Apple. Apple is arguing that you really don't purchase digital content and that if you don't play by their rules they can shut off your access to it. Morals of the story: Don't anger the worm god that lives inside the Apple, and burn as many DVDs/BluRays as you can!

Joking aside, I rarely buy BluRays anymore, though I tend to get them as gifts from time to time. But of course now that I have a 4K TV it would be better to have a 4K BluRay player and 4K BluRay disks than the old HD model I have, but I haven't convinced myself it is worth shelling out $200 or more for one. But since I mostly buy digital downloaded files from Amazon and Apple, I can get those in 4K, if they or offered in 4K. Apple kindly updated all the HD purchases to 4K after they released the first ATV 4K box. Amazon however, is too cheap to do that. I guess Bezos is focusing on paying off his ex and regaining wealthiest person in the world status!

And that's why I run all the movies I buy on iTunes through deDRM and store the resulting mp4 file on multiple raid drives. When I can no longer remove the deDRM, I'll stop purchasing from iTunes and go with only blu-Ray. I actually watch on Apple TV, so everything is streamed from Apple (and yea, I really appreciate Apple updating to 4K as well), but I learned the keep back up copies and if you can't view it, it's not a back up copy lesson early on. I do the same with all my digital content - movies, ebooks, audiobooks. I spend a lot of money on digital content and believe in paying for what I get (i.e. I don't pirate), but I also don't believe in being a sucker.

I have a 4K/blu-ray DVD player (and a backup still sitting in the box, I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy), but I also have a decent sized collection of DVD's and blu-ray disks. I have a few 4K but not many. I find that most of the TV shows that I buy are DVD or blu-ray. It's just too much of work to deDRM TV shows and most TV shows are filmed in a lower format anyway, so DVD is fine.

Where blu-ray and dvd's shine is when my connection to the internet is down (it happens from time to time) and for old, somewhat obscure TV shows and movies.