The mac mini 2018 astonished me.

ShikiSuen

ShikiSuen

Well-known member
I recently switched my main music-production-purposed mac from mac Pro late-2013 to mac mini 2018.
(2TB SSD for carrying lots of sampled virtural instruments; 8GB factory RAM so I can buy 32GB replacement Vengeance RAMs later in a much cheaper price; top CPU customization helps Steinberg Dorico runs faster.)

Though both the old one and the new one are using 6-core CPU, this new machine runs faster than the old one despite the little graphic glitches (slow FPS in window display with 4K monitor). I found that this machine might be the ideal choice for desktop musicians in the next 2 years, and its possible successor in the future might be an AMD Ryzen-based mac mini (or equivalent with Apple-made CPU if rumor comes true).
 
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How is it the "ideal choice for desktop musicians" when Apple products are overpriced as hell? Anyone who bothers to have a desktop these days can get much more value for the same money when they just buy the components themselves.
 
sbj said:
How is it the "ideal choice for desktop musicians" when Apple products are overpriced as hell? Anyone who bothers to have a desktop these days can get much more value for the same money when they just buy the components themselves.
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In emergency situations I can simply grab my mac mini into my rucksack and run away. What about yours?

Also, CJK fonts rendered like a bullshyte on Windows (which is notorious in behaving like that). 3rd-party font render solutions (GDI++, MacType, etc.) are not always stable; Using SFPCopy to replace CJK fonts with non-hinted replacements won't work with Windows 10 releases since 2019.

I know Windows and Linux users have cheaper choices of buying a portable NUC (maybe Intel or Ryzen), but your show-off here is rude.
 
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sbj said:
How is it the "ideal choice for desktop musicians" when Apple products are overpriced as hell? Anyone who bothers to have a desktop these days can get much more value for the same money when they just buy the components themselves.
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As somebody who has been a professional music producer and composer for 30 years using PC and Macs I can vouch for the fact that that any extra you pay for with a Mac is worth it for peace of mind, getting on with creating music rather than configuring and troubleshooting your equipment.

Plus the available software is so much more versatile, creative, supported and accepted within the music production industry.
 
Mr Lucky said:
As somebody who has been a professional music producer and composer for 30 years using PC and Macs I can vouch for the fact that that any extra you pay for with a Mac is worth it for peace of mind, getting on with creating music rather than configuring and troubleshooting your equipment.

Plus the available software is so much more versatile, creative, supported and accepted within the music production industry.
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Are you solely using Cubase or Cakewalk on Windows?
If you feel comfortable with that, then that's fine.
Reaper is also Windows-native; Pyramix is Windows-only.

All my audio interfaces I tried in these 8 years sound better on macOS and Linux.

It occurred to me that the same hackintosh I tested 3 years ago, running both Windows and macOS on exactly the same hardware, Studio One on Windows crashes when Presence XT sampling instrument tracks was added over 80 tracks. The machine is GB-BNi7HG4-950 (4-core i7 CPU + 32GB RAM). On macOS there is no problem of that but a robust production experience.
 
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sbj said:
How is it the "ideal choice for desktop musicians" when Apple products are overpriced as hell? Anyone who bothers to have a desktop these days can get much more value for the same money when they just buy the components themselves.
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As much as I myself do not really like Apple, but sometimes you have to use mac. And to say that the price is too high is quite incorrect, since this price includes technical support. And Apple's technical support is at a very, very high level, which is included in this price.
For design, video processing and music, the best thing is that Apple will not be better with their Retina screens, it’s just gorgeous and a lot of specialized tools are tailored specifically for mac.
But I myself do not like mac, and I consider the operating system that it is designed for housewives.
 
kick said:
As much as I myself do not really like Apple, but sometimes you have to use mac. And to say that the price is too high is quite incorrect, since this price includes technical support. And Apple's technical support is at a very, very high level, which is included in this price.
For design, video processing and music, the best thing is that Apple will not be better with their Retina screens, it’s just gorgeous and a lot of specialized tools are tailored specifically for mac.
But I myself do not like mac, and I consider the operating system that it is designed for housewives.
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Mac is certainly not the most expensive.
A 2019 model of 16-inch MacBook Pro is priced as 248,800JPY before tax, while Panasonic business laptops (much weaker in performance) are sold above that price (usually 300-350kJPY). Panasonic business laptops are designed to survive from the extreme-density of passenger populations in city trains through JR Yamanote Line, etc.
 
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I switched to Macs about 15 years ago. Last week I made the same switch you did. I have already upgraded the RAM to 64GIG. This little box outperforms the old Mac Pro by far. I wanted to get a new Mac Pro, but, when I looked at the price and compared the mini specs with the pro specs I decided it would be a much better decision to go with the mini. So far it has exceeded my expectations.
 
sbj said:
How is it the "ideal choice for desktop musicians" when Apple products are overpriced as hell? Anyone who bothers to have a desktop these days can get much more value for the same money when they just buy the components themselves.
Click to expand...

I use Apple products in my studio and on tour. For me and many other musicians it's money well spent. I'd say over time Apple products are probably just as cost effective as user built PCs plus you get the benefit of far fewer compatibility and stability issues.
 
I admire Apple's technology and OS but having been in the DOS/Windows world for as long as I have, I also like the ability to mess about in your box or even build your own. That said, once I hang up my Windows' admin hat for good (could be as soon as 5 years from now), Apple could be on the table. At that point, I may just want a simple system for writing and similar activities.
 
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