Items tagged with Mac Mini
Apple's latest M1 Macs -- and many Intel-based ones, for that matter -- all use the company's T2 security chip, which encrypts the system's built-in storage. The issue with highly-integrated motherboards with onboard storage is that if the onboard SSD wears out, the whole system becomes a brick of e-waste. And as flash density increases by storing more bits per cell (for example, Samsung's QVO drives with QLC NAND), its longevity decreases, since it can't handle as many write operations. That's why it might be a good idea to keep track of whether a system with built-in storage is wearing itself down. Hector Martin, one of the developers responsible for porting the Linux kernel to Apple...
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When Apple announced its new Mac lineup -- consisting of a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13, and Mac mini -- with its new M1 processor, the company was met with a mixture of enthusiasm and skepticism. Apple's performance claims were incredible. For instance, the company said that its new Apple Silicon offers upwards of 3.4 times the performance as the last-generation Mac mini with a quad-core Intel Core i3 processor. That's the sort of thing that could make a Mac lover's eyes pop. However, proclaiming things like "more than three times the performance," without substantiating those claims, will also spur its share of detractors. So, we did what any curious spectator would do; we bought...
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Apple's M1-based (Apple Silicon) Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air spelled the end of Boot Camp, the company's solution for booting into Windows natively on its Intel-based hardware. At the same time, the big names in commercial virtualization options, VMWare and Parallels, are still scrambling to get an Arm64-native version of their apps out the door. However, one very innovative developer worked up a new feature to use QEMU to boot the Hyper-V image of Windows 10's Insider Preview build straight from Microsoft. Now that those changes have made their way into the wild, we can see just how Apple's new hardware handles while running Windows 10. We got our mitts on an M1-based Mac mini, and...
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When it comes to development, if you want to make sure your program runs on all hardware with as many operating systems as possible, you need to do testing across all platforms. This can be an incredibly daunting task, but development can be cheaper and easier than ever with cloud-based solutions. Amazon is now offering AWS EC2 Mac instances for anyone to create and test Apple apps with ease. Amazon Web Service’s (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, is an easy and secure way to deploy “resizable compute capacity in the cloud.” There are many compute components with Amazon EC2, which now includes Apple hardware and software. Inside each Mac instance, you will get an actual Mac...
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As we reported yesterday, the first Apple Developer Transition Kits are finding their ways into the hands of eager app developers. Apple is making these Mac mini-style kits available so that develops can get native Arm-based apps ready for new Macs that will begin shipping later this year. These new Macs will be powered by what's being called "Apple Silicon" for now, but the Developer Transition Kits are powered by the current-generation A12Z Bionic SoC (which actually just a mild spec bump of the 2018-era A12X Bionic). Naturally, the first benchmarks for these systems are starting to filter through, and they're quite interesting. There are currently 28 listings in Geekbench...
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Apple is ready to move on from Intel after over 13 years of being a loyal partner. Apple announced its move to Intel processors back in 2006, and the first shipping systems came early in 2007. Earlier this month, the folks in Cupertino announced that starting in late 2020, it will begin offering Macs powered by its own Apple Silicon. There are a number of reasons that have been cited for the shift: Intel's processor roadmap has been fraught with delays Apple is looking to bring more chip design in-house Apple feels that its "Apple Silicon" will offer higher performance-per watt that competing solutions There could be substantial cost savings by using its own processor designs To aid in that...
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Apple recently updated the Mac Mini, its entry-level desktop that had not seen a significant upgrade since 2014, and the refreshed box packs quite the punch on paper—it pairs up to an 8th generation Intel Core i7 processor with as much as 64GB of RAM, with storage options topping out at 2TB. The Mac Mini is also somewhat easy to service and upgrade, depending on the specific component, a teardown analysis reveals. The 2018 Mac Mini comes housed in the same chassis as the previous generation. Some people speculated that Apple might refresh the form factor as well, specifically by switching over to the same chassis as its Apple TV set-top box, but that is not the case (literally). The only...
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When it comes to Apple products that have been withering on the vine near death for years, none have been as neglected as the Mac Mini. Apple's entry-level desktop previously hadn't seen a major update since 2014, but that all ends today with some key updates. While the Mac Mini doesn't look too far removed externally from its 2014 counterpart, Apple has made plenty of changes under the hood. For starters, Apple has incorporated 8th generation Intel Core processors (Coffee Lake), including Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 options. The Mac Mini now supports up to 64GB of RAM, while internal storage options top out at 2TB. When it comes to external ports, Apple offers plenty of versatility...
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Apple isn't exactly hurting for money with a market cap of a trillion dollars, making it the most valuable company in the world. It still wants more and to get its next trillion dollars in worth, Cupertino is looking to roll out some new products and among those are allegedly AR glasses in 2020 and an Apple Car in 2023. While we aren’t sure if those rumored products will actually launch, a pair of products that have been needing an update for years may finally be getting some new hardware. Rumors are flowing that Apple is set to finally update the long stale and underpowered Mac Mini desktop computer and the MacBook Air. Reports indicate that the new MacBook that is inbound will look similar...
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In May word was going around that noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo was leaving KGI Securities and the world of Apple rumors behind. While he did, in fact, leave KGI, he is still prophesying things all things Apple and is back with a new rumor. Kuo is now at TF International Securities and has published an investor note that outlines what he expects to see in the fall hardware lineup from Apple. Perhaps the biggest news is that long after Tim Cook promised the Mac mini would remain part of the lineup as the cheapest Mac, it will finally get a performance update. Sadly, if you are dying for details on that Mac mini there are no hardware predictions offered. Other tidbits Kuo predicts include...
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Apple has done very well with its Mac computers in recent years, even if it tends to focus more on the MacBook line often to the detriment of its desktop products. Apple let the Mac Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini fall by the wayside as it focused on smartphones and notebooks over the last few years. It has been three years since the Mac Mini was updated, leaving it using significatively older hardware than similarly-priced Windows products. Some Mac faithful simply don't want a notebook and prefer a desktop form-factor. There are other who aren't interested in the iMac all-in-one or the super expensive Mac Pro, leaving the Mac Mini as the only interesting product in the Mac line. A person called Krar...
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One of the disadvantages to buying an Apple system is that it generally means less upgradeability and flexibility than a system from a traditional PC OEM. Over the last few years, Apple has introduced features and adopted standards that made upgrading or using third-party hardware progressively more difficult. Now, with OS X 10.10 Yosemite, the company has taken another step down the path towards total vendor lock-in and effectively disabled support for third-party SSDs. We say "effectively" because while third-party SSDs will still work, they'll no longer perform the TRIM garbage collection command. Being able to perform TRIM and clean the SSD when its sitting idle is vital to keeping the drive...
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Apple has a history of trying to prevent owners of its products from mucking around inside its devices, and in case you thought the company turned over a new leaf with its Mac Mini system, think again. Though the previous model was relatively easy to service at home -- it scored an 8 out of 10 on iFixIt's teardown analysis -- the recently announced late 2014 model is an entirely different story. "Sometimes we just don't understand what goes on in hardware designers' heads. Apple took one of their most-fixable, most-upgradable products and broke it," iFixIt laments. "The design didn't change at all from the outside, so we can't blame the product designers who keep making things smaller, thinner,...
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It’s a veritable firmware update jamboroo this week at Apple. On Monday, the company released a firmware update for mid-2011 MacBook Air models (EFI Firmware Update 2.1), and today it rolled out updates for mid-2011 Mac minis (EFI Firmware Update 1.3) and early-2011 MacBook Pros (EFI Firmware Update 2.2). The firmware fixes all essentially address the same issues. (In fact, the descriptions for the MacBook Air and Mac mini are identical, save for the names of the computers.) The first issue pertains to Lion Recovery. For the MacBook Air and Mac mini, the updates fix a stability problem when running Lion Recovery from an Internet connection. The Lion Internet Recovery portion of the MacBook...
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Apple's Mac mini hadn't seen a substantial update for about a year, but with Intel's Sandy Bridge-based second generation Core processor family arriving in 2011, it was only a matter of time before one of those chips found favor with Apple's tiniest desktop. The Mac mini design really hasn't changed all that much in the year or so it took the folks in Cupertino to swap out the Core 2 Duo for a Core i5. In terms of volume and dimension, it's almost exactly the same as the 2010 edition, but with a major addition—support for Thunderbolt... Apple's Sandy Bridge-Based Mac Mini Review...
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Apple's Mac mini hadn't seen a substantial update for about a year, but with Intel's second generation Core processor family arriving in 2011, it was only a matter of time before one of those chips found favor with Apple's tiniest desktop. The Mac mini design really hasn't changed in the year or so it took the folks in Cupertino to swap out the Core 2 Duo for Intel's new Core i line of processors. In terms of volume and dimension, it's almost exactly the same as the 2010 edition, but with a major addition--that port between the HDMI socket and those four USB 2.0 ports. It's a Thunderbolt port, a lightning-fast interconnect jointly designed with Intel. With the addition...
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Today is shaping up to be a big day for Apple. It was just yesterday that the Cupertino outfit announced yet another record quarter, bragging about revenue being up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent, and today marks the launch of a bevy of products and technologies that will keep all those Apple exec pockets lined with cash for the foreseeable future. Let's take a quick look at each one. Mac OS X Lion Now available for purchase from the Mac App Store is Mac OS X Lion, the eight major release of Apple's operating system. It includes over 250 new features, some of the more notable ones being: Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac...
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Apple's Mac Mini has been viewed as a legitimate HTPC contender ever since the original model was released years back. People immediately began hacking the mounting options to get them onto the backs of their televisions, and with the new model, it became an even nicer solution. With a more powerful CPU and GPU, more storage space and great connectivity options, many use the Mac Mini as their primary Boxee Box. But there are a number of chinks in the armor. For one, there's no TV tuner option. And second, there's no Blu-ray option. It's hard to take an HTPC seriously these days if you can't incorporate those two things, but now Other World Computing and Elgato are coming together to make the...
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Well, this is interesting. On the same day that Apple saw their servers completely overloaded by people trying to pre-order the iPhone 4, the company also introduced a new computer. One that you can't order because of all those people crashing the iPhone servers. The Mac Mini has been around for years, and it has looked largely the same forever. Now, Apple has finally decided to push the Mini into the "unibody" category already occupied by the MacBook and MacBook Pro families. The new Mac Mini is slimmer, sleeker and much more beautiful. It's like a silver/aluminum Apple TV in a lot of ways. It's far less bulky and is more capable of being used as a TV-connected media center. The only two things...
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Apple makes a lot of fine products, but what they don't do is offer true media PC solutions. One of the main reasons is that the company refuses to acknowledge the existence of Blu-ray. None of Apple's machines offer Blu-ray as an option, so anyone hoping to use their machines as the centerpiece of a home cinema system will be sorely disappointed. Until now, it seems. AMEX Digital has just announced a new Mac mini Blu-ray Drive Upgrade Kit, which targets Apple's most promising mini HTPC. Many users feel that the Mac mini's size makes it the perfect OS X option for connecting to one's PC, and now, with the inclusion of a Blu-ray drive, you could actually use it as a high-def movie playing machine....
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Rumors have been circulating for months about new updates to the iMac and Mac Mini desktops, and today Apple finally confirms these rumors with the announcement of updates to both consumer desktop lines. Starting with its most-affordable offering, the new Mac Mini maintains its small form-factor, measuring 6.5x6.5x2.0-inches. The Mac Mini is powered by a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and now uses Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, which Apple claims offers "up to five times better graphics performance" than the previous iteration (which used integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics). The new Mac Mini now also has the ability to drive dual displays via Mini DisplayPort or DVI. Apple further...
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I know it's Microsoft that has the reputation for being computer monopolists. But all they supply to the affair is the Operating System and a free browser, after all. You can run it on any computer you like, or one that has enough horsepower to render Vista, anyway. You want a monopoly? Apple is a vertically integrated competitor killer. Psystar, a small manufacturer from Miami thought you'd like to get what is essentially Mac Mini performance, but with twice the memory, at half the price. Persuading a generic PC to run OS X isn’t that hard to do. Ever since Apple (AAPL) switched from PowerPC to Intel, hackers in the OSx86 movement have been playing cat-and-mouse with Cupertino, writing a series...
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