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Comment by kogepathic | Hacker News Reader

> 2. The poor Mac Mini that Apple is selling in 2017 uses 2013 era chips and is way overpriced.

Although the author points out that single core performance hasn't improved since Sandy Bridge (2011) and multi-core performance has been largely lackluster since then.

While I agree it's shameful for Apple to be selling the current Mac Mini, the performance from 2017 chips is going to be only ~20% better than what's in the Mac Mini now. [0]

It's not a completely fair comparison because the i7-7500U is 15W, but I can't find any Intel mobile CPUs released in 2015 or 2016 which were dual core and didn't have a 15W TDP.

[0] http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=2345&cmp%5...

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It is the stuff around the cpu that is improving. Those 2013 chips cannot properly drive a 4k display. Even a 2014 macbook pro with amd graphics is sluggish on 4k. But, a modern skylake with intel 530 integrated graphics can drive a 4k screen at 60hz without any mouse lag.

> Those 2013 chips cannot properly drive a 4k display.

Which honestly seems pretty fair. 4K wasn't mainstream in 2013, you needed to spend a lot of money to buy a 4K display or projector. [0]

I wouldn't say that most people purchasing a Mac Mini are planning to use a 4K display with it, considering its target market is people who want to buy a Mac (without an integrated display) but don't want to shell out for a Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro not supporting 4K is a problem, one that has been brought up by many other people as an example of how Apple is ignoring the Pro market segment.

[0] http://www.alphr.com/news/382774/asus-takes-pre-orders-on-fi...

The Mac Mini's specs were pretty fair for 2013, but selling them in 2017 is pretty atrocious.

4K display prices are down, way down, and well within the normal consumer range now - you can pick up a very nice 4K monitor for $300 or less. It's not unreasonable to expect a Mac being sold new in 2017 to be able to drive it...

> Even a 2014 macbook pro with amd graphics is sluggish on 4k.

I have a late 2013 MBPR (NVIDIA GT750M) with an external 4K monitor in portrait mode connected via DisplayPort, plus the laptop's display. Both are running at 60Hz. I don't see any sluggishness or mouse lag at all; everything is very smooth.

I mostly run Windows 10 on this machine, but it also works fine when I boot in to OSX.

I'm sure he's talking about MBPs with only Intel graphics (which frankly seemed a little underpowered for the Retina display much less a 4k monitor).

Actually not: "a 2014 macbook pro with amd graphics".

A while back I tested a 2014 MBPR with the AMD GPU vs. my late 2013 model with NVIDIA, and the AMD was a bit faster.

Not sure how I missed that...

I thought the macbook with amd was fine on 4k especially after getting the right cable for 60hz. The i5 with intel 530 is better. Maybe it is because graphics cards are designed more for 3d processing than for general 4k performance. I tried playing a 2d shooting game on each and for whatever reason the intel 530 system was less latent and much easier to win. The macbook is as smooth as the intel 530 when on its native screen but not when it drives a 4k screen.

> While I agree it's shameful for Apple to be selling the current Mac Mini, the performance from 2017 chips is going to be only ~20% better than what's in the Mac Mini now.

Which means it still won't be as powerful as the Mini they sold five years ago:

https://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

At the beginning of last year, I expected to be replacing a Mini and a MacBook. I ended up buying a 2012 Mini and a 2012 MacBook Pro on eBay, bumping up the memory and swapping in SSDs. I never would have imagined that a few years ago.

And the Mac Pro... that is /old/ tech nowadays

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