Hacker News Reader

Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

the author complains that the mac mini has no power brick - why not just have a power brick? he says. but he complains that an external GPU is a dumb idea?

this guy didn't like apple and his review simply reflects his emotion, nothing more.

View on HN

A power brick is sort of like a real brick - a big chunk of plastic which should be out of sight/mind and can be placed just about anywhere, as most people tend to do, often on the floor/behind the desk, etc... generally communing amongst other forgotten cables and dustbunny colonies.

External GPUs + enclosures are larger and more expensive than power bricks and therefore are probably best kept somewhere relatively safe, especially while connected to a tiny Thunderbolt port - I've personally seen plenty of bent/broken USB/FW ports due to cable management "issues" among friends/acquaintances/colleagues.

Peter Bright is Ars’s Microsoft guy and is known for his Apple antipathy. Not sure why he’s doing this review.

To be fair he called this out up front (although until your note I didn't know what he was taking about -- but I got the idea).

That gives you another viewpoint. About like how Gruber always buys the flagship Android phone from Google every year just to give his thoughts.

Uh, I don't complain it has no power brick. I say that it's impressive it has no power brick.

The first version had a power brick that was half the size of the mini itself. It was a dumb idea.

No power brick is a huge plus to me. It’s one of the reasons my entertainment center has a 2014 Mini hooked up to it and not a NUC or something like that.

He commends it for managing to not have a power brick, despite its small size. He then criticizes the small size (not the power brick, at least as I'm interpreting it), saying that most users wouldn't mind it being much larger if it meant better specs.

Right. My take is "hey, good engineering to not need a power brick. But to what end? What's the practical purpose of this engineering? Why not just make the system bigger?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com