Why Does the Mac Mini Exist in 2017? #Helpful Post

 Hey guys this is Austin.

Apple has been releasing a lot of major new products lately

but something they haven't touched is the Mac Mini

which has not seen an update in three years.

Why does this still exist in 2017?

I will say the Mac Mini comes in a tiny box.

So today small form factor PCs really aren't anything

all that special.

But, the Mac Mini was kind of ahead of its time.

Oh, all right, I will say one thing, even though, yes,

there are a lot of problems with the Mac Mini

that I will get into the actual sort of unibody

aluminum design still feels pretty nice.

You don't exactly get a lot in the box, though.

Pretty much all we get is a little bit of paperwork

with Apple stickers and a power cable.

It might sound weird to say considering that

this design originally came out in 2010 but I've

actually never held the Mac Mini and I'm kind of impressed.

So, like I said it's an all aluminum unibody design

and you actually have a fair few ports in the back.

Not only is there an SD card reader but there are also

four USB 3.0 ports, as well as even a couple of

Thunderbolt 2 ports.

Now, this is a far cry from current Apple devices

which have some would say fewer ports.

Earlier models of the Mac Mini

were actually fairly upgradable.

So, on the bottom you could actually screw off

this sort of plastic piece to get at stuff

like the hard drive and RAM.

However, this it's a little bit more difficult

and to make things worse the memory's actually soldered in.

That is a far cry from when Marques built

the ultimate Mac Mini back in 2012 where he

loaded it up with a ton of memory as well as an SSD.

At first glance though this actually doesn't look

like a bad way of getting yourself a cheap Mac.

So, this is a base Mac Mini which runs $500

and that's exactly half the price of the next

cheapest model the Macbook Air.

However, take a closer look and the Mac Mini

might not quite be such a great value.

Performance might just be the most outdated

part of this system as 2014 specs will only

take you so far.

This is the base model Mac Mini with Core i5-4260U

four gigabytes of RAM and a 500 gigabyte

mechanical hard drive.

To put things in perspective Intel is just launching

their eighth generation of Core processors

whereas the Mac Mini is using a fourth

generation Haswell chip.

Even when you spend the extra $500 to go to

the higher end model with the Core i7 you're still

limited to a dual core processor, which is bizarre.

They actually used to ship quad core versions

of the Mac Mini.

Take, for example, the leaked benchmarks for

the iPhone X that is showing a score of around

4,000 on single threaded and about 10,000 on multi-threaded.

Way, way faster than this Mac Mini is.

You're also stuck with a 500 gigabyte hard drive.

Now yes, you can spec up the Mac Mini with not only

a Fusion Drive but as well as pure SSD options,

but that raises the price significantly.

- Hey guys, this is Austin and today I'm back

with another tech under video this time talking a look

at tech under $60.

- So, to be fair the Mac Mini is powerful enough

to handle stuff like HD video as well as web browsing,

but the issue is with only four gigabytes of RAM

and you can't upgrade it you're going to run into

some serious usability issues on Mac OS.

So, take for example the HP Pavilion Wave,

this is a much more modern system.

You're getting more memory and almost more importantly

it's gonna cost you about $130 less than the Mac Mini.

It just doesn't make sense.

One of the reasons I can see somebody being interested

in the cheap Mac are for the Mac exclusive apps

such as Final Cut Pro X, which is what we use

to edit all of our videos.

- Hey guys, this is Austin.

- Wow, this actually, wow.

So, to give you guys some context on this this is

a triple stream 4K video being played back

and edited in real time on the Mac Mini.

In fact, it's actually the intro to this video right now.

So, yes this is not maybe the most demanding thing ever.

We haven't done stuff like color correction,

which would definitely slow things down.

But, as far as being able to do a sort of basic cut

this is three streams of 4K video playing back

in real time on the Mac Mini.

The only thing that's not totally stock here

and one of the reasons why it's not stuttering

is we are editing off a USB based SSD, but that's what

we do for all of our edits anyway.

Although, I think this says more about how

solid Final Cut is optimized and less so about

how powerful the Mac Mini is.

There are better alternatives if you do want

a cheap Mac though starting with

building yourself a Hackintosh.

Now yes, building a Hackintosh from scratch

is going to be more complicated than pulling

a Mac Mini out of the box but what you're going to get

is much much better hardware for the same price

if not even less.

Even used options can make a lot of sense.

So, a few minutes of searching on eBay found

multiple Mac Minis that are maybe only a generation

or so behind but could be found for as little as $200.

Look, most of the time there's at least someone

who I can say that a product will make sense for

when it comes to the Mac Mini it just isn't

a good idea to buy one of these in 2017.

There are just simply better options out there.

Now, before we get outta here I wanna give

a shout out to a few really good friends of mine

over at Vsauce.

So no, this is not a sponsored spot, but they've

been working on the Curiosity Box for over a year

now and I honesty feel like it is getting

really, really good.

This is a quarterly subscription box that comes with

all kinds of cool science stuff including

this incredibly attractive Vsauce beanie.

This box even comes with a Voyager One t-shirt

and a portion of the proceeds go

to benefit Alzheimer's research.

So, if you guys like VSauce and you want some cool

science stuff to show up every few months

check out CuriosityBox.com.

And, as always, thanks for watching.