Old Mac Mini

[Dolby]

I told you they were really slow.
I think ssd will do the trick tho.

Still perfect for what I need to check Mail, office or surf - thanks again !

Ye I think the SSD would work as well and busy investigating adding one. I don't have the special tools and I'd be scared of breaking WiFi antenna or something - so rather just get the pro's to help. Apple seem to have embed the HDD as far into the chassis as possible ...

 

[Dolby]

The CPU is the bottleneck in the older Mac minis. Rather look at a +-2018 (>8th Gen) or M1/M2.

My old PC was a similar age - albeit with slightly faster CPU, SSD and 8GB RAM.

 

[capd]

My old PC was a similar age - albeit with slightly faster CPU, SSD and 8GB RAM.

The problem is the laptop-class (low power) 1.4GHz Core i5. Your desktop-class i5 would likely be quite significantly faster. I suggest sticking to High Sierra or Mojave, or at the latest, Catalina. If you’d like to try the latest-supported macOS, then no problem to do so, but the i5 in question does become sluggish, the newer the OS.

 

[Dolby]

The problem is the laptop-class (low power) 1.4GHz Core i5. Your desktop-class i5 would likely be quite significantly faster

Makes sense

 

[Dolby]

I suggest sticking to High Sierra or Mojave, or at the latest, Catalina. If you’d like to try the latest-supported macOS, then no problem to do so, but the i5 in question does become sluggish, the newer the OS.

It seems I can go one more OS update - but I always thought priority #1 with Apple is user experience ?
So surely if they felt the user experience would suffer, they'd have stopped a few OS versions ago?

 

[capd]

It seems I can go one more OS update - but I always thought priority #1 with Apple is user experience ?
So surely if they felt the user experience would suffer, they'd have stopped a few OS versions ago?

View attachment 1497991

The user experience does not suffer. High Sierra supports iCloud, Handoff, etc. Remember there are new OSes each year, unlike Windows where it's every several years. Not much changes. And the core issue of yours we are dealing with is performance due to old hardware. Want the best experience, buy the latest hardware.

 

[Dolby]

The user experience does not suffer

To me, user experience includes the performance and the ‘experience’ of using the device (regardless of what it is)

In other words if they cut off at a certain OS, there’s a reason. If they allow a certain OS, someone at Apple has deemed the hardware can run it.

So to me, the fact that I can go one version higher must mean it runs to Apple specs

 

[capd]

To me, user experience includes the performance and the ‘experience’ of using the device (regardless of what it is)

In other words if they cut off at a certain OS, there’s a reason. If they allow a certain OS, someone at Apple has deemed the hardware can run it.

So to me, the fact that I can go one version higher must mean it runs to Apple specs

That’s not true. This is also your first Mac ever/in a long time.

>Catalina ruined HDD-based Macs. Even iMacs up till 2017/2018 shipped with them. Yet they are able to do Monterey/Ventura. As I said, the newer the OS, the slower old Macs become.

 

[Dolby]

That’s not true. This is also your first Mac ever/in a long time.

>Catalina ruined HDD-based Macs. Even iMacs up till 2017/2018 shipped with them. Yet they are able to do Monterey/Ventura. As I said, the newer the OS, the slower old Macs become.

I just didn’t expect Apple to be as shitty as that, honestly.

In another thread you made out that they were perfect & everything was great in Apple land for the last 10 years . But if you can’t rely on them with performance, they’re really not much better than anyone else.

It’s the same as selling the Apple Watch 3 - and yet it battles/can’t pair to new iPhones because it freezes.

IMO if you have hardware that can’t run certain software, they need to cancel the software roll out rather than put out a subpar experience

 

[Dolby]

And I’m not disagreeing with you - I just think someone in a company such as Apple should sit back and say ‘our users aren’t going to get the best experience by running this on older hardware … so let’s rather not push it out to those guys’

I’d hope that if an OS doesn’t work on my iPhone, they rather don’t roll it out and just tell me my hardware is too old

 

[bluepoole]

Sorry to hijack the thread a little bit, but after reading about Dolby’s experience with the Mac Mini and the discussion around it, I thought it good to ask for advice here:

I’m considering buying the following used Mac Mini:
Late 2012
2.5Ghz Dual Core i5
12Gb RAM (1600Mhz DDR3)
1Tb HDD
Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536Mb

Catalina installed on it at the moment.

Mainly want to use it for general internet browsing, little bit of MS Office work, downloading torrents and storing and uploading of files to WeTransfer.

Maybe a little bit of photo editing on Lightroom but not a set requirement at all.

How will the performance and overall user experience be?

 

[bwana]

How will the performance and overall user experience be?

Mediocre. It's an 11 year old machine with a spinning hard drive.

 

[Jean Claude Vaaldamme]

Sorry to hijack the thread a little bit, but after reading about Dolby’s experience with the Mac Mini and the discussion around it, I thought it good to ask for advice here:

I’m considering buying the following used Mac Mini:
Late 2012
2.5Ghz Dual Core i5
12Gb RAM (1600Mhz DDR3)
1Tb HDD
Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536Mb

Catalina installed on it at the moment.

Mainly want to use it for general internet browsing, little bit of MS Office work, downloading torrents and storing and uploading of files to WeTransfer.

Maybe a little bit of photo editing on Lightroom but not a set requirement at all.

How will the performance and overall user experience be?

Again. At what price? These old Mac minis go for inflated prices. You can get Nucs, Dell Optiplex minis etc that is 3+times faster for the same price.
M1 and M2 there is no comparison, but these old ones just have normal old Intel shyte in

 

[capd]

Sorry to hijack the thread a little bit, but after reading about Dolby’s experience with the Mac Mini and the discussion around it, I thought it good to ask for advice here:

I’m considering buying the following used Mac Mini:
Late 2012
2.5Ghz Dual Core i5
12Gb RAM (1600Mhz DDR3)
1Tb HDD
Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536Mb

Catalina installed on it at the moment.

Mainly want to use it for general internet browsing, little bit of MS Office work, downloading torrents and storing and uploading of files to WeTransfer.

Maybe a little bit of photo editing on Lightroom but not a set requirement at all.

How will the performance and overall user experience be?

That’s a 3rd Gen Core i5. Upgrade to an SSD, and while you’re at it, add another 8GB stick of RAM for 16GB total. Any DDR3L-1600 will do. You’ll have a decent machine for your needs. Plenty people still using the old Mid 2012 Unibody MacBook Pro with the same specs.

 

[capd]

Again. At what price? These old Mac minis go for inflated prices. You can get Nucs, Dell Optiplex minis etc that is 3+times faster for the same price.
M1 and M2 there is no comparison, but these old ones just have normal old Intel shyte in

But they don’t run macOS. A 256GB Rogueware SSD and Rogueware 8GB DDR3L will cost around R750. I wouldn’t expect the 2012 Mac mini to be more than around R2,000.

Lot of bang for buck.

 

[Jean Claude Vaaldamme]

But they don’t run macOS. A 256GB Rogueware SSD and Rogueware 8GB DDR3L will cost around R750. I wouldn’t expect the 2012 Mac mini to be more than around R2,000.

Lot of bang for buck.

I did not see anything he intends doing that need macOS on such a slower mini pc.
I’m not so clued up on these things, but currently looking for a mini pc for my daughter. It will mostly be used for Netflix and Youtube, but the catch is she maybe want to play a game like Minecraft too. Now graphics wise a mini pc with a Ryzen 2200g will be best, but they are scares and people tend to ask higher prices for them. Where you can get much faster Intels for the same price but with lesser graphics

 

[bluepoole]

Again. At what price? These old Mac minis go for inflated prices. You can get Nucs, Dell Optiplex minis etc that is 3+times faster for the same price.
M1 and M2 there is no comparison, but these old ones just have normal old Intel shyte in

Seller wants R1,700 for it which I thought is not too bad.

I specifically want to get a Mac Mini to move away from Windows, which I hate with a passion. The idea is to expand my Apple ecosystem.

It will be used as a secondary machine, my current secondary machine is a Windows PC bought in 2013, AMD FX4300 quad core 3.8 Ghz, 4 Gb RAM, 1Tb HDD and GT630 2Gb graphics card. This PC has served me well over the last 10 years, was obviously nowhere near top spec but it actually was not too bad on the performance front for many different tasks.

But the biggest headache is Windows, I hate working on it. I have no idea how the performance of the mentioned Mac Mini would be compared to my Windows PC, but any hardcore tasks are now handled by my primary machine so it really only needs to handle tasks as mentioned in my earlier post.

(And since the Mac Mini I’m looking at is of the same era, I reckoned it could be a viable option, but I have no personal experience with Intel Macs, and after reading this thread, it sounds like they might not be as great as I thought)

So a R1,700 is not a lot of money for it but if it’s really not gonna be at least a reasonable experience, I will rather save my money, suck it up and continue using the Windows PC.

In the end it is just for use as a secondary machine as mentioned, so no need for brilliant performance etc.

 

[capd]

I did not see anything he intends doing that need macOS on such a slower mini pc.
I’m not so clued up on these things, but currently looking for a mini pc for my daughter. It will mostly be used for Netflix and Youtube, but the catch is she maybe want to play a game like Minecraft too. Now graphics wise a mini pc with a Ryzen 2200g will be best, but they are scares and people tend to ask higher prices for them. Where you can get much faster Intels for the same price but with lesser graphics

Perhaps they’re already in the Apple ecosystem, or perhaps they’re wanting to enter it and have an opportunity to start off with an old one. This is the Apple forum after all, and there’s a reason they hold their value, are desirable, etc. Few go back after going Mac.

 

[capd]

Seller wants R1,700 for it which I thought is not too bad.

I specifically want to get a Mac Mini to move away from Windows, which I hate with a passion. The idea is to expand my Apple ecosystem.

It will be used as a secondary machine, my current secondary machine is a Windows PC bought in 2013, AMD FX4300 quad core 3.8 Ghz, 4 Gb RAM, 1Tb HDD and GT630 2Gb graphics card. This PC has served me well over the last 10 years, was obviously nowhere near top spec but it actually was not too bad on the performance front for many different tasks.

But the biggest headache is Windows, I hate working on it. I have no idea how the performance of the mentioned Mac Mini would be compared to my Windows PC, but any hardcore tasks are now handled by my primary machine so it really only needs to handle tasks as mentioned in my earlier post.

(And since the Mac Mini I’m looking at is of the same era, I reckoned it could be a viable option, but I have no personal experience with Intel Macs, and after reading this thread, it sounds like they might not be as great as I thought)

So a R1,700 is not a lot of money for it but if it’s really not gonna be at least a reasonable experience, I will rather save my money, suck it up and continue using the Windows PC.

In the end it is just for use as a secondary machine as mentioned, so no need for brilliant performance etc.

Go for the Mac mini but do ensure you upgrade to an SSD at the very least. It’s not difficult to do yourself if you have some basic hands-on tinkering experience. You will have a great and necessary experience which will ultimately help make up your mind, and be prepared to drop more money, etc.

 

[bluepoole]

Go for the Mac mini but do ensure you upgrade to an SSD at the very least. It’s not difficult to do yourself if you have some basic hands-on tinkering experience. You will have a great and necessary experience which will ultimately help make up your mind, and be prepared to drop more money, etc.

It sounds like an upgrade to an SSD would be the way to go and makes a huge difference.

I see even a 1Tb one is around the R1,000 mark, so even if I go for that much capacity it would still work out cheaper than a lot of used Mac Minis in the classifieds.

As mentioned the primary motivation is to expand my Apple ecosystem, I personally prefer MacOS. Just don’t want to spend money unnecessary on a machine which is not in daily use, so need to make sure it will be worth it.