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Mac Mini (2020) - any experience with large libraries?

2020 i5 Mac Mini here; I've got mine connected to a 4TB external HDD USB 3.0 which stores my iTunes library; works with zero issues and that HDD is backed up to another one, just in case etc...

Just direct iTunes to that external HDD and it works faultlessly :)
 
Netley said:
Great - do you use the Mini for anything else - who large is your iTunes library (in terms of items) - do you use any other music software eg Roon? Cheers
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Yup; I run my Limited Company from mine ;) Mainly MS Office, PDFs and lots of tabs open on both Chrome & Safari; but no photo or video stuff

My iTunes Library is c3.5TB large currently; I'll be ordering a 6TB external HDD soon enough I think

As said; runs faultlessly with zero issues with Music & TV

I've trialled Roon & Audirvana, again with zero issues; but neither made a difference to the sound of the music I listen to, so don't use either.
 
Sorry I’m short of boffin cells, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics; How’s It Going?
 
Alex S said:
How’s It Going?
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Fine, thanks.

But in this instance I was referring to the Human Interface Guidelines. Essentially a guide to what makes a Mac a Mac.

Much simpler historically of course, now there are versions for iOS, iPad OS, the ticktock doodad etc.

Back in the day, these were enforced with, shall we say, a certain amount of zeal, not just by Apple but perhaps to an equal extent by one's peers.

A bit like this only with arguably more gusto:


They still exist, but whether anyone pays any attention (Apple included) is another issue.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/

In more recent times (actually a decade or more), Apple itself has progressively ridden roughshod over them and shite like Adobe's attempts at a 'universal' UI are legion.

One can only assume some of the recently previewed graphics and iconography in forthcoming versions of MacOS account for the whirring sound made by Mr Steve Jobs rotating at high speed in his vault.
 
Yes, off topic - I'm thinking of buying an iMac (still using 2011) deliberately before it's updated since I don't care about the bezels, chin and fancy upgrading the RAM myself for far less money. My guess is the update will cost more and do away with self RAM upgrade hatch on 27". The only problem with that plan is they can't ship until Sept so either Covid supply issues or update incoming. So, F* it. Having been a fan in 1984 I now hate Apple but hate PCs even more.
 
I don't have a problem with Apple per se, and I think Tim Cook's done a decent job and the shareholders (er, so that would be me) will be happy, but they do seem to have locked themselves into the treadmill of annual OS updates across all their platforms, which I think is the biggest mistake. This was perhaps justifiable in the early days when everything was new and exciting, but now it's just 'Adobe-itis' where they keep bolting on new eye-candy and functionality which few people really care - or even know – about while letting long-standing bugs fester from one version to the next.

I hung up my spurs around 5 years back but I still keep in touch with a few acquaintances from the developer community and there's nobody I know who is particularly happy. Perhaps the move to their own processor hardware might prove to be a catalyst (no pun intended) for a bit of a rethink from the powers that be.

Meantime I'm happy to chug along with my 2012 maxed out quad-core i7 running High Sierra for professional purposes. If I could jam 32GB of RAM in it I'd be as happy as the proverbial pig in... I suppose I'll buy new hardware eventually, if only to keep my accountant happy, but no urgency. An iPad Pro might be a more likely purchase in the short term though.
 
I hope you receive bountiful dividends. Meanwhile, I do appreciate that Macs are well built and do chug along for about 10 years if you ignore the click bait. Nonetheless, it was all so exciting back then. I bought a shitty piece of Mac rubbish because all my creative friends told me it was cool. Now I'm just making the richest company in the universe a bit richer (and Amazon).
 
notevenclose said:
I don't have a problem with Apple per se, and I think Tim Cook's done a decent job and the shareholders (er, so that would be me) will be happy, but they do seem to have locked themselves into the treadmill of annual OS updates across all their platforms, which I think is the biggest mistake. This was perhaps justifiable in the early days when everything was new and exciting, but now it's just 'Adobe-itis' where they keep bolting on new eye-candy and functionality which few people really care - or even know – about while letting long-standing bugs fester from one version to the next.

I hung up my spurs around 5 years back but I still keep in touch with a few acquaintances from the developer community and there's nobody I know who is particularly happy. Perhaps the move to their own processor hardware might prove to be a catalyst (no pun intended) for a bit of a rethink from the powers that be.

Meantime I'm happy to chug along with my 2012 maxed out quad-core i7 running High Sierra for professional purposes. If I could jam 32GB of RAM in it I'd be as happy as the proverbial pig in... I suppose I'll buy new hardware eventually, if only to keep my accountant happy, but no urgency. An iPad Pro might be a more likely purchase in the short term though.
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That's exactly what I was thinking before I bought my current 2020 Mac Mini.

I was trying to find a decent 2012 i7 Mac Mini that I could shove 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD into; but the asking prices on eBay were stupid and no guarantee that they'd be as described when it landed and no one had one on the forums

TBH it made sense to go back to the latest i5 Mac Mini as it's new so will be supported for years to come; the 2012 will get supported until next year and that's it done, no further updates etc

As I use mine for personal and business use; it makes sense to have one with warranty and plenty of support!
 
hifilover1979 said:
That's exactly what I was thinking before I bought my current 2020 Mac Mini.

I was trying to find a decent 2012 i7 Mac Mini that I could shove 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD into; but the asking prices on eBay were stupid and no guarantee that they'd be as described when it landed and no one had one on the forums

TBH it made sense to go back to the latest i5 Mac Mini as it's new so will be supported for years to come; the 2012 will get supported until next year and that's it done, no further updates etc

As I use mine for personal and business use; it makes sense to have one with warranty and plenty of support!
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The 2012 model, particularly the quad-core i7, have come to be recognised as arguably the best combination of performance and flexibility, certainly superior to the 2014 'downgrade,' so like vintage Sansui amps, have come to command premium prices.

You can still find the odd one and beef it up yourself, and for many tasks the i5 is perfectly fine. I have an i5 with an SSD and 8GB of RAM as a music server, should the i7 in the office burst into flames then the i5 would be a perfectly adequate substitute in the short term at least.

I may look to pick up another i7 myself in due course. There are a handful of Mac dealers who specialise in refurbs, so you might pay a bit of a premium but at least would potentially have a warranty behind you.

Dunno what you do, but my background's in design & advertising and more recently the web, and while back in the day (30 years now) it was necessary to be a 'power user' with regard to Mac specs, pretty much anything in the upper half of the range in recent years is perfectly adequate, at what, relative to 1990, is a fraction of the cost.

The only thing I ever ask the i7 to do which causes the occasional gasp for breath is rendering video, everything else it just breezes through.

Pretty much the only time I ever hear the fan is when Google's shitty Mac citizen of a web browser displays its long-standing memory hog/leak behaviour but that's about it.

As I said, I'd quite happily continue using this machine for the foreseeable future, a bit more RAM would be the only item on my wants list. Well, I suppose the onboard video's a bit pokey, but I'm emphatically not a gamer, and the days when I needed a Mac Pro with multiple video cards and monitors are long gone.

I'll see what they do with an ARM processor in the next Mac minis, I'd have thought those would be one of the first candidates to make the jump to Apple iron.
 
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notevenclose said:
I'll see what they do with an ARM processor in the next Mac minis, I'd have thought those would be one of the first candidates to make the jump to Apple iron.
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I reckon the new ones with ARM may be fanless which for a music server would be great. Still considering the UPTONE mod on my 2012 i7 though. :|
 
You might be right. Options likely seem to be same size/weight but higher performance/battery life or smaller form factor/lower weight with relative compromise re performance/battery life. Interesting times.

That said, I wouldn't have thought one should hear the fan on music server duty anyway – I believe the precise technical assessment of the task in question would be 'piece of piss.'
 
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I haven't been reading this whole thread, but I've been running various minis and an imac. Have a 2010 mini server that was not being used that has both SD and HDD. Found a 2014 in the pawn shop to use for music only thinking it would be faster-- slow as molasses without an SD, but I booted it from an external SD and it's better. Same thing with the imac using an HDD. Found a 2018 in the pawn shop and that thing is like lightning, however I need to use it elsewhere. I'm tempted to go back to the 2010 for music after reading some of the opinions here
 
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