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Game Changer: MacMini with Dual Thunderbolt 2 Ports

The MacMini’s main limitation has been a single Thunderbolt v1 port. Attaching a display used that port, even if in some cases daisy-chaining could be done—and it was Thunderbolt v1.

Today’s announcement that the new MacMini now has dual Thunderbolt 2 ports brings the MacMini into far more useful territory for expansion, and it might be a good choice for some users.

Be sure to order the MacMini with 16GB, because the memory is soldered-on and cannot be upgraded.

Bleep42 writes:

I would like to point out that Apple Decided to cripple the MacMini this time around to only a Dual Core i7 from a Quad Core i7, in the previous iteration (MacMini 2012).

I have been using My MacMini 2.6Ghz / 16gb / 2x 1TB SSD, since the release of the Quad Core, and was hoping to Upgrade, but after seeing it was only a Dual core decided not to.

I love the fact that if I need more storage space I can add a MiniStack to it and build a mini tower that way. I currently have both the MiniStack & MiniStack with BluRay drive. Also Thunderbolt has been pretty useless to me. I have found USB3 to work better for my need, and easier to find drives for it.

Love your reviews!

MPG: (real names preferred). In practice a fast CPU clock on a dual core can outperform a slower quad core on most all tasks, because most tasks for most users never use more than two CPU cores except briefly. So a 3 GHz Intel Core i7 with TurboBoost to 3.5 GHz can perform very well, including Photoshop.

But it all depends on workload, and if one CPU core is being sucked up by a background task, one remaining core is sometimes not much to work on.

The main limiting factor for photographers and similar is the 16GB memory limit. While 16GB is plenty for ordinary tasks, it does exert a top bound on some tasks, just as with the Macbook Pro. That said, compressed virtual memory on a fast internal SSD helps greatly should memory get low, so the MPG advice is to go with a straight SSD (“flash storage”) for the internal drive, and add (as needed) external hard drive storage with Thunderbolt (preferred) or USB3.

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