#Cnet mac mini review upgrade
#Cnet mac mini review full

Sadly, that all changed this past summer when Apple CEO Tim Cook walked onto his company's virtual, livestreamed stage and said Macs were changing forever.

#Cnet mac mini review upgrade

That's one of the only ways to play well-regarded virtual reality games like Valve's sci-fi shooter Half-Life: Alyx, which CNET sister site GameSpot just named game of the year for 2020.Р”Р„nd if some component, like the video card, just isn't doing enough, I'm able to upgrade the machine with little hassle. During the day, I'd move between my MacBook Air and Hackintosh for work, using all the specialized Mac software I've come to rely on to track my to-do lists, manage my calendars and find clever GIFs to use in idle banter.Р”Р„t night, I switched the Hackintosh over to Microsoft's Windows, which powers more than 73% of the world's computers. (Apple declined to comment for this article.) But the result was that I had a desktop Mac computer on my terms. It's not something Apple supports, and it may be a violation of the MacOS software licensing terms. I'd turned my DIY computer into a Hackintosh. The project took about $800, many nights of squinting at computer code, and a couple of frustrated bangs on my keyboard, but eventually I'd done it.Р”Р„pple's $699 M1-powered Mac Mini is a low-cost machine with surprisingly speedy chips. Then I tricked Apple's MacOS software into powering it. Next, I put them together in a rather generic-looking case.

I bought all the parts I needed, including a storage drive, system memory and a graphics card. So I decided to do one of the nerdiest things a techie Apple user can do: I built a PC.

#Cnet mac mini review full

But if I plunked down the $499 starting price Apple wanted for its Mac Mini computers at the time, I'd be paying the full amount for a machine whose innards were more than two years old. I wanted a low-cost multipurpose machine I could rely on for work and play for the next several years. But the desktop Macs weren't getting the same attention. The company pumped out new iPhones, iPads, AirPods and MacBooks at a regular pace, and I had at least one of each. And it's Apple's fault.Р”В«ack in 2016, I was frustrated that Apple hadn't updated its Mac Mini, iMac or Mac Pro computers in at least a year. One of my favorite nerdy hobbies is ending, whether I want it to or not. Apple's M1 chip is being hailed as a leap forward for Macs.