You must authorize the Thunderbolt connection for the TS3 Plus, TS3.The Mac Mini is perfect for art and graphic design since they are just 2D. Your Mac mini comes with 90 days of complimentary technical support and a one-year limited warranty.There's roughly two parts to this Mac Mini review.A good option for a Thunderbolt 3 docking station for gaming and graphic design. Limited Warranty and Service. Operating altitude: tested up to 16,400 feet (5000 meters) Typical acoustical performance: Sound pressure level (operator position): 5 dBA at idle 3.ConfigurationMac OS X was the tenth iteration of the Mac operating system and debuted in 2001. Photo editingFirst part looks at the specifications and the second at how it performs in the real world with regards to creating graphics, photo editing and video editing. I prefer linking into Illustrator files rather than embedding. Just because you can make the file big doesnt mean you should.I'm only interested in how predictable the computer is. I'm not really interested in numbers so you won't see much benchmarking - go to Macworld or Barefeats for those. Since I create graphics for newspaper, I'll also comment on its ability to perform under daily deadlines. The set I'm buying is for mainly for photo and video editing, stuff that I do at home. Apple's 2012 release of Mac Mini comes in three configurations:I bought the middle configuration but customised it with a 2.6Ghz quad-core and 1TB Fusion Drive.If you work for print, and require colour accuracy for reproduction, you have to get a non-glossy screen. Apple displays and that from the iMac are brilliant, but not excellent. Other retail or online stores are selling only standard configurations.The (non-exclusive) advantage of the Mac Mini is of course the ability to pair it up with your own display. I've an office computer (WinXP) with better specs than the Mac Mini but shows all those problems.Customisation of the Mac Mini is only available from the Apple store online.
Mini For Graphic Design 2016 Mac Mini IsSo depending on what you do, you might not spend more on the extra processing power.Some applications that use multi-core: Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Premiere ProSome applications that do not support multi-core: Sketchup, iLife (includes iMovie, iPhoto, etc).If you're looking at the Mac Mini for entertainment, e.g. ProcessorThe base model has a dual-core, the middle and server editions both quad-cores.Not all applications take advantage of the multi-core. If you're putting your computer facing light source or windows, there will be gloss. I can't even stand the gloss on my iPad. Personally, I prefer non-glossy screens. Hard Drive and Fusion DriveThe default hard drives are 5400RPM, but you can configure them to either a Solid State Drive (SSD) or the new Fusion Drive.Both the SSD and Fusion Drive are noticeably and significantly faster than default hard drives.Traditionally speaking, the hard drive has been and still is the bottleneck of computing systems. I've noticed that this pattern during my photo batch exports and video renders. So even if you have upgraded to 2.6Ghz, you might not get 2.6Ghz worth of processing power. Once the processor starts to heat up, the CPU usage drops. You can also upgrade it to 2.6Ghz but I'll only recommend it if you work more on videos.So far from my usage, I found out that the processors have maximised usage during initial runs — that would be 100% for software that can use quad-core. Show full path info for email outlook for macOn the bright side, 128GB is more than enough for storing the OS, applications and handling daily file transfers. Overall user interface is very responsive.For the price that Apple is selling their Fusion Drive, they should be providing a 256GB SSD instead. You get snappy performance for opening applications, opening and saving huge files, copying files from USB3 or the SD card slot. Storage space is 1.12GB total.The Fusion Drive feels like a single 1TB SSD. It's theThe Fusion Drive is actually 2 drives: a 128GB Samsung 830-based SATA III SSD and a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive. That's faster than my 2006 Mac Pro with a Crucial M4 SSD. In other words, get an external drive for backup.I've also tried filling up the SSD portion and proceeded with the usual tasks, e.g. That's no different from a single hard drive. There's not much point to the technology if it doesn't save time.If either one of the Fusion Drive parts fail, the whole drive fails. All these manual file moving is just a waste of time, which is why I favour the Fusion Drive option. But I don't know what happens when they have to edit the finalised version, which happens all the time. They put their working files on the SSD and then move them to the hard drive after finalising. I don't expect performance to be significantly different, at least not in a noticeable way compared to the Fusion Drive. Apple overcharges for their RAM.The usual brands for RAM are Kingston, Crucial, Corsair and Transcend. RAMThe default unit comes with 4GB of RAM, specifically the DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600Mhz (PC3 12800).You can get cheaper RAM from third party sellers. If you're using it as a main workhorse, then it's recommended. But let's face it, when you open such a big file, you will expect it to be slower.If you're using the Mac Mini to watch shows, then there's no need for the Fusion Drive. Past that boundary, when you open up files, they still feel snappy, even for 1GB+ Photoshop files. However to go beyond the 1920 by 1080 resolution, you need a mini Displayport to Displayport adapter (cheap), or a Dual-link DVI cable (expensive).I'm using a Dell U2711 LCD monitor. Intel HD Graphics 4000The integrated graphics card can drive resolution up to 2560 by 1600 from high-end 27 and 30 inch LCD monitors. If you need more, you can get an extra stick. One good gauge on how much RAM to get is to open the Activity Monitor and look at your typical memory usage.An extra stick of 8GB RAM will give you a total of 10GB after removing the 2GB stick inside. There's some slight lag during panning, but nothing I would complain about.A dedicated graphics card would of course be more appropriate for Maya, Autodesk, Lightwave, Cinema 4D or Zbrush. In the scene above, there are 5 high-polygon models each about 8MB in size. With Sketchup, the graphics card can handle high polygon scenes without significant lag. Expose animation is quite fluid even at 2560 by 1440 resolution — I'm using a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable from Accell.I don't play games to I can't comment in detail from the gaming perspective.I tested the 3D capabilities with the Sketchup modeling software. If you work with multiple applications or on huge files (500MB Photoshop or Illustrator files anyone?), it is recommended to get more RAM. I attribute that to the Intel HD 4000 which is quite a performer despite what other people might say.For art and graphic design, the Mac Mini handles flawlessly. There's no screen redraw even when working on several huge files. Art and Graphic DesignI work on various Adobe graphics applications, mostly Illustrator and Photoshop.Launching applications is fast and they are responsive. You can also increase the number of history states and display cache that can be recorded.The Mac Mini is perfect for art and graphic design since they are just 2D.One downside that's not really related to Mac Mini is user habits during graphic design. Get more RAM!For Photoshop users, you can add RAM to the point where you don't even need the scratch disk. When that happens, I've to quit other programs to release the memory so that I can save or export files. Adobe Photoshop might show up blank palettes. Adobe Illustrator will fail to save files, unless you quit other applications to release memory. You can pair it with any monitor of your choice which is important if you require absolute colour accuracy.The USB 3 and SD card slot are blazing fast at importing photos. Photo editingThe Mac Mini 2012 is also a great machine for photo editing. I prefer linking into Illustrator files rather than embedding. If your camera cable is only USB 2, you might want to use the SD card slot, assuming you have a fast SD card.
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