At a certain point this year, I was down to a work computer, my iPad Pro and a computer devoted to running my PLEX server.
I gave away distractions. I needed to focus on work and I needed to get my life in order so I could transition into a full time role at work.
It was good at the time. I had two tiny screens to focus on (I moved my 4K TV back to being a TV in the living room and gave away my Threadripper machine since my niece needed a machine for school), and I stepped up and got through the times in need.
Since then, the PLEX machine had problems and I rebuilt it as something more powerful.
I bought myself a new Intel machine to play games on and do work with and then…
I found out that a decision I made in January to turn all my 1080p rips into 10 bit H.265 file format (NEW and not older), was incompatible with my PLEX setup.
I thought it was the old machine having problems, instead, it was actually a file format problem that I should have caught earlier.
So now, the past month has been spent re-ripping what I could and having to reprocess a lot of things I didn’t have on hand. Even with two machines processing all day, it wasn’t enough.
This is how I ended up with a M1 Mac Mini. God, I feel dirty.
As I write this, the M1 is Apple’s new self created chip. It replaces Intel processors on their machines. The Mac Mini is supposed to be the most powerful machine Apple has ever created with benchmarks…
Okay this proves that like with presidential polling in the past couple of elections, you can’t believe benchmarks as a selling point. Only believe what a machine can do by seeing what it can do in YOUR workload.
It might be the fasted whatever. It does 17 FPS on my H.265 settings. That’s the worst of the three dedicated machines (my work machine doesn’t count), and now, while it’ll be part of my work flow, it just won’t be the major part that the “reviewers” had said it would be, but it’ll be an Adobe/comics creation machine.
The thing is, I’m typing this on my iPad Pro. I’m reading books on my iPad Pro. I’m reading comics on my iPad Pro. I even made a space on the desk for the iPad Pro.
So even though the M1 Mac Mini was a disappointment, am I now a Mac guy?
Kill me.
Jim