Unfortunately, our beloved Mac Mini finally died over the weekend. It has been showing signs of old age for quite a while but I was hoping I could keep it limping along until next year when I am in a better position to shell out ridiculous amounts of money for a new one! But this wasn't to be, while working on a new feature for PhotoArk it suffered an epileptic fit before restarting, never to boot again! I tried many things to coax it into life but sadly, it wasn’t having any of it. RIP Mac mini!
It’s weird to think that, five years ago when I first got curious about Macs, PhotoArk didn't even exist. The idea to form a photography website didn’t come until a few months after, around the time I brought my first bit of Pentax kit; the K-5. It was this camera combined with my Mac that got me into processing RAW files. As time went on and my new found love of Mac grew, Apple’s Thunderbolt display became ever more tempting. Having only ever used my Mac with a cheap TV connected via VGA (criminal, I know!) I wondered how much difference this awesome looking £900 monitor could make. Turns out, hell of a lot!
Meanwhile, my Dad’s 10 year long quarrel continued… he loves the ease and endless possibilities of shooting digital but always felt his results didn't compare to 35mm slide film. This quarrel was quickly put to bed when we hooked up the Thunderbolt display and realised, it was simply the quality of the screens we were using. Within a year my Dad had run his last roll of film through his camera, and brought himself a brand new Retina MacBook Pro.
In between all of this, my Mac Mini was getting thrashed as we started designing and developing PhotoArk. We were creating logos in Photoshop, preparing images in Lightroom and running web servers for testing; often all at the same time! But our work is never finished, so every Tuesday for the past five years me and my dad have sat in front of my Mac Mini updating content and maintaining the site. All along we were fine tuning things, changing settings and installing new bits of software to make managing PhotoArk quicker and easier. Things you forget about until you try and use another machine, like my Dad’s MacBook Pro, to do the same job.
But despite the huge role my Mac Mini has played over the past few years, we have never reviewed or even mentioned it on PhotoArk. So, without further ado here is my review of the Mac Mini 2011, “AWESOME”!
RIP Mac Mini, 2011-2015