Buying a mini pc to install Delphi

[Anders Melander 1795]

I can't really recommend anything with regard to KVM switches as I haven't used one in ages. But don't buy cables that are longer than what you need 🙂 Make a mockup of the whole setup and then measure the required lengths. Cables that are too long can make a mess of even the best designed system.

 

My own system consists of a desktop PC, a laptop (connected to a docking station via Thunderbolt 4), two monitors and a single wired keyboard and Bluetooth mouse.

I mostly just use the docking station for charging the laptop and then use remote desktop to connect to it from my desktop system.

 

Both monitors have multiple inputs so I have them both connected to both the desktop and the docking station and if I want to I can then switch the active input on the monitors between the two systems. The keyboard and mouse I have to switch manually. All in all a bit cumbersome so I rarely do it this way.

[Rollo62 538]

You could check 

https://symless.com/synergy

Works like a charm for me, at fair costs 

[Alberto Paganini 3]

23 minutes ago, Rollo62 said:

You could check 

https://symless.com/synergy

Works like a charm for me, at fair costs 

But don’t you need any hardware to connect all the hardware?

 

I want to make clear I want to use one computer at the time I don’t want to keep both machines on at the same time.

 

Many thanks

Alberto

[dummzeuch 1506]

1 hour ago, Rollo62 said:

You could check 

https://symless.com/synergy

Works like a charm for me, at fair costs 

There is also Mouse Without Borders, now part of Windows Power Toys, which has a similar functionality, but is Windows only.

But as Alberto just clarified: He needs a different functionality, so this won't help.

 

Regarding KVM switches: I found them a bit too pricey for just a convenience so I do the same as Anders and use the multiple input ports of my monitor(s) to connect my computers and switch between them using the monitor's on screen menu. My keyboard has two USB ports so I connect the mouse to the keyboard and just need to plug in the keyboard's USB cable into the computer I am currently using. (A separate USB hub would offer the same "convenience" at much less cost than a KVM switch). Also, I can have one of my monitors show the display of one computer and the other the display of the second one, if I need that. I don't know whether KVM switches allow that nowadays.

 

Of course that always depends on the use case: If you want to switch frequently, a KVM switch may be worthwhile. But then maybe Remote Desktop or Synergy / Mouse Without Borders could be a better solution.

[Rollo62 538]

1 hour ago, dummzeuch said:

but is Windows only.

This sorts it out for me

[Rollo62 538]

5 hours ago, Alberto Paganini said:

But don’t you need any hardware to connect all the hardware?

It controls the mouse and you can transparently switch mouse and keyboard from one PC to the other, just by moving the mouse into the right viewport.

That means you need 1x mouse and keyboard, but 2x display, one for each PC.

 

That way you operate both machines at the same time, at least it feels like this.

 

[David Schwartz 427]

On 10/31/2024 at 6:56 AM, Lars Fosdal said:

These days I avoid shopping at Amazon. The new MacMinis look amazing - but yeah, the Apple Tax is brutal. 

"the Apple Tax"?

 

I've got a 2014 Mac Mini and a 2018 Mac Mini, as well as a 2014 MacBook Pro. They all still run just fine. I use the Mac Minis pretty much every single day. I have yet to own a Windows PC that lasts more than 3-4 years.

 

My suggestion is to buy an Intel-based Mac Mini with an i7, 256GB or more of SSD. These devices let you upgrade the RAM, so you could get one with just 8GB and put in a couple of 16GB DRAMs. 

 

Also, you can get more SSD, but it's cheaper to get a Samsung T5, T7, or T9 external SSD (USB 3.2) rather than pay the cost of adding more SSD to the base machine. A 512 GB SSD + a 2TB T7 may be an optimal choice.

 

Set it up with a VM and load Delphi into that. I use VirtualBox, but I just read where VMWare just announced that Workstation and Fusion are now FREE. Be sure to back them up; mine take up 100GB or so, which only takes a few minutes to copy to a T5 and less on the faster ones.

 

As far as connecting to whatever you get, I access my 2014 Mac Mini via the 2018 one using an RDP connection (shared desktop). That would work as well for Windows as Macs.

 

I'm looking at getting a new Mac Mini with the M4 chip ... does anybody know how well VMs running Windows work on Apples Mx series chips? Does the Intel CPU emulation layer slow things down very much?

Edited November 15 by David Schwartz

[Rollo62 538]

12 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

"the Apple Tax"?

 

I've got a 2014 Mac Mini and a 2018 Mac Mini, as well as a 2014 MacBook Pro. They all still run just fine.

Yes they do, but I can not use my older MacBook for current development any more.
For text editzors and web-Browsing it will be fine.

 

12 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

My suggestion is to buy an Intel-based Mac Mini with an i7, 256GB or more of SSD. These devices let you upgrade the RAM, so you could get one with just 8GB and put in a couple of 16GB DRAMs.

I would recomment to use the latest, affordable Mac Mini with M2/3/4, since clearly this Apple Silicon is Apples future.

No one knows, how long Intel will still be supported by Apple at all, I'm afraid my next major update will stuck on the old OS on Intel.

 

They like to hard-cut and freeze older OS, even after a few years after purchase, which brings us back to the "Apple TAX".

Not only their products have an extreme Price-Tag for the performance, they also enforce tp use the whole "ecosystem" and rebuy such maching after a few years.

Now Windows is doing similar, after decades of backwards compatibilty, with Win10 to Win11, and the world complains massively.

But Apple TAX is maybe the wrong expression, under these considerations, Apple MAFIA would hit it better

 

It all depends on what you are using it for, if for development I would be careful.

 

Edited November 16 by Rollo62

[Patrick PREMARTIN 76]

On 10/30/2024 at 3:33 PM, Anders Melander said:

It's a very nice system but the refurbished ones I have been able to find are a bit expensive for what you get. I couldn't find any with more than 8Gb RAM although the max is 16Gb.

It's the Mac mini M1 I use. I bought it after the GTK to check if I could work on it with Windows VMs and never changed. The only thing that really annoys me is the SSD, which I also took to be too small and supplemented by external disks around the case.

 

Buying an Intel Mac is a bad idea. Buy a "real" PC instead of that. The Intel based models can't soon use latests macOS releases and you won't be able to code for macOS or iOS. The M1 should still have 2 or 3 years before being deprecated.

Edited November 17 by Patrick PREMARTIN

[Alberto Paganini 3]

Hello again

On 11/12/2024 at 9:09 AM, dummzeuch said:

I do the same as Anders and use the multiple input ports of my monitor(s) to connect my computers and switch between them using the monitor's on screen menu. M

Thanks for this advice, my monitor had 1 VGA and 1 DVI. I took this onboard and connected one PC to one monitor port and the other PC to another.

Then purchased a USB hub and plugged the keyboard and the mouse (and I still have two more USB ports available). All I have to do is to switch one USB cable and I can control one of the two PCs

 

Thank you

Alberto

 

 

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

On 11/15/2024 at 11:59 PM, David Schwartz said:

My suggestion is to buy an Intel-based Mac Mini with an i7, 256GB or more of SSD.

Intel Macs are going the way of the Dodo. It is all about ARM for Apple now.

 

The Apple Tax refers to the premium you pay if upgrading from the base spec of an Mx based device. The cost is ridiculous. You could buy a second device for the price of the upgrades.

 

Edit: ...and your average consumer cannot upgrade the device by themselves.

Edited November 17 by Lars Fosdal
Added no upgrade

[David Schwartz 427]

 

14 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Edit: ...and your average consumer cannot upgrade the device by themselves.

I didn't realize this forum caters to "average consmers".

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

9 minutes ago, David Schwartz said:

"average consmers"

Average consumers of hardware, then. Not all programmers tinker with hardware. And, if they bought a newer Apple device, they wouldn't typically be able to do so, as not all programmers are handy with soldering tools. Those of us that are, would probably be reluctant to void the warranty of their new devices. 

[Brandon Staggs 278]

On 11/15/2024 at 4:59 PM, David Schwartz said:

I've got a 2014 Mac Mini and a 2018 Mac Mini, as well as a 2014 MacBook Pro. They all still run just fine. I use the Mac Minis pretty much every single day. I have yet to own a Windows PC that lasts more than 3-4 years.

Sounds like a very poor choice of computers, then. I have like four or five Windows PCs in my house all being used that are 5 or more years old. But, I did build them myself.

 

The cost of Mac computers is outrageous. I am forced to buy them for development work, but unless you are or want to be in the Mac ecosystem, the prices are just too high. This is par for the course with Apple products since the 80s, they have always been overpriced but catering to a subset of the population that buys into their marketing.

 

I will say that modern Mac computers are almost works of art from a hardware standpoint and I guess I understand that for some people this justifies the price, and for others MacOS is better suited to them and you can only legally use their OS on their devices, so.

[David Schwartz 427]

13 hours ago, Brandon Staggs said:

Sounds like a very poor choice of computers, then. I have like four or five Windows PCs in my house all being used that are 5 or more years old. But, I did build them myself.

 

The cost of Mac computers is outrageous. I am forced to buy them for development work, but unless you are or want to be in the Mac ecosystem, the prices are just too high. This is par for the course with Apple products since the 80s, they have always been overpriced but catering to a subset of the population that buys into their marketing.

 

I will say that modern Mac computers are almost works of art from a hardware standpoint and I guess I understand that for some people this justifies the price, and for others MacOS is better suited to them and you can only legally use their OS on their devices, so.

You're welcome to spend your time however you want. Just like some people love to constantly tinker on their own cars, and won't own anything built after 1990. That's perfectsly fine! I'm just as uninterested in futzing with my car as I am with constantly futzing with my OS and computer hardwere. There was a time when I totally LOVED futzing with the OS and hardware. Today I just want it to run. Apple's OS is basically Unix, and I can get at it via the Terminal app any time I want; I do that very rarely any more. It's not about the cost to me, but how little I have to actually think about it and am forced to deal with it. 

Some people prefer to clean their own homes, and some prefer to have someone clean it for them. Arguments can be made on both sides. But saying you do your own cleaning just because you think "the cost [to have someone else do it] is outrageous", then it's not about the cleaning any more, is it? 

 

Neither one is "right" or "better". I just find that Apple's ecosystem takes far less of my time and attention to maintain than Windows. That's priceless to me. YMMV.

 

 

[David Schwartz 427]

20 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Average consumers of hardware, then. Not all programmers tinker with hardware. And, if they bought a newer Apple device, they wouldn't typically be able to do so, as not all programmers are handy with soldering tools. Those of us that are, would probably be reluctant to void the warranty of their new devices. 

That's why I prefer to buy stuff that's out-of-warranty and do my own upgrades. It's WAY CHEAPER that way! Most of what we're talking about is purely mechanical work; very little soldering is needed.

 

Besides, I can't recall the last time I had any piece of electronics that failed and I was able to get it fixed under warranty. Seriously.

 

FWIW, I spent most of today at a car dealer. I got a new car on Friday and while going through the paperwork yesterday (Sunday) I found that a few things that I kept telling them I wanted and hearing them say, "Ok, that's what you've got" -- but that ended up being far different than what was in the agreement they had me sign. It all had to do with warranties. If you want to find an industry that has figured out how to leverage people's fear of things breaking down vs. the cost to get it fixed, the automotive industry has perfected this to the max.

 

My experience with electronics is they either fail in the first few hours of use, or they don't. That applies especially to computers and peripherals.

 

I don't know how many dozens of computers are contained in the newest cars, but no matter what they say, most of them are NOT covered under ANY warranties. But they'll tell you they are -- or they'll say they're NOT just to get you to buy an extended warranty plan that you don't need, and when they fail they'll tell you they're NOT covered.

 

I got this new car because my last car had a problem that originated with the previous owner. In spite of all of all the warranties and assurances that I didn't have to worry about ANY problems that might arise with my electrical system (it's an EV) they were all just a big pack of lies. My fast charge port stopped working, and they wanted $6500 to replace the entire wiring harness in it -- even though the warranty I paid $5k for was supposedly designed to cover things like this -- "from stem to stern" they said. "Anything that goes wrong" they said. Just not "pre-existing conditions". Oops. Now they tell me that after 3+ years!

 

I'm the wrong person to talk to about the perceived value of warranties -- to me, they're utterly worthless. And if you ask most people who've had any kind of insurance policy on things that failed and then their "warranty" denied coverage (esp. health care plans!) they'll say the same thing.

 

I put zero faith in warranties. It's easier to get things "fixed" by filing a dispute with your charge card company than to deal with warranties! Thankfully, most companies are easier to manipulate via social media than the useless warranties they offer. 

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

If you need to produce executable code for MacOS and iOS - you need stuff that is NOT out-of-warranty, i.e. the Mx generation of CPUs.

I built all my computers myself from 1984 until 2008. After that, it has been laptops and mini PCs.
I bought an MBP M1 Pro when it came out, and it and later models using the Mx platform, cannot be upgraded. You have to pay the Apple tax on more memory and more storage.

[Brandon Staggs 278]

9 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

because you think "the cost [to have someone else do it] is outrageous", then it's not about the cleaning any more, is it? 

No, but because Windows machines cost so much less for substantially the same thing. The fact that I build my own machines is not really the point; I don't believe most Windows machines are dead in 3-5 years, that's ridiculous. Nearly everyone I work with is using Windows machines at least that old.

 

If you prefer MacOS that's certainly fine, nobody can criticize you for that. My personal experience as someone actively doing development for Macs is that it is easily the worst system to target for development and gets worse with every major update. Although it may be a lot of Unix under the hood, Apple is locking it down more and more with every update. Apple behaves as if it owns not only its hardware but their users. The Apple Tax is not just overpaying for hardware, but losing personal computer sovereignty with every update. It's bad enough on Windows, it's many times worse on Mac.

Edited November 19 by Brandon Staggs

[Rollo62 538]

12 hours ago, Brandon Staggs said:

No, but becauseI don't believe most Windows machines are dead in 3-5 years, that's ridiculous.

True, most of my machines get a 2nd life, afther their pre-life as Workstation.
As Build-Server, other server, separate, small workstation for web-development, or the like, if they were no more good enough as main workstation.

With Mac thats not so easy.

Edited November 20 by Rollo62

[David Schwartz 427]

I do my Delphi development in a VM running Windows on my Mac. I don't know what VMs let you run Windows on non-Intel Macs -- I think VMWare Fusion is the only one ... does anybody know for sure? (I don't have an M-series Mac so I'm wondering.)

 

The most unstable part of my systems are the browsers that slowly eat up memory because javascript doesn't have any sort of memory management and nobody seems to bother freeing anything. From what I can tell, it's the same on all platforms because it's a javascript issue.

 

Otherwise my experience has been that Macs are far more stable than Windows machines. My Win-based VMs implode from time to time, far more frequently than my Macs do. Again, what kills my Macs is because of excessive and uncontrolled memory leakage from javascript in the browsers. I totally minimize my use of browsers inside of the VM, but it still crashes for indeterminate reasons, just like every Windows laptop and desktop I've ever used. That's what I'd call the "Windows tax". I prefer the "Apple tax", thank you.

 

There's also the well-known fact that Windows is targeted by hackers a couple of orders of magnitude more frequently than MacOS is. To deal with this, you need to run a steadily growing layer of screening tools that eat up a big chunk of the performance boost you get from upgrading your machine. This is the "other Windows tax".

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 11:30 PM by David Schwartz

[Dave Nottage 559]

Just now, David Schwartz said:

I don't know what VMs let you run Windows on non-Intel Macs -- I think VMWare Fusion is the only one ... does anybody know for sure? (I don't have an M-series Mac so I'm wondering.)

Parallels allows you to run Windows ARM VMs on M-series Macs

[David Schwartz 427]

Just now, Dave Nottage said:

Parallels allows you to run Windows ARM VMs on M-series Macs

What I mean is, can you compile for Intel platforms and test them? I seem to recall there's a translation layer that came with the M-series chips, but I don't hear much about it when it comes to using Delphi to build WinTel code.

Edited Wednesday at 11:32 PM by David Schwartz

[Dave Nottage 559]

Just now, David Schwartz said:

What I mean is, can you compile for Intel platforms and test them?

Since Windows ARM can run x86 code, yes.

Just now, David Schwartz said:

I seem to recall there's a translation layer that came with the M-series chips, but I don't hear much about it when it comes to using Delphi to build WinTel code.

Rosetta on Mac doesn't have anything to do with the above, as far as I know - that's just for whether Intel macOS apps would be able to run in the Mac host.

[Patrick PREMARTIN 76]

11 hours ago, Dave Nottage said:

Since Windows ARM can run x86 code, yes.

Rosetta on Mac doesn't have anything to do with the above, as far as I know - that's just for whether Intel macOS apps would be able to run in the Mac host.

Yes, each ARM OS does the conversion it needs to run X86/x64 based programs.

 

Parallels Desktop is great for Windows VMs on Mx Macs. All tasks a Windows developer have to do can be done with it. (except for rare devices with no ARM driver)

 

[Rollo62 538]

I'm using Parallels too, because at those days, VmWare Fusion was year behind and unsure to support Apple Silicon at all, while Parallels was way ahead and went clearly all-in.
This forced me to move from my beloved VmWare to Parallels, and nowadays I would say that Parallels still is a step ahead, even if VmWare might get closer.
The unclear strategy of VmWare at the time, and even today with Broadcom as their latest owner, I'm distracted enough that I haven't touched it for a while.

No problems with Parallels so far.

Edited Thursday at 12:38 PM by Rollo62