Mac Mini’s are cool, and I appreciate that Apple has some of the most experienced and talented designers in the world… But they put the power switch on the bottom. You have to lift it up and turn it over to turn it on and off.
Remember these are the same engineers who put the Magic Mouse charging port on the bottom, making the mouse unusable while you charge it
Honestly, the mouse charger screams marketing or management. Apple’s brand is partially form over function.
It was very likely a designers decision. It forces the use the use case they wanted; wireless mice should be used wirelessly. I would bet they fought marketing and management to get this on the final product.
Marketing would want the mouse they can advertise as being useable with and wireless. Female ports are easier to mount and manufacture with they have depth to set the socket. So a plug on the front is much cheaper and easier to manufacture.
The fact the charging cable doesn’t get used in motion means it will last longer and you wouldn’t have people useing fraying cables on the front of their mouse.
PARTIALLY!? The Vision shipped without a lens cover. It did ship with a cover for the outside face.
What marketing genius uses a mouse upside down.
It’s better for display
Users aren’t trying before they buy so the display is the most important aspect
Users aren’t trying before they buy so the display is the most important aspect
Trying before you buy is literally the entire point of the apple store
How often have you tried charging while there?
What software do they let you load?
When I check out a device in the store I definitely pick it up, hold it, turn it over, and generally look at every part of it. Things like a charging port on the bottom would probably stick out…
Or like in this case, with the power button on the bottom, I’d definitely notice that as annoying.
What software do they let you load?
Basically anything you want, they don’t tend to watch you at the apple store, unless you seem like you actually want to buy something. They want you to mess around with the machines, so I’ve never seen them password protected in any way, you have admin access.
People treat it like a mistake but not be able to use the mouse while it’s plugged in is the entire point of the design. Right or wrong the Apple designers thought a cord drag was a bad experience and designed to prevent it.
They probably looked at their target audience and realized there was a certain percentage of folks that would just leave the mouse on the cord 24/7 and wanted to prevent that.
They also know their target audience has plenty of people who gobble up every bad design decision and even defend it online years later.
People treat it like a mistake, but the Emperor has no clothes and people are catching on.
I don’t understand what was wrong with the original version that just took 2 AA batteries. Reaching for the AA charger and swapping cells not awkward enough or something?
Smart and elegant design would be hiding a battery charger in the iMac it self (maybe even use something smaller than AA), not expect you to flip and plug in your mouse every time ya leave it. The Nintendo Switch, while a completely different form factor, is a great example of an elegant (you could even say “wireless”) charging solution.
I’m getting really sick of the Apple esthetic of sticking out wires, be it the mouse or the dozen dongles for every portable device they now make. Uh! Can’t forget the world’s only pen that needs charging, for seemingly no reason.
They can fit a bigger rechargeable battery in the same space as a battery bay for replaceable batteries. Plus it eliminates the waste of throwing away batteries, and has longer battery life than similarly sized alkalines.
Honestly don’t feel like a slight reduction on a month long battery life is of much concern. As for waste, I’d say being able to replace a dead battery should reduce waste if anything, also nobody said it must be a AA (on a side note, you seem to imply the use of non-rechargeable AA, which holy shit, if they’re still a thing, must be purged, sweet jesus…who’s dumb enough to waste money on em???). Personally, I’d much prefer having a second battery charging separately somewhere, ready to swap, as opposed to being forced to stop using my computer. Or like the Nintendo Switch I mentioned before, have some spot I can put it away for charing, that way the mouse is also cleaned up and not fucking dangling and wobbling around freely on the table.
(on a side note, you seem to imply the use of non-rechargeable AA, which holy shit, if they’re still a thing, must be purged, sweet jesus…who’s dumb enough to waste money on em???)
You should probably educate yourself on the advantages of rechargeable and single use AA batteries before calling other people dumb for still using Alkaline batteries.
Rechargeable NiMH batteries are great for most usecases, but even the ones that are designed to have a low self-discharge rate still are much worse in that regard than Alkaline batteries. There are simply use cases where rechargeable AA batteries make no sense and you are much better off with regular Alkaline batteries.
Thanks for not providing even a single example… I tried looking around and only found relatively niche use cases, like them being more reliable and resistant (while also being lighter) for extreme environments or infrequent use, for example emergency equipment. And then some people choosing em because they don’t feel like investing more into it, when they have only a couple devices that drain the batteries slowly, let’s say a clock that lasts a year. That could be easily fixed if you could exchange empty batteries for full ones like with gass tanks and similar, and the prior examples aren’t a good enough reason to have such batteries in the convenience store.
IT here. They were terrible.
Very insightful comment Mr. IT of lemmy.
I don’t understand why this is so hard to understand. You’re supposed to stop using the mouse while it is charging, and use the mouse unplugged. That’s the purpose. It’s not a stupid decision, it just prevents some user’s preferred operation of using the mouse while it is charging
“it prevents some users’ preferred operation of using the mouse while its charging”
…
“It’s not a stupid decision”
It’s not a stupid decision, but a stubborn one.
I’m 100% OK with that; Apple is heavy on design aesthetics. If a user doesn’t like that, they can just use their own preferred mouse - wired or otherwise.
Yes. Disagree with their decision, fine. But it was thought out and purposefully done.
I used to buy Macs when I was a teenager and young adult, but finally grew tired of the “my way or the highway” approach to design.
Windows is guilty of this too, but it’s more subtle, but getting worse all the time with w11.
Linux has more of a “you break it, you buy it” approach to design lol
I’m the reverse. As I get older, all the things I used to consider deal breakers just don’t matter as much. I don’t really care about how upgradable or repairable the device is, I’m just gonna pay Apple for the upgrade and pay them again to fix it. Whenever I have to solve an issue on my gaming PC I get an inch closer to just throwing it out and buying whatever overpriced gaming laptop comes working out of the box.
whatever overpriced gaming laptop comes working out of the box.
Not an Apple one, for sure.
You’re supposed to stop using the mouse while it is charging, and use the mouse unplugged.
Why? Says who? There’s been a few times where I’ve booted my work laptop up in the morning and my mouse is dead and I’ve had to plug it in. Once it’s charged I unplug it. What’s the harm in that? I’d be way more furstrated if I had to open up my laptop (I keep it closed with an external monitor) and use the trackpad instead.
Says the designer or design team, backed by whoever is over them who approved the decision.
As for why? For design reasons. To make it prettier so it sells more units. To fit in with the brand’s minimalist theme they’ve got going on.
Yeah and I hear they might bring that back lol. Why haven’t there been any wireless mice that use wireless charging? They could include a super thin coil that you could place under any mouse pad. It doesn’t even need to charge fast so heat shouldn’t be an issue. Just trickle charge when it’s not being used.
Edit: guess I should have searched first. Of course it was Logitech
Even worse, that was done intentionally. They wanted to prevent retail stores from leaving them plugged in at all times.
That’s not true at all. Apple likes minimalism, and putting ports and buttons where you can’t see them adds to the aesthetic.
I get that, but it doesn’t really make sense with a mouse as I pretty much never see the front of it as it’s always ahead of me. The only person who would see it would be if someone were to be sat opposite.
What.
The fuck.
In case it wasn’t a joke, I imagine it would be high enough for your finger to just poke under it to push the button, like you would a monitor with buttons on the bottom of the screen.
Doesn’t look like it is.
You’re using it wrong: Just place the whole computer upside down on your desk.
A reporter at the Verge just had a hands on with it and confirmed that you do, unfortunately, have to lift it up.
there’s no way to reach the power button, which is on the underside of the computer, without lifting it up.
Apple reported to say that you don’t need to use the power button because Mac Mini is not required to shut off.
The new design seems more lifted, I think it should be fine to fit your finger below there without having to lift it up yourself. At least for most people.
Power Bottom
But once its on why would you ever turn it off? /s
I bought my iMac in March 2020… since then it’s been powered down maybe half a dozen times (a couple of those were power cuts) and rebooted (outside of macOS updates) maybe ten times.
It just sits there reliably doing its thing and sucks little juice in power saving so 🤷🏻♂️
This but non-sarcastically. I have a Mac mini and I don’t think I’ve ever touched the power button (except after plugging in of course, but then you’re already fiddling)
We used to have racks of these things for automated testing …. And eventually they stop responding, so someone needs to power cycle them. In the computer room. In a rack
I seriously don’t understand why Apple won’t make server macs, with proper server features like IPMI, rack mounting support, virtualization. As a software developer, macs are horrible to work with.
Beyond the nightmare that is code signing and certificates (required even for debug builds), the physical devices are special snowflakes. Getting them to play nicely in a CI/CD system is really difficult. They often freeze or misbehave requiring physical access to fix. Also, if you want to target older OS X or iOS versions, you need to use an older version of XCode (that Apple makes really difficult to find) and an older version of MacOS.
There are many other use cases beyond software development, such as render farms, network storage, backup etc.
Assuming the desktop takes the same power saving techniques from their laptops, there is no real reason to turn it off.
The previous model has it in the back, you can’t even feel it properly because it’s not recessed.
On the other hand the last time I turned off my M1 mini was when we moved. It’s 100% silent and takes less power than a lightbulb when it sleeps, so why would I bother powering it off.
So while it sleeps, it still wastes electricity on literally nothing. Gotcha
So does anyone’s desktop PC that they’re too lazy to power off and I can guarantee those will waste even more.
Why would you run a lightbulb 24/7?
A prior model Mac Mini uses 7W at idle.
so you don’t have to turn it on when you enter a room
But WHY??
The side with the power button is now the top. There is no ports or io on the bottom.
You’re holding it wrong!
Is it meant to stay on forever once you set it up?
You’ll be able to fit a finger under it I bet.
who let the magic mouse engineers loose
I’d just get two toothpicks and make a seesaw to press it, although I pretty much never turn off my computers so I still wouldn’t mind too much
Don’t worry, there will be suitable USB accessories, for just 99$.
That’s trippy. Try following the cable from end to end.
I assume that the plinth lifts it high enough for your finger to comfortably fit under.
It looks to me like the center part is thicker than the edge so the corner might not be flat against the desk. But I’m completely sure if it’s enough.
The next 900$ monitor stand will attach the monitor at the bottom with the screen facing the desk.
You need to buy the ar/vr set to see what the screen is displaying.
So how do you figure the designers are that good?
At the very least, the keyboard functions for power.
There is plenty of room on the front for a power button. Should have removed the headphone jack.
Lol, lmao.
Why didn’t they put the headphone port on the back…
Or on the keyboard?
That’s horrible. I want you on my design team.
Perhaps, but for the price of those flat non-rgb or mechanical things they should either shine my shoes or provide some kind of utility, such as a headphone jack.
Or sold as a separate device that costs only a bit less that this whole pc.
It doesn’t come with one last I checked.
Most, if not all, Apple devices look almost exactly the same as their sibling devices.
Well, it would be
- more confusing if they shaped it like an iPhone,
- more unstable if they shaped it like the magic mouse with the power port at the bottom,
- super cute if they kept the exact mac pro tower design but super smol,
- actually useful as a vase of they used that cylinder mac pro design from 10 years ago
That cilinder Mac Pro was a fever dream but I still love the design
Smol Mac Pro would have been the best possible reality here.
Imagine a lil tiny ornamental CD drive that just pops out!
more unstable if they shaped it like the magic mouse with the power port at the bottom
Sounds like someone didn’t wear their Brave pants today
- way sexier if they shaped it so it could wear tight little brave pants
(and the ‘turn on’ button would have been covered by pants in this case as well, which sounds proper)
- way sexier if they shaped it so it could wear tight little brave pants
Implying Mac Minis haven’t looked like Apple TVs from the beginning?
Mac Mini (2005-2009):
Apple TV (1st gen, 2007):
Mac Mini (2010, first redesign after Apple TV came out):
Exactly my same thought, it’s just a smaller Mac Mini.
The price of the storage upgrades. Jesus.
It’s because they launched this product with an actual reasonable amount of ram (16gb) compared to the 8gb they are still selling MacBooks with. So, if they can’t charge you $300 for a little bit of ram now, they instead are going to rape you on storage. Apple is still apple.
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Because we shouldn’t have to pay such prices to upgrade to a normal storage amount without dongles and external storage.
Why care when we talk about desktops?
Because it’s $600 and velcroing an external HDD to a nice new sleek piece of hardware makes it look ugly. Typical Apple bullshit, I’m surprised they didn’t develop another proprietary connector.
I think you’re confusing desktops with laptops.
It’s kinda cute
I mean… It looks like the other Mac minis so… Okay.
Would it be so hard to get dual power supplies and a rack mount?
It exists for the outgoing Mac mini. We ran two minis in a 1u, colocated in a DC, for years. They ran Ubuntu server.
Rack mini: https://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html
Would rather buy a Beelink SER7.
Looks like that power button wasn’t placed by a circus clown and it has an option for USB PD, yeah this is more like it.
With the 10G NIC upgrade, I would see some use in this if it ran Linux
You can get cheaper options with 10G nics in the same form factor
It can possibly run Asahi Linux in the future. I had the same idea
That doesn’t seem very good for the price.
When… have their products ever been competitive on price? Not even shitting on them, but there’s always been an Apple tax.
Honestly, now that they put in a reasonable amount of RAM, with a processor that strong and some external storage, 600USD isn’t that terrible of a price.
I’d need to see what comparable x86 processors and graphics are to the M4, but yeah, this seems like it could be one of the first Macs in a while to be really competitive on price. It doesn’t happen often but it does happen. Fifteen years ago, a couple years after Macintosh went to Intel, I bought a Mac Pro. I had a hard time comparing prices at first, but once I finally realized I needed to be looking at workstations instead of desktops the Mac Pro actually came out to be about $300 less than identically spec’d workstations from Dell and HP. That was about the price of a full retail license on Windows Vista Ultimate (or later Windows 7 Ultimate). With Boot Camp and feeling like I could find Windows on sale for less it actually seemed to make the most sense with the added benefit of access to both Windows and OS X. It was frankly the best Windows machine I’ve ever used. No bloat, and all the drivers worked.
16 GB of RAM are kinda meh, but I can’t think of many $600 devices that can run three 6K monitors simultaneously at 60 Hz, plus then one at a lower res but still 60 Hz.
The SSD size is silly though.
I will agree with you there, wholeheartedly.
They’ve often been on par with competitors tbh.
The X1 Carbon isn’t much cheaper than a Macbook Air and ditto for Dell XPS vs Macbook Pro. The Macs have better build quality usually, but the PCs would get better specs. RAM, at least.
The Galaxy S series stars in the same range as iPhones do, though you get a better screen. But in the Ultra and Pro Max versions the screens trade blows and the iPhone is apparently cheaper.
When I was last comparing laptops a few years back I was seriously leaning towards the Framework AMD. It was clearly a tradeoff between Apple’s displays, trackpad, lid hinges, CPU/GPU benchmarks, and battery life, versus much more built in memory and storage, a tall display form factor, and better Linux support. Price was kinda a wash, as I was just comparing what I could get for $1500 at the time. I ended up with an Apple again, in the end. I’m keeping an eye on progress with the Asahi project, though, and might switch OSes soon.
I’m exactly the same, if I was getting a new laptop I’d be completely torn between Framework and Apple, the polar opposites. Part of me wants freedom, upgradability, repairability… And part of me wants a super high quality aluminum body, a trackpad so good you don’t even need a mouse, and whatever magic they do to make their screens look so good even if some PCs have higher resolutions nowadays.
Back in 2009-2010 I bought an entry level 13" MacBook Pro because it was fairly competitively priced compared to other options with similar specs, but the MBP had by far the better battery life, display quality, touchpad, and probably keyboard. It was easily worth the upcharge for those factors, so no real Apple Tax.
Mac Mini M1 when it was released was a good deal compared to same form factor machines at similar prices. Same for the M1 MacBook Air, despite the base RAM.
That advantage lasted a while, too, considering battery life and build quality.
Still running an m1 Mac mini right now, it’s a damn good machine, but the performance gains over the years on the m series chips haven’t really forced me to upgrade yet. As for gaming, I just use GeForce now to play my steam library and it’s awesome, it’s a really great combo. The 8GB of ram is lacking, but I’m using GFN and not pushing it too hard, so I don’t notice any meaningful performance problems. I’m also not editing photos or videos, so that probably helps.
For the Mac Mini? The Apple Silicon line has always been a really good value for the CPU, compared to similar performance from Intel and AMD. The upcharge on RAM and storage basically made it break even somewhere around 1 or 2 upgrades, if you were looking for a comparable CPU/GPU.
For my purposes the M1 Mac Mini was cheaper than anything I was looking at for a low power/quiet home server, back in 2021, through some random Costco coupon for $80 off the base $599 configuration. A little more CPU than I needed, and a little less RAM than I would’ve preferred, but it was fine.
Plus having official Mac hardware allows me to run a Bluebubbles server and hack Backblaze pricing (unlimited data backup for any external storage you can hook up to a Mac), so that was a nice little bonus compared to running a Linux server.
On their laptops, they’re kinda cost competitive if you’re looking for high dpi laptop screens, and there’s just not really a good comparison for that CPU/GPU performance for power. If you don’t need or want those things then Macs aren’t a good value, but if you are looking for those things the other computer manufacturers aren’t going to be offering better value.
M4 reportedly outperforms Intel’s Core i9-14900KS by 16%. That CPU alone is over $600.
I don’t think anything with the word “intel” can be taken seriously in value comparisons…
When I got my last laptop I ended up with a MBP because there were no high end options for Linux laptops with AMD. Now the options are better, but back then, the only realistic alternative to a MacBook Pro would have had a third of the real-world battery life if not less, even if I decided to spend £3k. That didn’t seem like an acceptable compromise so there were virtually no laptops in existence that could compete with an M2 MBP.
True. It was just the first comparison I saw when I searched for M4 benchmarks.
Really, AMD isn’t even a fair comparison because we’re talking about an ARM SoC here. So maybe the Snapdragon dev kit that ultimately got cancelled?
It was supposed to be $900, for a special Snapdragon X Elite, 32GB RAM, and 512GB SSD.
cpubenchmark.net has comparisons to other X Elite chips, putting them pretty much on-par with the M4 or maybe just below it.
With the same amount of RAM and storage in a Mac Mini, you’re talkin $1200. So, $300 premium for a device that’s maybe 2-8% better, has retail support instead of being a dev kit, and… well, actually exists. It’s not a slam dunk for the Mini, but it’s clearly not a rip-off either.
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$600 gets you 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. You can get better hardware for less.
Have you factored in the processing power and the cost of an equivalent processor?
Is there even a better ARM SoC? All I know of is the Snapdragon X Elites, which are either on par or slightly below the M4. And you can only get them in a laptop form factor at this point, cuz they cancelled the mini-PC dev kit.
Aside from the pitiful SSD it seems good.
I think the issue is - I would buy something positioned as a very long-living and good machine for that price.
Like Sun workstations were. The design and experience of everything.
The issue with Apple is that these things look expensive, temporary and inconvenient (that feeling of concept nice to look at … for a day or so). And what’s worse, they are.
I hope Larry Ellison gets geriatric demented sooner, maybe then he’ll try to resurrect Sun as a separate entity. Just joking, even to Larry Ellison I only wish good health.
I wish him bad health:
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/09/16/oracle_ai_mass_surveillance_cloud/
Oh. F*ck Larry.
Its not, you can build your own mini pc with a ryzen 9700X, more ram, more storage, and it would probrally cost less. In addition you wouldn’t be locked into the Apple ecosystem and you would be able to upgrade it.
Some people like the Apple ecosystem.
Same, I loved building my own PC but I also have a Mac mini because Macs just ✨fucking work✨ always
Sure. And you can buy a dirt bike cheaper than an ATV. Yet people still buy ATVs.
I’m not gonna do iOS dev or ML on a GMKtec no matter how cost-effective it is, just like I’m not gonna play x86 Windows games on a Mac even if I win a maxed-out unit in a giveaway.
Ok, let’s put together a mini PC with a ryzen 9700X for under $600. What case, power supply, motherboard, RAM, and SSD are we gonna get? How’s it compare on power, sound, form factor?
It’s an apples to oranges comparison, and at a certain point you’re comparing different things.
- Case/mothedboard: minisforum ms-a1
- Power supply: external
- Ram: ddr5l (sold separately)
- ssd: pcie gen 5
- power: slightly worse single core performance (can be overclocked) slightly better multi core performance (with a better AM5 CPU)
My point isnt that Apple sucks and nobody should ever buy it, my point is that you’re paying an Apple premium for a fully assembled computer. That premium is greater over time since you cannot upgrade it, meanwhile every part of the minisforum ms-a1 can be. Its convenience and a premium product vs freedom and upgradability. I cannot say that every person does or should value freedom but I do and thats my opinion.
So with the case/mobo/power supply at $259, the CPU/GPU at $329, you’ve got $11 left to work with to buy RAM and SSD, in order to be competitive with the base model Mac Mini.
That’s what I mean. If you’re gonna come close to competing with the entry level price of the Mac Mini (to say nothing of frequent sales/offers/coupons that Best Buy, Amazon, B&H, and Costco run), you’ll have to sacrifice and use a significantly lower-tier CPU. Maybe you’d rather have more RAM/storage and are OK with that lower performing CPU, and twice the power consumption (around 65W rather than 30W), but at that point you’re basically comparing a different machine.
You’re comparing entry level when the preformace (and price) is more comparable to the M4 Pro. I agree the entry level model cant be beaten on price but the higher model isnt a good value.
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Meanwhile… Apple TV stuck in stone age and still can’t do bitstream.
