Apple introduces the new edition of the Mac Mini

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That'll be $3,000

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I'm a bit shocked at the pricing, $600 or $1400 for the Pro

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I'm a bit shocked at the pricing, $600

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Well damn.

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but this looks like a really frickin' good deal and I might have to get one.

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I've always thought that, for some reason, Apple prices the base Mac Mini very reasonably.

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$600 or $1400 for the Pro

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I've always seen amazing deals on used Minis on FBM but holy shite, that's insane.

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might have to get one.

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Slickdeals already shows it for $500 for the base model.
Costco is usually $50-100 off the direct from Apple price (basically the educational discount)

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With the educational discount

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Damn it. I gotta read harder next time.
Wasn’t on Costco yesterday but went live sometime this morning for $579 ($769 for 512gb ssd instesd)


My practice uses mostly laptops, but I do have 7 desktops in deployment currently. I buy used mini devices on Amazon depending on what’s available.


I have been tempted on occasion to actually transition over to these for a couple of reasons (FaceTime is an adequate way to perform telehealth and has non-iOS support that works fine (or did. I haven’t tried it in about 2 years). I don’t actually have a need for specific MS Office, thus the access to typical open source office applications and the addition of the integrated ones are adequate. I personally like Open/LibreOffice but can appreciate that it feels a little 2003ish, and employees do not like it for some reason), integrated messaging, with the current iOS/OSX (and every employee has an iPhone. Not most. Every) you can now fully operate the mobile device from the desktop without opening the mobile device.)


And then, of course, they can be integrated with MDM/active directory, and you can do some significant restrictions on freedoms to the end user if necessary.


So you get a natively-encrypted with no-removable parts desktop that probably has a 10-year useful life for web browsing (our EHR is web based) with fairly significant software-specific advantage (and disadvantages. But none of them really apply to my work environment. And many things can be accomplished with 3rd party software, but not quite in the same way, and there is some “it” factor to the employee for whatever reason).


The real thing that is getting me is the laptops, though.
I’m not ready to commit to a MacBook Air for everyone. But the more I replace $600 laptops because of shitty keyboards and hinges that you can’t find replacement parts for, the more I appreciate that $1000/user (and down to about $800 if used), you can make some similar/decent arguments for the quality of the MacBook Air vs the XPS 13, Lenovo T/P14. But I also feel that a “slow rollout” would cause complaints/annoyance and am not ready to replace 10 laptops at this time, and plenty of employees would be pissed at change for no reason which is a very reasonable stance.



I have posted before that I like the terminal and the Automator processes. I had a weird scenario (I needed a network share that I could write a script to watch a folder and upload via SFTP to a server automatically upon changes) and was able to figure it out there faster than Powershell or the command line (easy to do but difficult to automate and pass a single argument through for me).

The speech to text was miles ahead of any non-paid service when the m1 was announced, and the cost of the m1 MacBook Air was cheaper than the cost of the software that would make the windows computer better to beat it. This may have changed, and the software option (Dragon) is significantly better, but for the cost and the specific use case, it was what converted me for my work laptop.



So, while I used to hate it, it’s a part of my regular workflow now.



But I still don’t have multi-tray printer support for my main printer.



Such is Apple.

Call me curious. I’ve just bounced between work laptops that were underwhelming the last decade.

Have been thinking about getting a personal home device again lately

Needs would be pretty basic. About as fanciful as I would expect to get is dabbling in 3D printing or trying to keep up with AI basics so I’m not a dinosaur as I get older. Easy photo edits or basic videos? Super cool. Toss it on my desks at home or work? Excellent.

Ultimately I’d rather age like my dad who can keep up on everything even if not cutting edge as opposed to my mom who says stuff like “I never think to google things- just a different generation”

This seems like spot on the right device to knock out all those basics pretty cheaply. And with an upgrade or two be relatively future proof for awhile.


Accurate?

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Yes, very. That M4 chip is gonna haul arse and handle anything you throw at it for years to come.

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Are there any benchmarks out yet besides the bogus claims from Apple?

This could make for a sweet little transcoding box.

Edit: It's also nice to see Apple finally ditching 8gb of RAM as the default spec

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Are there any benchmarks out yet besides the bogus claims from Apple?

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No, but the Passmark ipad version comes in between the i9-11900KF and i5-13400F



Single-thread it ranks around 22nd.


There were some videos back when the initial m1 launched in the MacBook Air and Pro as well as Mac Mini comparing the difference in performance. The two fanned options were better. Someone put the MacBook Air on an external cooler, and its performance increased to practically identical to the other two. So you can reasonably expect the performance of that to be somewhat higher in the other formats, and then a bit higher in the higher-cored versions, but there’s a jumping off point from 6m ago.



They wouldn’t be a bad transcoding box at all. The real missed opportunity from Apple is releasing an app for the Mac Mini that runs TVOS-like apps and remote support + control of the computer by phone. The HTPC market is definitely shrinking. And they probably would do just as well launching a Safari app for the AppleTV. But I still like the idea of a small computer hooked to the TV and the versatility of something like a NUC/Mac mini sitting there (both the viewer and the server for remote access to files in a small, sleek, hideable, mountable, minimal-looking box)