Thinking about dipping my toes into the apple ecosystem. Any pointers?

I have an old MacBook Air that works just fine. However I'm not sure how much use you are going to get out of an "Apple Ecosystem" without an iPhone. That seems like step one to me.

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However I'm not sure how much use you are going to get out of an "Apple Ecosystem" without an iPhone. That seems like step one to me.

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This is correct.

If you are just looking for something different, then go for it. You just aren't going to get much use of the "ecosystem" with buying a computer. I like Apple, but it will likely be pretty frustrating to start if you aren't familiar with Apple products.

I've had iPhones for forever that I love. I also have an Apple TV and AirPod Pros that I really like. I got a Macbook Air a couple of years ago after being a lifelong Windows guy. I still feel like there are ways that I could be using it better, but the integration with all of my other devices is great. If you are planning on only getting an Apple computer and nothing else, I would watch a bunch of YouTube videos to try to gain as much knowledge about the differences between it and a PC.

When I jumped ship it was mostly because getting a good deal on an IPhone and IPad.

Not sure I could go back unless I broke/ lost both at the same time.

I still use a PC tho at home so what do I know?

Yeah I'll give it another week before I get something. I could probably get by with a Chromebook for home use but like I said I am interested in their music and video editing software. Could be a new hobby to get into

The new M4 machines are great. And the Mini is a sweet deal.

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The new M4 machines are great.

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Just bought a new M4 Air this week. Huge upgrade over my '17 Air. I've been an Apple user since 1988. Laptops generally last about 8-10 years. My old Air needed a new battery so I just bought a new MacBook. This one should be good for another 8 years or so.

I also have an iMac, two AppleTVs and a HomePod that rarely gets used. I use my AirPod Pros 2 instead.

ETA: I forgot about my iPhone 14 Pro. plus two other iPhones my boys have.

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thinking of either starting with the M4 Mac mini or the new MacBook air

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Pick the form factor you want. I bought a Mac mini to play around with when the ARM chips first released for reasons like you were describing- mostly the music recording software (as much as I love Ardour and Ubuntu Studio, I just wanted to play around with GarageBand).

About 4 months later it was time for a new computer. That generation MBA went on sale for like $800, I liked the speech recognition as much as anything else I’d used to that point, and the battery life was, at the time, significantly better than basically anything on the market worth talking about.

I’m not committed, and the gap of portable + powerful enough + long battery life is leveling back out. I’m not seeing a reason to upgrade yet after 4 years. When I do, Lenovo T14 will be a stiff competitor to a new MacBook Air. There’s plenty I don’t love about it- in particular their file manager, window manager, general lack of usable desktop as a launcher (it’s usable, but it’s semi-difficult to even just see the darn desktop. I guess to prevent the Windows-style desktop with 100 shortcuts scattered everywhere, but if you’ve ever used it, you probably know what I mean. It’s inconvenient to get to).

There’s some good, too- with the way I work, being sable to see who’s calling me and responding to texts is better than any windows/android version of software I’ve used. The iPhone mirroring (you can use anything on the phone like apps that aren’t available on the desktop) is ok but a little buggy. Convenient for the most part but not a huge part of my day)

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If I go the mini route what is recommended as far as peripherals?

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For the desktop, I’d use whatever keyboard I already owned, consider adding the mousepad. The mouse as an addition to the laptop seems to be semi-popular, but I don’t own one and don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I like my Logitech vertical mouse.

As far as ‘Mac keyboards’ go, there are a couple symbols you need to learn to translate to your ctrl, alt, and windows keys and you’ll be fine. If that’s difficult, Logitech, among others makes a keyboard with both sets of keys symbols on it. You can find mechanical keyboard caps if that’s your thing too, but I’ve never seen a mechanical keyboard with those shortcuts.

If using the MacBook Air, I wouldn’t buy any Mac peripherals. If using the mini, you unlock a little functionality with the trackpad. There’s also a way to put the trackpad gestures onto Windows if that’s your thing (I have a KVM with all wired peripherals and a windows, osx, and Ubuntu machine (well , it’s on proxmox and available from both of them rather than available by hardware switch)

It works better when there are multiple parts to the ecosystem and you're content doing it the way Apple wants you to.

For example, just committing yourself to using Safari will make your life easier. Use Apple Pay and apple passwords and so forth. And get an iPhone.

I'm not saying that because I think it's objectively better (you can make the case, but that's not my point). It's just that Apple being Apple, you'll find that giving up your tech autonomy for convenience is the trade off, IMO.

I might have a tough time adjusting to all of that. I've been using Chrome for at least a decade it seems now