Apple’s first Mac mini redesign in 14 years looks like a big aluminum Apple TV

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.

A Mac Mini underside, showing the power button placement.

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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- Apple reported to say that you don't need to use the power button because Mac Mini is not required to shut off.
- Doesn't look like it is.
- 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.
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
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
- Why would you run a lightbulb 24/7?
But once its on why would you ever turn it off? /s
- 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)
- 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 🤷🏻‍♂️
- 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
- Assuming the desktop takes the same power saving techniques from their laptops, there is no real reason to turn it off.
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$.
I assume that the plinth lifts it high enough for your finger to comfortably fit under.
The next 900$ 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.
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.
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..

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)

Implying Mac Minis haven't looked like Apple TVs from the beginning?

Mac Mini (2005-2009):

Apple TV (1^st 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.

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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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/
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.
- 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.

Meanwhile... Apple TV stuck in stone age and still can't do bitstream.