Can't make up my mind on next computer

[rspeaker]

Hey there! I can't believe I'm asking for buying advice. I worked at Apple for 9 years, helped people make the best decision for themselves tens of thousands of times. And yet... I can't decide what I should do next. This is all very first-world problems, I'm sorry if it comes off as whiny or entitled. 20 years ago if I read this, I'd think, "Oh boohoo, this guy has more money than sense, what a sad and awful life."

Use Cases:
The perfect computer for me is an M-series chip, 16GB of memory, and 8TB of storage. However, that's expensive unless you go with an M1 Mac Studio, and I don't want to buy a 4-year old computer.

• Mostly storage: approximately 3TB of videos, 600GB of photos and videos. Another 250GB of music, documents, email, text messages, etc.
• Photo organization, minor edits in Photos, favoring, sharing, and the reason I need a Mac for photos is adding Faces when Photos doesn't detect them. (I'm big on the Faces feature.)
• Handbrake a handful of times a year
• Web browsing and web-based tasks like taxes
• Email
• Budgeting and paying bills
• This is also the "hub": printer with Printopia is plugged in, our scanner, Time Machine HDD, and a Blu-ray disk drive. I also like to keep USB cables for syncing kids' iPads and charging my keyboard and trackpad, as well as a USB-C to 30-pin cable/dock plugged in for charging my iPod. I like keeping everything plugged in so I don't have to unplug and plug stuff in throughout the week

Current set-up

• 2021 iMac 4.5K, with M1, 16GB memory, 1TB storage
• CalDigit Element Thunderbolt Hub
• Sandisk 4TB SSD
• Western Digital 8TB SSD in Acasis Thunderbolt enclosure (I moved my Photos, Music, and Apple TV app libraries to this drive and pointed the apps there.)

Why do I want to change this set-up?

• I have an old 27" Dell 2560x1440 monitor I use for work, angled off to my left, and my iMac straight in front of me. I really just want one monitor. I've been thinking of the Asus ProArt 6K or LG UltraFine 6K as replacements.
• I could keep my iMac, but I don't really have a better place to put it... so I'd maybe need a different desk setup. Maybe the iMac goes to the angled side since I use it less than the Dell monitor.
  • Aside: the Dell is not plugged into the iMac. I tried it for a while, but then Photos stopped scanning for faces at night. I found on Reddit having an external monitor plugged into the iMac (and maybe MacBooks?) prevents Photos from scanning faces, I unplugged the monitor, and the next morning it had added a bunch of photos to People and Pets after not doing so for two weeks.

What am I indecisive about?

• I bought a Mac mini over the weekend at Micro Center. $2600 ($3000 after AppleCare and tax) for an M4 Pro, 64GB of memory, 8TB of storage. Seemed like a heck of a deal, and tons of internal storage. But now that it's all set up, I realize all that power is just sitting there.
• I could get the $799, 16GB/512GB Mac mini, plug in my 8TB Western Digital SSD, and buy an extra USB hub, and be fine.
• But at the same time, I got a whole computer for less than the cost of going with 8TB in a Mac. (Least-expensive option is M4 Pro, 24GB memory, 8TB SSD, for $3800.)
• I still need my CalDigit hub to get everything connected
• I'll need to buy a keyboard and trackpad (I'll try to sell the iMac, including its keyboard and trackpad)
• $3000 seems like a lot of money for something that mostly just sits there
• The 6K monitors won't be out until after the return period for the Mac mini, so I'm going to have to make a decision before having the "ideal" setup.
• I've also considered a MacBook Air, 16GB/512GB, that lives its life mostly plugged in. Amazon has those at $1000. But I'd also need another USB hub to get everything connected. I like the idea so I can pick up and be portable, but since all my photos, music, and movies live on an external SSD, the Air would really only have email and documents when it isn't connected at the desk.

What do you think? What's the best set-up for my use, and should I keep the Mac mini or not?

 

[M4th]

I could get the $799, 16GB/512GB Mac mini, plug in my 8TB Western Digital SSD, and buy an extra USB hub, and be fine.

Sounds like you answered your own question...?

I thought my 24/512 M4 pro was overkill for my use case, but do on the odd occasion get the spinning beachball (briefly) when GIMP does some effect rendering. As far as a panel goes, couldn't be happier with Apple's studio display especially with the $1299 deal Best Buy had at that time.

Overkill is never bad unless it really bothers you.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Use Cases:
The perfect computer for me is an M-series chip, 16GB of memory, and 8TB of storage. However, that's expensive unless you go with an M1 Mac Studio, and I don't want to buy a 4-year old computer.

[...]

• Photo organization, minor edits in Photos, favoring, sharing, and the reason I need a Mac for photos is adding Faces when Photos doesn't detect them. (I'm big on the Faces feature.)
• Handbrake a handful of times a year

As such, the M4 is the way to go. M1 vs M4, the Neural Engine (i.e., NPU) improvements are ~3.5x, very beneficial for all of those ML features (e.g., Photos recognition). The Media Engine is also more capable (e.g., AV1 hardware support). Even if you don’t utilize the hardware encoder/decoder, the CPU performance is (obviously) also far greater for tasks such as transcoding.

I bought a Mac mini over the weekend at Micro Center. $2600 ($3000 after AppleCare and tax) for an M4 Pro, 64GB of memory, 8TB of storage. Seemed like a heck of a deal, and tons of internal storage.

Very much so a great (discounted) price. That’s what I paid for my current Mac mini config.

• But at the same time, I got a whole computer for less than the cost of going with 8TB in a Mac. (Least-expensive option is M4 Pro, 24GB memory, 8TB SSD, for $3800.)

Refurbished is $320 cheaper but that’s still a significant amount away from the deal you otherwise happend upon.

Anyway… I would say your two most logical choices are:

What am I indecisive about?

• I bought a Mac mini over the weekend at Micro Center. $2600 ($3000 after AppleCare and tax) for an M4 Pro, 64GB of memory, 8TB of storage. Seemed like a heck of a deal, and tons of internal storage. But now that it's all set up, I realize all that power is just sitting there.
• I could get the $799, 16GB/512GB Mac mini, plug in my 8TB Western Digital SSD, and buy an extra USB hub, and be fine.

As for the “overkill” aspect… Well… My chosen config is seemingly such, though I intentionally did so because I’ve been (slowly) getting into more video production with apps like FCP, Motion, and have been (also slowly) doing software development on the side. Basically, I wasn’t sure how much oomph would be valuable.]

And:

Overkill is never bad unless it really bothers you.