How long should my M4 Mac mini be good for?

[throAU]

Security-wise, I think for actual work machines this issue is overrated, no one is going to hack your old machine unless you do something that might get someone’s interest. Sure I wouldn’t recommend open banking apps on this old computer, but even if you do it is not unsafe since most banks have had 2fa for a long time already

Without knowing the future, i'd feel less uneasy running and older mac from after the T2 security module became a thing but in terms of concern - if its used for something important (like... connected to work) you *really* should try to keep on something that gets updates.

Because whilst its probably relatively low risk, "oh, the bad guys got into our company because they compromised my 15 year old mac and hijacked my open browser because i'm too tightfisted to spend $700 on a new mac mini every 7 years!" is not a conversation you really want to have.

2FA won't help you if you log into your bank and there's a RAT on it to hijack your logged in session, or screen record to steal your personal info to impersonate you, etc.


Also - assuming "no one will hack you unless you make yourself a target" is dangerous.

Every computer on the internet is a target. Sure, you won't get nation state attention, but compromised websites can, have done and will again host malware in the site that could/would infect your machine via an out of date browser - simply by visiting a compromised website, that was automatically compromised from another infected site or infected browser.

e.g. i'm old enough to remember dealing with this

Nimda - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[uacd]

Every computer on the internet is a target. Sure, you won't get nation state attention, but compromised websites can, have done and will again host malware in the site that could/would infect your machine via an out of date browser - simply by visiting a compromised website, that was automatically compromised from another infected site or infected browser.

That’s btw a reason why I use adblock: it keeps most of these scammers away and probably blocks most malware code before it is even being run.

Security definitely matters in corporate setting, government communications surely, but for casual user visiting only few websites like YouTube, Reuters, Macrumors or Tiktok it probably won’t be an issue. Not so many people wanna deal with adblock, though

 

[throAU]

That’s btw a reason why I use adblock: it keeps most of these scammers away and probably blocks most malware code before it is even being run.

Security definitely matters in corporate setting, government communications surely, but for casual user visiting only few websites like YouTube, Reuters, Macrumors or Tiktok it probably won’t be an issue. Not so many people wanna deal with adblock, though

Ad block is a good idea because its only a matter of time before someone compromises an ad network, but its not a silver bullet.

Thats one reason i run adblock, the other is i don't want the level of ad misbehavior of the modern internet.

 

[Steve686]

Probably most hardware will outlast the internal SSD which is somewhat like a battery. Over the years its performance will decline and run out of read/write cycles.

 

[Ruggy]

Have a 2016 Macbook that not only still runs but is still snappy.
That is an amazing machine. So that's 9 years so far

My 2009 iMac lasted 10 years i think. Graphigs card died so game over. Beautiful machine though
One 2018 pro still in good condition but slowed down a bit. That's 7 years and it'll probably last a few more.
2016 Macbook Pro was a real dog. Went in for repair 3 times and it wasn't physical damage any time but note it was repaired each time by Apple who changed screens twice, keyboard and battery at no cost.
That's also important to remember. For me anyway, they have always been brilliant when it comes to repairs.

I don't think the 2020 Pros were very good. Keyboard problems here and they don't seem to have held up so well
Crazy really, the Air came in and blew them out of the water at less than half the price!
M1 Air-brilliant. 4 years and still brilliant. Will need a new battery soon but it's worked so hard!!!

We'll have to see how long the M4s last.

 

[eRondeau]

Interesting question. In terms of software/security updates, the M1 Mac mini is now more than 5 years old and there’s no indication that it will stop receiving MacOS updates anytime soon. I have one and it still feels super snappy. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple Silicon maintains (some degree of) support for a decade. In terms of hardware failure, I can see these SSD Macs running fine for 30+ years. I have a PowerPC iMac G3 from 2000 running Tiger… it's now 25 years and still works fine. I have Intel Mac mini’s from 2009-2010-2012 and they all work great. These Macs are the flagship products from one of the largest and most-successful companies in the world and they’re built right.

 

[jtdx99]

Anywhere between 7-10 years I think, seems like Apple silicon is going to age a lot better than the previous Intel chips. I would imagine the performance jump between generations is going to have diminishing improvements (i.e. M1 -> M4 vs M4 -> M7).

 

[throAU]

Oh figured i'd post here.

Last week, I found some malware on one of our work PCs before any of the virus scanners officially flagged it.

Got a warning from on-device windows defender that it was performing known malicious behavior, but defender didn't officially classify it as malware and look to remove it until a couple of days afterward once it had been positively identified as such and added to the malware definitions.

The malware had been seen by Microsoft on only 3 machines globally when i looked into it. Defender was the first to positively class it as malware about 3 hours after i was investigating it, the rest of the AV scanners did not identify it for significantly longer (again, it had only been seen on a very small number of machines).

LLMs are going to make it much much easier for malware authors to put out unique looking malware without needing to spend too much effort!

A virus scanner won't save you 100% as per above. You need to keep software patched. The malware above was somewhat crippled due to on device features preventing it from dumping memory. (to snoop lsass.exe).

The above was windows, but macOS (especially unsupported versions - when they get that old) is not immune to the same things for the same reasons.

 

[Juicy Box]

i am surprised it can run WoW, most your computers are pre-2015 i assume they run the web in slow motion

My older Macs run WoW very well, and pretty much most apps that I use run well on these older Macs. My 2013 iMacs (4th gen i7, 4GB 780m) out-perform or at least about on par with my M1 MM in many things I do.

The 3rd generation Intel i-chips (around the 2012 Macs) was about the time that Intel's generation to generation performance improvements slowed to a crawl, which I am pretty sure one reason Apple decided to switch to AS for their Macs.

Up until this point (the 2012-2013 Macs), there was a dramatic difference in performance between Intel chip generations. The difference was huge when going from 2007 iMac to a 2012 iMac, but not so much when going from a 2012 iMac to a 2017.

As for web browsing, the older Macs can't compete with a modern AS Mac, but the experience isn't bad at all.

 

[chmania]

M4 Mac Mini, 10 years?
Sure, it will last that long, maybe even longer, as long as Apple doesn’t mess with macOS in the future.

 

[JSRinUK]

My late 2014 Mac mini still works fine. Would I use it in preference to my M4 Max Max Studio? Of course not, but it still works.

How long it’s “good for” is down to your own personal use case. I’m not expecting my Studio to be “good for 10 years” because there’ll be something to surpass it real soon. If it makes it to 5 years before I replace it, I’ll call that a win.