Not only doesn't it fit a 1U rack space anymore, as it is too high, now they even make it incredibly inconvenient to reach the power switch. Hard pass for me. It shrank in the wrong dimensions.
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M4 Mac Mini's Power Button Has New Bottom Location
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To be fair, I've never had an issue with the ports being on the front of my Studio - I always thought it was daft putting the headphone jack on the back of this thing due to cable lengths etc. So I'm kind of glad they put it on the front of the mini, but the power button is just ridiculous.
Makes you wonder if they really understand how their Mac products are used in the real world, doesn't it?
This is far from world ending, but it is a really stupid design decision.
I was thinking of printing a 3D printed holder to hang it directly behind my monitor
That's great, but is this method approved by Apple? (Mind you, I think it should work because other than the fan, there are no moving parts inside.)
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no the new Mac mini has one less port than the previous one. There was 2 USB A and 4 USB C so 6 in total and now it is only 5. Not to mention that the cabling will be messy with these two front ports...
On the Mac mini, I don't think the Touch ID on the keyboard does double duty as the power button. At least not power on. Maybe off, switch users or the like.
Unless you're using the Mini to power things through the USB-C connectors, you're not going to use 155W.
At idle (sleep) I doubt the power usage will be over single digit Watt values.
And no, Apple is not going to secretly, remotely access your Mini to run distributed computational efforts globally.
And yes, MacOS does better sleeping, as even when sleeping it will do things on schedule.
Only for the M_Pro models. The base models since the M1 have been 2+2.
My M1 Mac mini does not - only when losing power while running.
If I‘m not mistaken that‘s a regression from Intel Mac minis that could power on upon connecting mains.
There was a time when Apple had good taste and/or humour in their ads, wasn’t there?
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I was thinking of a tiny teeter-toter. You press down to power it on, it pivots and pushes up the little switch.
I was an electronics engineering technician when I was working. My father, an industrial design engineer, once asked me "What do technicians do, anyway?" I replied "We deal with the engineer's mistakes." Sometimes these people need someone with a practical sense go over these designs.
I think it's a silly decision, quintessentially Apple (like the recessed 3.5mm jack on the original iPhone) but it's also not a huge deal - unless you mount your Mac minis behind a display or somewhere where the bottom of the machine is difficult to access.
The first one selling some kind of contraption that allows pushing the power button without lifting the Mini will make a ton of money.
I guess I'm one of the crazy ones because I shut my Mini down when I'm done for the day, so the button placement would be an annoyance for me. Otherwise this is a sexy little machine. But I'm not using my M2Pro Mini to its full potential, so the internal improvements aren't big enough for me to bite.
I guess I'm one of the crazy ones because I shut my Mini down when I'm done for the day, so the button placement would be an annoyance for me. Otherwise this is a sexy little machine. But I'm not using my M2Pro Mini to its full potential, so the internal improvements aren't big enough for me to bite.
That your company is requiring people to physically relocate themselves every day means your company has already dictated the use of energy vastly (by many orders of magnitude) more than any Mac Mini array in your company will use even if never put to sleep.
Can't even remember the last time I hit the power button on my Studio, it just sits in my shelf doing computer things. Might get the occasional reboot but generally I just sit down at my, hit space bar and off I go. Power button being on the bottom seems like an 'internet issue' vs an actual problem to me. New Mini looks mint though!
What is the issue with a power button on the front of the machine ? Apple ?
Two of my coworkers with the current minis like this. According to them it’s too easy to hit the power button when plugging stuff in. I don’t have a mini so can’t confirm or deny.
I did not think about this case. I never use the power button but I can see accidentally pressing the button on the back when plugging something in. The new Mini is so small I would probably use one hand to hold it and the other to plug in the device. When using the front plugs this would put my fingers near where the power button was. If this is why they put it on the bottom that would make sense to me.
This is such a non issue for me. Already ordered mine!