When I heard that Apple was going to start creating desktops with an ARM based CPU, I knew I would be buying one in the near future. I didn't know it would be the mini!
I've owned Apple products off and on over the past 3 decades. My wife still uses all Apple machines for her work. But, my favorite Apple systems were the original iMac, and the Mac mini.
I bought the very first iteration of the mini, and when the intel version came out, I bought that too. Now, over a decade later, I have bought another Mac mini, this time with Apples own SOC!
To be honest, I have been building my own, powerful PCs for the past decade, and I used them more for gaming than anything else. Jumping to a new hardware platform, with a non mainstream GPU, is a sort of "risky" step for me. 90% of my Steam library is now null and void, at least until some Steam upgrades come into play where Rosetta can safely perform translations of the binaries of the games. But I also have faith that it will happen over time.
In the meantime, I do have a small subset of games I can play, including CIV 5/CIV 6, Bioshock 2, Arkham city, Borderlands 2, Carrion, and some others.
There are, of course, also the games that were designed for Mac, like Osmo and Myst. These games all play fairly well to very well and they are games that use x86 binaries. Rosetta 2 does a great job at emulating (or really translating) these x86 binaries into ARM binaries.
But other things impress me about the mini. One, it is SUPER quiet. Like you never hear it. My expansion drive is MUCH louder, even though it too is pretty quiet. It is very responsive at all times. I bought the 512 SSD/16GM RAM model and purchased an OWC external miniStack with an 8TB, 7200 drive in it. Works pretty well, although the quality of the miniStack... might be another story.
Another thing I noticed immediately (mostly because I had been worried about it) is that the font rendering is very very good on my non-Apple 1440P monitor. I was worried because I use a macbook pro for work and hook it up to another 1440P monitor I have, and the rendering is horrific. Now, it could just be how I am connecting (USB C to HDMI) to the monitor, but I tried multiple things to try and get it to a state where I can stand looking at it. I had to resort to default writes in the terminal to fine-tune the anti-aliasing. This issue did not happen with the mini. Font rendering is great right out of the box.
I have not had any issues so far with Mac OS X Big Sur, or with the mini itself. I have a logitech headset on bluetooth, as well as a logitech mouse also on bluetooth. I am typing with my HHKB Pro Classic keyboard. It has an "Apple" mode so... seems to be working fine.
I have been missing some of my gaming friends, who I talk with on Discord, but I plan on sticking with the mini for awhile.
Anyway, if you are thinking about pulling the trigger on one, know this: Gaming? Limited. Productivity, pretty good! As long as you use Apple products. I know Adobe is putting out native programs, so they should be fine. You can also run MOST other apps through Rosetta without noticing any difference (Rosetta is that fast) but, you will likely run into some issues of there are some complex UI/rending things going on that are not accounted for in normal UI calls.
Oh, while Safari is pretty darn good now, I still like Chrome better, and Google has put out a native version of Chrome which not only works fine but all my extensions loaded as well.
I also have a native version of Java SDK 11 (or SDE I guess it is called), a native version of Python and have been able to use Clojure natively thanks to the native version of Java.
The apps I use most at the moment are:
- mail
- browsers (safari, chrome)
- chat/messages
- music
- bb edit
- terminal
- steam
...little things I have forgotten existed was how closely my iPhone and my iMac tie together... my phone calls also ring on my mac now, and anything people send me in message also comes to my mini.
Anyway, I am enjoying this little beastie.
Have fun if you get one!
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