I bought an M4 Mac Mini (2024) to replace my Ivy Bridge (2012) PC.
It was difficult to choose a configuration, because of the need to see a decade into the future, and the cost of upgrades. It is hard to believe that an additional half terabyte (internal) would cost more than a whole terabyte external drive (with board, USB electronics/port, case, cable, and retail box.)
It feels pretty fast. Apps open unexpectedly quickly. Which is to say, on par with native apps on my 12C/16T Alder Lake work laptop. Apparently, my expectations have been lowered by heavy use of Flatpaks.
It is quiet. When I ejected the old USB drive I was using for file transfer, it spun down, and that was the noise I had been hearing all along. The Mac itself is generally too quiet to hear.
It is efficient. I have a power strip that detects when the main device is on, and powers an extra set of outlets for other devices. Even with the strip moved from “PC” to “Netbook,” the Mini does not normally draw enough power to keep the other outlets on. (I put the power strip on the desk and plugged it into the desk power, then turned off the Mac’s wake-on-sleep feature. Now I can unplug the whole strip when not in use.)
It has been weird getting used to the Mac keyboard shortcuts again. For two years, I haven’t needed to think about which computer I’m in front of; Windows and Linux share the basic structure for app shortcuts and cursor movement. I don’t know how many times I have pressed Ctrl+T in Firefox on the Mac and waited a beat for the tab to open, before pressing Cmd+T instead.
It is extremely weird to me that the PC Home/End keys do nothing by default on the Mac. It’s not like they do something better, or even different; they just don’t do anything. Why?
I also had to search the web to find out why an NTFS external drive couldn’t put things in the trash after I had copied them onto the Mac. It seems the whole volume is read-only; macOS doesn’t have built-in support for writing to NTFS. Meanwhile, I didn’t notice anything in the UI to suggest that the volume is read-only; some operations just don’t work (quietly, in the case of keyboard shortcuts.)
There was one time where I tried to wake the Mac up, and it didn't want to talk to the keyboard. I plugged and unplugged the USB (both the keyboard from the C-to-A adapter, and the adapter from the Mac) and tried it with a different keyboard, but to no avail. I couldn’t find any way to open an on-screen keyboard with the trackpad alone. I had to hard power off, but it has been fine ever since.
I guess that’s about it! It doesn’t feel like “coming home” or anything, it just feels like a new computer to be set up.
