The raw speed of CPU, GPU, and Unified Memory is race-car fast; but it took me half a day to get from unboxing to my desktop, and I met some usability problems.
After the Hello dialog and choosing language and keyboard, then Setup recommended upgrading from MacOS 15.0 to 15.1. This is expected for a new product: the software must be frozen in order to manufacture the flood of units for initial shipment to distributors, so purchasers of those units should expect the equivalent of a few months of software updates. With my gigabit network connection,
it took only a couple minutes to download a few GB. But the first progress bar for Preparing the upgrade said "About 30 minutes remaining", and that was an optimistic estimate. Steady state was not reached for almost one hour.
Setup finally finished, and then I started Migration Assistant. I had 200GB on a 3-year old MacMini-M1 with MacOS 12.6 (Monterey), connected to the new machine with a Thunderbolt 3 cable made by Apple. By clicking around during the transfer, I learned that the Assistant had diagnosed the hardware connection as more than 10 GB/s, with other options (including 1 Gb/s wired connections to the same ethernet switch) down to ad-hoc WiFi network at 54 Mb/s.
After waiting for a couple minutes of "Looking for files to migrate", I decided that it would never actually Connect. (That's bad U/I for not being more informative.) So I Back'ed up all the way to the beginning, and started again. This time the machines connected, and after a 6-digit numeric handshake the transfer began. The end-to-end speed meter generally indicated 50 MB/s to 85 MB/s; 200 GB took
more than an hour.
Next, Usability: At 7.5 inches square, I rested a 1920x1080 monitor on top of a previous generation MacMini with no problem. The new generation is only 5 inches square, and the combination is tippy.
Then the ports: DisplayPort remains a second-class connection: you must use AltMode, a USB-C port, and an active adapter (more than just wires); I don't like that. The lack of a USB-A port is a poor choice.
$5 for an adapter (USB-A socket to USB-C plug). Many an older USB-2.0 mouse, keyboard, tablet, etc. continues to work just fine. "Get a new device with Bluetooth" requires a purchase and a battery, whieh is not eco-friendly. If you want to connect a USB video camera, multi-channel audio device (digital sound output and/or input), CD/DVD player/recorder, etc, then you will need a powered USB hub (USB-2.0 works); and probably TWO of them: one on the back, one on the front. Then an external SSD via USB-3.2 and USB-C brings the usage of Thunderbolt ports to 4: front USB hub (for convenience of U/I devices and USB flash memory), rear USB hub, DisplayPort, SSD.
Finally, the Power button. Assume that Sleep consumes 3.5 Watts, which is the EPA limit. There are 720 hours in one month, so that's 2.5 kWh per month, or 30 kWh per year. At the US residential average
of $0.18 per gross kilowatt hour (total bill divided by total usage), that's $5.44 per year, which buys a nice ice cream cone. That's the cost of Sleep instead of PowerOff; de-rate for your estimated average daily sleep duration. Having the Power button on the bottom costs you that ice cream cone. The solution: stand the MacMini on its side, with the power cord near the bottom edge; see photo. Now the Power button is reachable at top rear. Also, get a vertical stand to guard against tipping, like the ones made for "1 liter PC" (approx. 7 x 7 x 1.5 inches) by Lenovo.
Tracker
Sir Lancaster
Caleb
