I’ve been seriously tempted to splurge some dosh on getting a Mac Mini. Without doubt, if I was starting from scratch TODAY, this is the system I would start from – alongside a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse.
But what specification would I choose, and what other accessories would I purchase. That’s the second part of this post.
After doing quite a bit of reading, and watching several reviews (see references at end), I have determined that for me (and I stress, for me), that the first decision that can be made is that the M4 Pro chip is way over the top for me, so that just leaves RAM and Disk Storage as a decision to make.
My MacBook Pro (2021 – M1 chip) is doing just fine, and that’s the real reason why spending money at this time is just not a sensible option, and it has 32Gb RAM. I often have several applications open at the same time when editing photos as well as Lightroom Classic – Topaz, Photoshop, Safari, and others. Having the “headroom” to know I can easily swap between them without delay (once they’re loaded) is important. So the first decision is an easy one – my MacMini should have 32Gb RAM.
The other decision to make is how much SSD storage do I need. When I purchased the MacBook Pro I imagined this would be a machine that would last me a very long-time, and so I decided that maxing up on internal storage “would be a good thing”. Wrong on a number of counts. Firstly, I really hadn’t worked out in my mind how I would use iCloud storage (I have 2.2Tb of storage – currently even in an Apple Family scenario it’s only 1.2Tb “full”). Secondly I had no sight of the incredible innovation in offline fast SSD disks, including those using NVMe technology (more later).
I recently purchased this 1Tb external SSD from Crucial for c.£99 – it does read/write at incredible speeds of 2,100 MB/s – certainly fast enough to read or write an image bearing in mind that my fast SD cards only r/w at 300MB/s. So having a large amount of internal SSD storage now doesn’t seem so essential – especially given Apple’s insanely high upgrade costs. So instead of the 2TB of internal storage (I must have been mad!) in the MacBook Pro, I think 512Gb SSD would be ample.
So we would have this Mac Mini, 2024 costing TODAY from Apple – £1199
Apple M4 chip with 10‑core CPU, 10‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
32GB unified memory
512GB SSD storage
Gigabit Ethernet
Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, two USB‑C ports, headphone jack
If I wanted to save cash, I would drop the SSD to 256Gb and save £200.
The next piece of kit I’d need would be a monitor. What do I particularly require? Good colour reproduction comes top of the list, with Adobe RGB compatibility as a possibility, Thunderbolt connectivity (better than HDMI for working with the Mac systems) and a good working relationship with Mac hardware.
Although the Dell Ultrasharp range would be a very sound choice, as would monitors from Asus, I’ve been very happy with the BenQ monitor I purchased to work with the MacBook Pro as a desktop system, so I would stick with them and with Wex Photovideo who I purchased the monitor from. Some in the range have a specific M-mode to ensure the best mirroring from a MacBook display. It makes sense to get that compatibility if available, even with the Mac Mini.
The monitor I have is the BenQ PD2725U 27 inch 4K UHD Thunderbolt 3 Monitor and it cost me then £899; the price has now dropped to £698 (on Amazon). However there are other BenQ monitors in the range and you can explore the BenQ and Wex Photovideo sites to see the current ranges and see prices on Amazon. You might also take a glance at this one – the MA 270U – which has a good review, or this one – the SW242Q (if you want a 24″ monitor).
So you have the Mac Mini, a monitor, keyboard and mouse, what else? Well although the MacMini is well equipped with ports, none of them are USB-A ports, and there’s no SD-Card slot – two deficiencies that I would have to rectify.
I can do that in one of two ways. I could use a docking station like the one I use with the MacBook Pro – the CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub – which is just great (but currently unavailable but look at any in the range from CalDigit, Sabrent, OWC or UGREEN), or an alternative which is in many ways much more aesthetically pleasing (ie tidy) – a MacMini Hub, of which there a couple, but take a look at this one – I love it!
There are others on Amazon. None of them are Thunderbolt 3/4 yet, so I might wait a bit – they will be more expensive when they arrive, but could be worth the wait, because you can install that NVMe SSD RAM in them – a really cost-saving move for more storage. [Even if you can’t wait and have run out of storage, this Hub should be a good purchase – but it doesn’t appear to be available yet in the UK.]
The alternative is to buy an NVMe Enclosure and put a SSD NVMe card (from Crucial or Samsung) in it and hook it up to the MacMini directly. That’s a really earth-shattering and cheaper alternative to Apple storage, but again make sure you’re looking at 40GB/s transfer or Thunderbolt 3/4. I can recommend UGREEN kit.
Video Reviews of Mac Mini
The last one almost echoes my thoughts, but I think her original decision to go with 24Gb RAM on the MacBook Pro, was wrong!!
Have you ever experienced a dramatic fall in the internet performance of your computer, phone or tablet when your device is connected to the WiFi network in your house? You have? You may be suffering from “flaky wifi” – I hadn’t heard the term before, but it’s for real! Just Google it and you’ll see it does exist; but what is it, and how do you rectify the problem? It might be intermittent, or might be permanent. Can you solve the problem? Yes you can.
First some background information – you can skip this if you want.
Let’s look at how the broadband (the internet) enters your house. If you’re lucky you will have a fibre-optic connection which would give you the fastest speed and performance but the fibre only runs from the Exchange to a Street cabinet. From the cabinet to your house the connection will be by copper. You can recognise whether you have fibre in your area by looking at the BT street cabinets. If they’re like the one on the left – you have. If they’re smaller like the one on the right of this picture and don’t have vents in them (necessary for cooling) – then you won’t … yet! Inside the cabinet it is still likely that there will be a tidy arrangement of cables and patch leads – not at all like the old telephone street cabinets which usually are rather untidy. So the picture to the left is a couple of rather proud BT engineers looking at a new fibre cabinet. So whether you have copper or fibre to the cabinet, the connection to the broadband in your house will be by copper. This is the same for the cable operators like Virgin Media as well.
Your broadband provider (your Internet Service Provider, or ISP) will have given you a device that presents the internet into your house. This could be done in a number of ways, but for this discussion I will call the device a hub. The hub incorporates two components – a modem which pulls the signal from the street cabinet and pushes a signal back, which in turn is connected to a router which handles the distribution of the signal to your various devices in the house. Sometimes these are two separate devices, in the case we’re considering they are one and the same. Your router will probably itself have two components – an aerial for sending and receiving a WiFi signal and a number of ethernet ports to allow you to directly connect a device by an ethernet cable to the router.
[This is always faster and more reliable than using a WiFi connection – but more about that later.] In the diagram to the right the WiFi is being delivered from a separate Wireless Access Point. This is not the normal way of providing Home WiFi nowadays, but before the introduction of “the hub” – it was.
What’s this got to do with “flaky WiFi” I hear you say … we’re getting there, but if you want to fully understand how the internet works you would benefit from an explanation of another piece of wizardry – the Internet Protocol, or IP address. You can skip this bit too if you like.
Every device connected to the internet has an IP address, some are Public, some are Private. Almost certainly all the IP addresses in your house, behind the router will have Private IP addresses. Your ISP will dynamically allocate an IP Address to your router when it sees it’s switched-on, ready for connection. This will be from a store of addresses it has and will look something like this – 86.10.6.1 – this is effectively the equivalent of the telephone number for your house. As the number of Public IP addresses is limited, your router will then allocate an IP address to each device from a Private range and these will look something like this – 10.0.1.2. It is the job of the router to map the devices from the Private range of IP addresses to the Public IP address space of the Internet.
So you can see I hope that the Router is a really important piece of equipment as it handles all the transfers of information to and from the internet using IP addresses. If you’re using wired ethernet connections that’s really all you need to know (there’s loads more but not for this post) and as long as your hub is working and has the correct lights shining all should be well. However we have the wireless network to consider, don’t we? So now we come to “flaky WiFi”. At last, I hear you say!!
Your wireless router (or hub) broadcasts signals to devices on different channels (like TV channels). Usually when you switch it on it will configure itself to use the best available one. However, if another network nearby (say next door) is using the same channel there will be interference between the two causing the signal to be interrupted, the information to be resent, the performance to drop. This is the most common reason why you will get “flaky WiFi”. Other reasons may be that you are too far away from the wireless router to get a good signal, you’re moving about, the walls are too thick, the router is not located in the best position to cover the whole house, the wireless card in your computer is damaged in some way (or is just too old to get good performance), or your software is not configured correctly.
I can’t deal with all of these but here are a few links that you may wish to follow up these …
… for now I’ll just go through a couple of situations.
1) If the signal as shown on your device gets stronger the nearer you get to the router, your problem is likely to be the siting of the router. You need to move it closer to where you wish to use the device, or consider a wired connection instead. This might sound daunting, running cables and the like, but you can buy a pair of Powerline plugs and connect the router to the device using your internal mains electric circuit. Alternatively, you could extend your network, again using Powerline technology to provide a Wireless Access Point near to where you want use your laptop, phone or tablet. [Note: There are other manufacturers and suppliers of this technology other than Trendnet and Amazon, this is just the kit I use. Furthermore {Feb 2021} the use of Mesh systems has become more common.]
2) If the WiFi is definitely “flaky”, it’s intermittent, or undependable, you’re most likely to need to change the channel. You may be able to do this yourself using the management software provided for your hub, but you may also find it better to contact your ISP, explain your problem, say that you believe you may need to change the channel and they’ll talk you through doing just that. [They may indeed be able to change it remotely.]
That’s it. I knew about channels before writing this, but not the term “flaky WiFi”. I’ve learnt something new! PS If you want to know just how well your device, and/or network is performing why not use Speedtest, it’s available for mobile devices like phones and tablets as well from the App Store or Android Store. Here’s a screenshot of a test I just did on a wired connection in my house using Virgin Media as my ISP. It’s quite addictive.
