It's official. You have to lift up the mini to turn it on

[Night Spring]

So the desk in the above video is the kind of setup I envision a lot of people might use for the M4 Mac Mini. At around 5:07, you can see the Mac Mini snugly stored in a cubby hole on the desk. The location of the power button means that if you ever need to hit that button, even if it's once a year, you need to pull the Mac Mini all the way out.

As I said before, not a deal breaker, but fairly annoying.

 

[Mark.g4]

I read a lot of ironic comments, but in the end, the Mac mini is a very powerful machine in every configuration. It has no flaws, it's powerful, very small, and consumes very little energy. The power button? You can turn it on from the keyboard, you can set up a schedule for turning it on and off via the terminal, and it doesn't have the button at the back, near the ports, which I have accidentally pressed more than once.

 

[Populus]

You can turn it on from the keyboard (…)

If this is the case, I don’t think I’ll ever need to press the power button, outside the first boot/pairing.

 

[Night Spring]

You can turn it on from the keyboard,

Turn it on, or wake from sleep? There's a difference.

 

[Populus]

Turn it on, or wake from sleep? There's a difference.

I guess we’ll soon know it.

 

[5167767]

This thread is still going

 

[tomtad]

So how are we finding it?

 

[macuros]

Yes, I needed to lift it up to power on for the first time.

If that's a big deal... Just enjoy!

 

[marstan]

Apple has a history of making these kinds of irritating design mistakes. They seem almost deliberate; just to show that they can do this and get away with it (remind you of anyone?).

My first experience of this was back in 2011 when Apple took away the backlit keyboard in the Macbook Air where it had been there on the previous model. I learned not to trust Apple after that.

 

[Populus]

Yes, I needed to lift it up to power on for the first time.

If that's a big deal... Just enjoy!

Please could you power it off, completely, and tell us if you can boot it up (not just wake it from sleep) from the keyboard?

 

[marstan]

Please could you power it off, completely, and tell us if you can boot it up (not just wake it from sleep) from the keyboard?

I would think if you could power it up from the keyboard, then it would not be truly powered down. It would be in some kind of standby mode like the ATV for example.

 

[jagooch]

For the two times you may interact with the button over the lifetime of ownership, I'd say it's more of a catastrophe than disaster.

Or daily, like me. I turn my Mac on in the morning and off at night.

 

[jagooch]

And to think some people are still struggling with how to power on/off an iPhone. 😂

Is there a fast way?

Right now, I just held the right side button and volume down to get the power off slider to appear. I think there was a time where I could just hold the side button until it powered off.

I hear about some crazy side button combos on Apple tech podcasts, but never remember them.

 

[Mark.g4]

Is there a fast way?

Right now, I just held the right side button and volume down to get the power off slider to appear. I think there was a time where I could just hold the side button until it powered off.

I hear about some crazy side button combos on Apple tech podcasts, but never remember them.

Download Onyx and set up a power-on and power-off schedule based on your routine, or if you don’t want to download programs, you can set it directly through the terminal, so you won’t have to touch the power button anymore

 

[Populus]

I would think if you could power it up from the keyboard, then it would not be truly powered down. It would be in some kind of standby mode like the ATV for example.

I was asking because some users are saying you can power it on without pressing the power button, because on the MacBooks you can boot it up just by pressing any Key from the keyboard (if you power it down keeping the lid open), and I think there’s a feature to power on a Mac through the LAN, although I’ve never used it.

So, I don’t know, maybe there’s an option to do that without entering into sleep, because I don’t like to put my Mac into sleep and wake it up several times if I’m doing something important.

 

[anshuvorty]

I’m doing it. I have flipped it over and keeping it that way!

 

[Night Spring]

I’m doing it. I have flipped it over and keeping it that way!

Do the fans still work when flipped over?

 

[Micky Do]

Or daily, like me. I turn my Mac on in the morning and off at night.

Why?

 

[Night Spring]

Or daily, like me. I turn my Mac on in the morning and off at night.

Why?

Because that's what people did with computers. They were noisy, and ate a lot of electricity, so you turned them off when you weren't using them. More modern computers became less noisy and more energy efficient, so there are less reasons now to turn them off, but there was no reason NOT to turn them off, either. So people who were in the habit of turning their computers on/off every day kept doing that.

Now that Apple has made it inconvenient to do that with the Mac mini, maybe people will learn to just leave it on all the time.

 

[anshuvorty]

Do the fans still work when flipped over?

I can't hear it whether the Mini is right side up or upside down, so I don't know. I'm sorry.

 

[TheGenerous]

I'm glad they changed it! So many times, I've turned off the computer when rotating the Mac to reach a cable

 

[mansplains]

Or daily, like me. I turn my Mac on in the morning and off at night.

Why? Are you running a mobile station or something?

 

[Che Castro]

Apple won’t do this but they should make a Mac mini commercial, do you even lift bro”

 

[amancalledsun]

I don’t understand why everyone is fixated on this as a design choice. It’s clearly bad design. The choice was driven by Apple wanting to reduce manufacturing costs by not having to wire a button or include an additional cutout on the rear surface, both of which add to manufacturing complexity. They saved $0.00003 per unit, which is all profit that Tim sells to shareholders.

 

[Chuckeee]

I don’t understand why everyone is fixated on this as a design choice. It’s clearly bad design. The choice was driven by Apple wanting to reduce manufacturing costs by not having to wire a button or include an additional cutout on the rear surface, both of which add to manufacturing complexity. They saved $0.00003 per unit, which is all profit that Tim sells to shareholders.

I doubt it was for the money savings, I suspect it was for aesthetic reasons only. That’s even a silly rationale,