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It's official. You have to lift up the mini to turn it on
- Thread starter tomtad
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Power button is inaccessible to deter you from booting external storage and instead buy the affordable storage options.
It also allows Apple to sell a $199 vertical mount dock.
Booting from an external storage is painful anyway since the transition to Apple Silicon. Nobody does it nowadays.
It’s a really dumb place to put the power switch. I really don’t care though. Everything has trade offs and this is a beast of a computer that costs $600 USD with the power button in a weird spot. It’s not gonna stop me from upgrading if I get a deal I like on it.
Switch gate! 😝
Yes, stupid joke. I’m just surprised someone else hadn’t made this stupid joke yet.
Yes, stupid joke. I’m just surprised someone else hadn’t made this stupid joke yet.
Im not defending anything.
What I am doing, however, is calling out the massive over exaggeration of it being a 'disaster'. Wrong word and utterly over-egging any problems.
I think most people can see that its a clear tradeoff needed to enable the shrinking of the overall body of the machine to the extent they have.
We all know that Apple love the 'smallest thinnest lightest blah blah blah' marketing and whereas there was no real practical reason whatsoever in shrinking a Mac mini to this size they did.. because they could.
Could the power button have remained in a similar location to before? Sure but they would have needed to keep the plastic back which they seem unwilling to do. It has to go somewhere and where they put it is where they put it.
It's not the end of the world. It is FAR from a 'disaster' and as many people have said they simply leave the machine on 24/7 anyway.
Do we have a power button on the AppleTV? No? Why not? Probably because it's not really deemed a necessary thing given that it would rarely if ever need to be turned off. Perhaps they see the Mac mini in this way too.
Whatever you do, you will be criticised - but for goodness sake make it constructive and reasonable. Placing it on the underside of the small, thin, and light box is hardly world ending.
Right? Who is going to buy a $150 2TB Samsung SSD + external enclosure when they can pay Apple $800? 💵
Yes but why just have one drive anyway? I have been using multiple drives on windows PCs forever. If I get one of these Mac Minis, I will just add a second drive (which is external) and just put my main user account there—along with other files.
I was just saying that booting from an external drive is problematic on ASi machines.
Just keep the smaller drive and create a bunch of aliases for your personal data.
That is one of the most ridiculous comparisons I've ever heard of. Nobody leaves their oven on. Most people just lock their Macs and walk away, just like they lock their phone and put it in their pocket instead of turning it off.
Me, I always press the button to turn it on! I always shut down at the end of every time I use the Mac, then turn plug off at wall. Maybe it’s just me & my main priority being to pay electric companies the least possible, then there’s the green aspect too. Over a year the £ all builds up & when u do that to all devices in house it makes a difference. Button on front would be best & Magic Mouse charging port underneath is an utter joke. Designer should be ashamed with that (& shot)!
Ooh big red switch .. lovely!
Reasons why you shouldn't use the power button so why not just get rid of it?
- Boot from inexpensive external storage
- Switch between MacOS and Asahi Linux/other OS'
- Boot into recovery to clean install MacOS or upgrade via USB
- Shutdown every day until Apple fixes WindowServer memory leak
- Force shutdown when system hangs
- Boot from inexpensive external storage
- Switch between MacOS and Asahi Linux/other OS'
- Boot into recovery to clean install MacOS or upgrade via USB
- Shutdown every day until Apple fixes WindowServer memory leak
- Force shutdown when system hangs
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Sure, it really isn't that huge a deal. I mean, it's a button location on a computer, and in the greater scheme of things something that trivial can *never* be a huge deal. But it is a sign of the continued degradation of Apple and the fandom that is allowing them to continue the downward spiral. Apple apologists who stubbornly defend the most downright idiotic of Apple's design decisions do nobody any good. If you honestly can't comprehend that this is a laughably terrible design decision, and it is instead somehow the persons discerning enough to understand that are being unreasonable, then you need to take a look at the level of Apple fandom present in your thinking. It's an issue those of us who look upon Apple's products with a relatively objective-eye have gotten used to over the decades of course, and yet to those of us not immersed in it, it remains surprising. We were simply lucky during the Second Coming of Steve Jobs that more of Apple's decisions were positive (by no means all of them), than negative. We are no longer there. Not even close.
I think it comes down to this: We (as a species) should actively resist being rabid, unthinking, fanboys of any company or product, period. It allows us to be manipulated, tricked, and conned. It allows companies to continue poor-practices. It's pervasive in our society and growing. My guess is that there will immediately be products to eliminate this design flaw, and that most rational persons will simply sit it permanently upside down, probably on some little rubber feet to keep it from sliding around because it is pretty light. So, no, not a huge deal, just one more minor annoyance that is indicative of a larger problem. (Quick aside about the culture of fandom I recently read. A good read.)
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It’s not a great design choice given that people use Minis for various not-just-a-computer types of things (like media servers and players) — which means they could find themselves in odd places without a lot of vertical clearance.
I was going to put mine on a short shelf in my entertainment center, so yeah, it’ll be annoying the approximately 8 times I need to hit that button.
As said by pretty much everyone now, it’s hardly a disaster. But it is puzzling.
I was going to put mine on a short shelf in my entertainment center, so yeah, it’ll be annoying the approximately 8 times I need to hit that button.
As said by pretty much everyone now, it’s hardly a disaster. But it is puzzling.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I only reboot my M1 MacBook Pro like once a month or even less than that. Never had an issue.
This is really the only valid complaint I can think of. Although isn’t there a setting to have it auto boot after being powered off? Then you would never need to hit that button.
It could also be a matter of perspective.
It looks like an amazing place for a power button to be, if you're planning to VESA mount your Mini to the back of your monitor.
Just sayin'.
It looks like an amazing place for a power button to be, if you're planning to VESA mount your Mini to the back of your monitor.
Just sayin'.
...but not significantly better than having it on the front or back panel, which any VESA mount designed by a sane person will leave accessible.
Meanwhile, if you need something like this, you're stuffed:
Mac mini Security Mount
- Lightweight and low profile - High-grade aluminum construction - Easy to install- Secured with the keyed lock- Compatible with all Mac mini models- 100mm x 100mm & 75mm x 75mm VESA Pattern
Meanwhile, if you need something like this, you're stuffed:
Mac mini Security Mount
- Lightweight and low profile - High-grade aluminum construction - Easy to install- Secured with the keyed lock- Compatible with all Mac mini models- 100mm x 100mm & 75mm x 75mm VESA Patternwww.maclocks.co.uk
Can't you just mount it bottom out?
That would probably be better for heat dissipation anyway.
Funny you should say that: https://www.apple.com/uk/mac-pro/
But that's OK because nobody ever kept a large tower-format computer, say, under their desk where a top-mounted power button and USB ports might be hard to access... right...?
I guess you just pull it forward on it's optional $800 wheels and hope that none of the massive multi-way cables plugged into your specialist A/V card (which is one of the few reasons you'd need a Mac Pro now) gets dislodged.
Sorry, but Apple are falling so far down the "form over function" rabbit hole that all of these little "hardly a disaster" niggles are going to end up adding up to a disaster...
So what happens if you mount your new Mac mini in a bracket on the back side of your monitor? How the hell are you supposed to get to the power button then?