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Shutdown, or not?

I Always close the lid. Maybe restart a few times a year through updates. I don't think I've ever actually chosen the shutdown option.
 
The old G5 iMac hanging off an UPS I always did shut down due to unreliable mains power. The MBP just gets the lid closed to sleep for the last 13 yrs.

Edit: Did used to shut down for 3 yrs when the MBP had a HDD for transport. So the last 10 yrs with SSDs it just sleeps.
 
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My personal Mac is never shut down or slept; just display sleep as it acts as a server as well. For work-related systems I shut down at the end of the day. Perhaps it's different for Macs, but my work-issued systems are so loaded down with cruft that gets really buggy. I have to shut down my work-issued Lenovo at the end of each day or the VPN gets flaky, the intranet stops being reliable and many of our tools with cloud back ends just refuse to save.
 
In the past, I would never shut down my laptops. But I no longer actively use my 2013 MacBook Air now and do all my work on a 2018 Mini. That machine gets pushed very hard, running a 32gb Windows 10 VM most of the time, frequently running all night exporting hundreds of gigabytes of GIS data. Obviously, the Mac needs to be turned on to do that. 🙂

When that isn't happening, I shut it down at the end of the day. The 2018 Mini runs very hot and I don't want it on when not needed. I suppose it wouldn't be hot while sleeping, but I never use sleep on the Mini. There have been quite a lot of threads about external drives ejecting, displays losing their configuration, crashing, etc. on sleeping Mini's.

Yeah, it takes a bit of time to start in the morning but so what? I login, then do a few chores while it starts up. I have 64gb of RAM and I assume it does some kind of RAM test at startup, since this Mac is very slow to start. I also have multiple external SSD's connected and suspect that also slows down startup.

If I was still using a laptop, would probably just close/open the lid and not worry about shutting down however.
 
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yeah, my MM M1 is shut down after use. My MBP, iPad and iPhone all remain on all the time, obviously the MBP screen is closed and running in sleep mode. Will shut down every so often though. maybe 10-14 days at a time.
 
I generally let my devices sleep and charge (if needed) on most nights with a complete shutdown Friday, Saturday or Sunday evening before bed. I‘ve been doing it this way for a while and feel it’s a good balance between the convenience of being able to use the device quickly and the benefits of the occasional power cycle.
 
I only shut down my Mac when it suffers bugs —to fix them. I would prefer this not to be necessary, but it sadly is.
 
I’ve noticed with my MBP 2019, 32GB memory, if I restart the Mac, often upon restart the internet connection doesn’t work (WIFI or LAN).

I have to wait about 30-40 seconds, then you’ll hear the fans kick into high gear and the unit will restart in its own, with a message to send the report to Apple.

Odd…
 
I don't shut down my M1 Mini unless I have a specific reason.
I have no deeper technical understanding around this, but I like to think of it this way:
After a restart, memory is 'empty'. As you launch applications, open documents, visit web pages etc, the memory fills up with data for faster access if it's needed again, i.e better performance. If you have plenty of memory, it will mean more for the performance, if you have less, it will mean less, but still improve performance. Todays macOS'es are pretty fantastic at managing memory.
After a restart, it takes time to build up the fast access memory again.
 
Over the past week or so, I have since prevented the likes of the apps listed below, from starting upon power on/login.
Doing so seems to have stopped the weird issue I was having, when restarting my MBP.

1Password
OneDrive
Cisco AnyConnect
 
I only ever shut down or restart my Macs for updates or troubleshooting. I just walk away from my iMac when I’m done using it, and tap the mouse or keyboard when I want to use it. Why would I want to shut it down?
 
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Just yesterday, I had to restart my MBP. I JUST learned that with my MX Master mouse, I could set a button at the top of it to 'Mission Control'.

After setting the button to Mission Control, the mouse icon would simply disappear off the screen, if I used the function.
So, I restarted the MBP, and then it seemed to correct itself...
 
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