It was time to die.
My 2014 iMac, equipped with 3 TB unit and maximum RAM, it was a dream machine. For years, I turned it on and started working, transcoding videos, recording podcasts, and writing books. It was almost too much machine. He had one beautiful and beautiful screen, one of the first models of Retina, if I remember, great speed and amazing performance. And it lasted almost seven years, a record given my habit of upgrading to every major Apple update.
Once I installed macOS Big Sur, however, things went downhill. I would open several tabs in Safari and get a beach ball that would result in such a hard crash that I was ashamed of the Apple CEO Tim Cook. Everything would freeze and spin for two minutes until the gray screen of death appeared. It should start again almost daily. Apple had downsized my old machine capable of crashing.
What was he supposed to do? I could use a laptop at home, but my kids and their remote studios took them with them. I could keep working on this iMac and reboot constantly. I could use an iPad and cry to sleep every night.
Reader, I bought a Mac Mini.
The Mac Mini is a computer I love very much. I had a first generation model in 2005 and it was my first real foray into Apple products. Remember, then, unless it was a hard one, it did all your real work on a Windows machine. They were cheaper, more ubiquitous and, except for some art, music and design applications, more capable. We can argue these points if you wish, but for the average computer user you get a Dell.
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The original Mini was a revelation. It worked wonderfully, the user interface was great (it wasn’t a Mac, so I hadn’t probably used it since the days of PowerPC) and I could add as many peripherals as I wanted. I used an old monitor, a nice keyboard and a Logitech mouse. Everything worked perfectly.
After on the death of my iMac, I wanted something similar in power with a fantastic screen, which I loved from the big, bright Retina screen my old one had. I also wanted to test the M1 chip. I switched to the iMac and set up the Mini. This is what I learned.
Get a great monitor
I went for the $ 700 LG 24-inch UltraFine 4K UHD IPS Monitor, which delivers much of the brightness and clarity of the original iMac. I noticed a smaller difference in color and brightness and the screen was slightly smaller than the 27 inches to which I was accustomed and, in retrospect, I probably should have grabbed a bigger one, as this is my daily driver. That said, the difference between the laptop, the iMac and this screen is minimal.
You can go out cheaper (about $ 300 for the BenQ PD2700Q) or get a kid with the LG 38WN95C-W for $ 1,600. But what you are looking for is a USB-C compatible monitor with some expansion ports. Since the Mini only has two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports, you’ll want the expansion.
Get an external drive
The Mac Mini maximums at 512 GB, which I noticed filled almost immediately. As mentioned, my old iMac had 3 TB on board, and that was more than enough. That was too little. I bought an external hard drive and turned it into a “junk” drawer for downloads and the like.
You will also want a good one USB powered support. I have an eight-port Anker model and can switch multiple devices while keeping the sound system off-board (the Scarlett 2i2) and the Logitech MX Master 2S mouse plugged in.
Replace the webcam
You want a video capture device like the $ 110 Elgato Cam Link 4K. You can also connect a GoPro camera to your M1, but I had a hard time getting it to work with the new M1 chips. I am currently connecting a Sony DSLR to Elgato via HDMI, as the USB transmission function does not work. This is the biggest problem of this whole system and I definitely miss the built-in webcam, although the largest The iMac was nasty (the Model 2020is much better).
All in all, I spent about $ 800 on accessories to make the Mac Mini work like my iMac, not including the cost of the Mini itself. Since iMacs don’t have M1 chips yet and the Mini was so reasonable, I think it’s a perfect opportunity to test the hardware I haven’t touched in years and upgrade my Mac in the process.