It was time to die.
My 2014 iMac, equipped with a 3TB drive and maximum RAM, was a dream machine. For years, I fueled it and jumped to work, video coded, recorded podcasts, and wrote books. It was almost too much machine. It has a massive, beautiful screen – one of the first Retina models, if I remember correctly – great speed and amazing performance. And it took almost seven years, a record given my habit of upgrading to every major Apple update.
Once I installed macOS In Big Sur, however, things went downhill. I would open several tabs in Safari and get a spinning beach ball that led to such an accident that I was embarrassed about the CEO of Apple. Tim Cook. Everything would freeze and spin for two minutes before the Gray Screen of Death appeared. I will have to start again almost daily. Apple once left my capable machine in ruins.
What did I have to do? I could use a laptop in the house, but my kids and their remote schooling took it. I was able to keep working on this iMac and constantly restart. I could use an iPad and cry myself to sleep every night.
Reader, I bought a Mac Mini.
The Mac Mini is a computer that is close to my heart. I had a first generation model in 2005, and this was my first real decay of Apple products. Remember that you did all your work on a Windows machine at the time, unless you worked hard. It was cheaper, ubiquitous and, in addition to some art, music and design programs, more capable. We can argue these points if you like, but for the average computer user you got a Dell.
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The original Mini was a revelation. It worked great, the user interface was great (I wasn’t a Mac head, so I probably haven’t used it since the PowerPC days) and I was able to add any peripherals I wanted. I used an old monitor, a nice keyboard and a Logitech mouse. Everything worked perfectly.
After the death of my iMac, I wanted something similar going on with an amazing screen, something I loved about the big, bright Retina screen my guy had. I also wanted to try the M1 chip. I swapped the iMac and set up the Mini. Here’s what I learned.
Get an excellent monitor
I fetched $ 700 LG 24-inch UltraFine 4K UHD IPS monitor, which offers much of the brightness and clarity of the original iMac. I noticed a slight difference in color and brightness, and the screen was slightly smaller than the 27 inches I was used to, and looking back I probably should have picked up a bigger one given that it’s my daily driver. That said, the difference between the laptop, the iMac and this screen is minimal.
You can go cheaper – about $ 300 for the BenQ PD2700Q – or go wild with the LG 38WN95C-W for $ 1,600. But what you’re looking for is a USB-C compatible monitor with a few expansion ports. Because the Mini only has two USB-C and two USB-A ports, you will want the expansion.
Get an external disk
The Mac Mini maximum 512 GB, which I notice it fills up almost immediately. As mentioned, my old iMac had 3TB on board, and that was more than enough. It was too little. I bought an external hard drive and turned it into a ‘junk’ drawer for download and so on.
You will also want a good powered USB port. I have an Anchor model with eight ports, and I can swap different devices while keeping my onboard audio system (the Scarlett 2i2) and the Logitech MX Master 2S mouse plugged in.
Replace your webcam
You need a video recording device like the $ 110 Elgato Cam Link 4K. You can also connect a GoPro camera to your M1, but I struggled to get it working with the new M1 chips. I am currently plugging a Sony DSLR via HDMI onto the Elgato as the USB streaming feature does not work. It’s the biggest cludge in this whole system, and I definitely miss the built – in webcam – though the parent iMacs were horrible (the 2020 models is much better).
I spent about $ 800 on accessories to make the Mac Mini work like my iMac, not the cost of the Mini itself. Because iMacs do not have M1 chips yet and the Mini was so reasonable, I think this is a perfect opportunity to try hardware that I have not touched for years and upgrade my Mac in the process .