A couple months ago I posted about my 2013 Mac Pro serving dual purpose as a museum item and my cloud backup machine. It’s done that job extremely well but it’s already being replaced by another Mac mini, one with an M4 chip, in fact.
So why such a short career? Well, the Mac Pro was always a stopgap solution to what would ultimately become a Mac mini again once I could find one within my price range. I expected to replace it with a 2018 Intel model or a 2020 M1, but prices are still in the high $200s for the Intel and $400+ for the M1. While it wouldn’t provide significant improvements in backup performance (currently limited by disk and network speed), it would provide more convenience. A mini would take up less space, use less energy, and, more importantly, could connect to my Thunderbolt dock so I could get rid of the USB switch and extra cables on my desk.
While used Mac minis were selling for more than I was willing to pay, I realized I had another option. We have a rewards program at work where you can earn points for going above and beyond. An extra presentation here, making an improvement there, those kind of things. You can use the points to order items from a marketplace – gift cards, vacation vouchers, tvs, bikes, and technology. It so happens that the marketplace included the Mac mini and I had enough points to get one, brand new, for what would amount to $0.
I had seen the mini in the catalog earlier in the year, which was the then-current M2 model. At that time it was over a year old and didn’t feel like the most valuable thing to spend my points on. Apple introduced the M4 model in November with a new case design, more ports, better video, and double the RAM. It also used less power at idle, which amounted to 91% less energy than my Mac Pro in the same scenario. After reading about the energy efficiency and performance of the M4 and leasing an M4 Max MacBook myself, I decided that it was a good time to cash in the points.
The catalog only offers the base M4 which sells for $599 on the Apple Store. That includes a 10-Core M4 with 4 performance and 6 efficiency cores, 10 GPU cores, the same Neural Engine as the M4 Pro and Max, a 256 GB SSD, and 16 GB RAM. 2024 was the year that Apple doubled the base RAM of its entire line up “for free”, making it an even better time to buy. Thanks Apple Intelligence!
The mini is really small and fits nicely on my desk next to my laptop stand. Because it has Thunderbolt 4, I can plug it directly into my dock and use my keyboard, mouse, and monitor, just like my MacBook Pro. No more USB switch to connect to the drives, which the Mac Pro didn’t seem to like anyway. No more fiddling with screen sharing, which was better on the Mac Pro than my previous mini but still a little annoying.
Backups were working just fine on the Pro but they’re even more smooth on the mini. Since it only uses 4W at idle, I’m even considering plugging an external SSD into it and using it as a fast cache of my Mac Museum files.
While the Mac Pro is no longer my dedicated backup server, I’m not ready to move it into my archive just yet. I don’t have anything specific to do with it, but I’m sure I can find something 🙂
Relatively Ambitious 