I love the idea of it, and I love how tiny it is. Will probably get one when money isn’t so tight.
But I was curious if the power button was accessible without lifting it. And it genuinely isn’t. Why does Apple like shoving important IO and buttons underneath the device. Good thing it’s light?
Oh and a funny thing was the staff had to loosen its mount on the table so you could turn it on.
Which is exactly why they made this change. The Mac mini is essentially a screenless laptop in a tiny case. You don’t fully shut down your laptop between uses, so why would you shut this down? It probably costs $2/year in idle power costs. There is no common reason to regularly shut it off other than habits and personal preference.
Rather than Apple enforcing this through nag screens or other methods, they just make a simple design change to try and break this habit.
Why do they need to enforce it though?
Because instant wake results in a better user experience. Contrary to popular belief, people frequently make decisions that make their experience worse out of habit or based on misinformation, especially when it comes to technology.
Because having always on devices normalized enables future surveillance (marketing) paradigms?
costs $2/year in idle power costs
Maybe even less. My Ryzen 5000 laptop runs for about a week in sleep mode. According to my calculations, this is about 3 kWh per year, which costs 0.4 euros in my country.
It refers to the low power consumption of the chip, conventional wisdom is to shut down old, large or power hungry desktop computers because they generated a lot of heat and consumed a lot of power while idle.
Whereas if you think of the Mini more as a laptop in terms of the heat it generates and the power it uses, then it makes more sense why they think you don’t need to shut it off.
The enforcement is breaking bad habits that make your experience worse. There is no reason to wait for the computer to boot every time you need it, but people still do it because old habits die hard. But if they just stopped, they would enjoy and use the product more.
This is the “you’re holding it wrong” patronizing attitude all over again. I’m still extremely confused that it’s remotely controversial that tucking a power button at a place you can’t reach it on a piece of consumer electronics is stupid design. That you have to pull your computer from wherever it is to do something as basic as turn it on is stupid, no matter how you spin it.
I never said it couldn’t be interpreted as patronizing, but it’s also a fact. Apple absolutely thinks it knows better than their customers what they want, that’s the “courage” thing they were referring to in eliminating the headphone jack on the iPhone.
That’s what I mean by opinionated design. I’m not espousing it or defending it, I’m just explaining it. I would take issue with calling it “stupid” though, it’s actually very considered. Whether or not you agree with the reasoning or conclusion is your own business, but stupid implies a lack of consideration or an oversight. It’s definitely not that.
If after all that you still feel it’s stupid or patronizing, then this is not the product or company for you. Which is also totally OK. Not everything has to be for you.
