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Thought I would give the @Apple M1 Mac Mini a go as I keep reading everywhere how blazing fast it is and how everything works. Having tried it for 48 hours, I think it's probably going back. I thought my impressions might be useful? 1/n
I got the 8 Gb RAM, 512 Gb SSD model. If I was keeping it then I would need to swap out for the 16/1 Tb, but that would be custom build and not returnable. I'm comparing to a 2019 i5 Mini with 32 Gb and 1 Tb. 2/n
What's good? Bluetooth appears to be stable and have far better range than the disgrace that came before. I didn't hear the fans once, even when setting up, and when trying unsuccessfully to use migration assistant (see later). 3/n
Safari stays fast even with lots of tabs, as does Chrome, and Office feels snappier, even when using BIG spreadsheets. Both 4k displays work consistently and resize instantly, including on reboot. So why going back? 4/n
I'm having to use a USB-3 hub, which obviously might be affecting things, but there's only 4 ports! The webcam I use every day is often missing, and needs to be unplugged and reattached to be available. 5/n
GoToMeeting takes about a minute to launch, and often can't find video or audio. Overall, despite the speed, there's a bit of a feeling of instability. Nothing terrible, but a knowledge that none of the remote working apps are very stable yet. 6/n
Even FaceTime seems to often take 10s of seconds to launch. Overall, despite the peace, for a desktop machine I don't think it's worth it for my use case. Yet. You can see the potential, it's going to be amazing, might already be there as a laptop, but it's too early for me. 7/n
I do wonder if more RAM might help, but I'm not willing to take the risk of a non-returnable custom build to find out. Maybe people like @atpfm, @gruber, @reneritchie etc might have a better idea? 8/n
As an aside, for a second time running, my HFS+ TimeMachine backup has turned out to be worthless. It loads and runs so slowly as to be completely pointless. Migration assistant just sits there kicking heels for hours. 9/n
This seems like it's a thing, I've found lots of references to it online. I'll be starting a new backup using APFS as that's now a thing on Big Sur even on Intel. 10/n
I won't be able to return the machine until next week, so if anyone has any ideas or has anything they would like me to try then I'm all ears. 11/11.
