So Apple dropped a pile of press releases yesterday instead of doing one of their big theatrical keynotes, and buried in the M4 MacBook Pro news was the thing that's actually got me thinking: they redesigned the Mac mini for the first time since like 2010, and they put the power button on the bottom.
Not the back. The bottom. As in, the part of the computer that's touching your desk.
I want to be clear that I like almost everything else about this thing. Its tiny now, genuinely tiny, something like 5 inches square and under 2 inches tall, roughly the footprint of an Apple TV box stacked on itself. Starts at $599 for the base M4 model, which is the same price as the outgoing Intel-shaped one but now you get double the storage as standard (256GB instead of the insulting 256GB... wait no, I mean it used to ship with less, forget it, the point is storage got better without the price moving). They also finally put two USB-C ports and a headphone jack on the front, which is such an obvious quality-of-life win that Im almost annoyed it took this long. Anyone who has ever had to reach around the back of a mini to plug in a USB drive knows exactly what Im talking about.
But the power button. Why.
I get the design logic, I really do. The whole machine is basically an aluminum puck now, and putting a button on the front or back would mean interrupting that continuous shape they clearly worked hard on. Its a very "we are a design company first" decision. Except the practical result is that if you want to turn your Mac mini on or off, you now have to physically pick the thing up, or crouch down and feel around underneath it, especially if its sitting on a shelf or tucked under a monitor arm the way basically everyone puts a mini. Ive seen a few people already joking that Apple has decided nobody should ever intentionally turn a Mac mini off, and honestly that tracks better than any actual explanation Ive heard. Just leave it on forever, let sleep mode handle everything, never touch the button again. Fine. But then why include a button at all, in a place no human hand will ever comfortably reach?
Its such a small thing to fixate on and I know it. Theres a whole new chip in there, the M4 and M4 Pro options, unified memory bumped up, all the stuff that actually matters for what the computer does. Reviewers who've had review units are apparently pretty impressed with the performance jump for the price, which if true is a genuinely good story, base-model Mac minis being legitimately fast little machines for cheap. Thats the headline every other tech blog is going to run today and tomorrow, and fair enough, its the real news. Im just more interested in the button because it's the kind of decision that tells you something about how a company thinks. Somebody in a room in Cupertino looked at a spec sheet that said "power button placement" and picked the one option that makes the object more beautiful and less usable, and everyone in that room nodded and moved on to the next line item. Thats a very specific kind of confidence.
I've had a 2018 Intel mini running as a little home server type thing for years now, tucked behind a router on a shelf, and I do not want to know what putting this new one in that exact spot would be like when it inevitably needs a hard reset at 11pm because something hung. Reaching blind under a hot little metal puck to find a recessed button by feel is not a fun way to end an evening, speaking from the general experience of having done exactly that with other bottom-mounted-button gadgets over the years.
Anyway. New Mac mini, looks great in photos, undoubtedly fast for the money, pre-orders are open now with the first units shipping November 8th. Ill probably end up with one eventually because the old one is getting long in the tooth and $599 is hard to argue with. Ill just be leaving it powered on forever like Apple apparently wants me to.