Mac Mini
I broke down the old Mac Mini1 yesterday. I’m a big fan of the minis and I got this one in 2012 with a 2.6GHz quad-core i7 Intel chip2. We use it on one of the televisions mostly as a media server mainly for listening to music, watching movies, and scrolling the intrawebs. Because it has two terabytes (an internal and external), I also use it as a centralized backup solution for our other computers and storing large media files like audio, photos, and video. I replaced the drives with new Samsung Evo SSDs and maxed out the RAM. I not going to rehash the process because there are hundreds of tutorials on line for doing so3. This machine will be stuck on Catalina because Big Sur will not support it4. My future migration plan will likely rely on the two year Mac transition to Apple silicon5. Although the leaked benchmarks on the Apple Developer Program Transition Kit Mac Minis look pretty impressive6, I’ll wait it out because I’m a late adopter7. Because the chassis on my machine hadn’t been previously opened since new, it took a lot of wiggling and prying. My fat fingers and deteriorating eyesight aren’t very well suited to this type of work. My cat also tried numerous time to get the static electricity in my fingers charged. Regardless, I’m glad to say it’s back in service and running like a champ.
- Mac Mini – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini
- Intel Core i7 ‘Ivy Bridge’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)
- Google Search “Mac Mini Upgrade” – https://www.google.com/search?ei=G8BHX6ClD4-y5wK6waiACA&q=mac+mini+upgrade
- Big Sur – https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/
- Mac transition to Apple silicon – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Apple_Silicon
- Apple Developer Transition Kit – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developer_Transition_Kit_(2020)
- Late Adopter – https://davidawindham.com/late-adopter/