This is ridiclous
To be fair, aren’t those mini PCs meant for HTPCs/home servers? You’re not really supposed to turn them off, and if you really want easy power button access you can just set it upside down. I’d say it’s a good idea if you take into account that it’s aimed at Apple customers who care more about “design” over usability. They truly “think different” over there.
Apple is powered by the copium of their fanbase, so maybe the next model won’t even need a power cable.
It’ll still NEED a power cable, it just won’t COME with one.
I’m not really trying to come to Apple’s defense here as they don’t need it, but everyone reacting as though this is as bad as or worse than the mouse charging port seems to be ignoring the fact that most computers nowadays don’t need to be manually turned off or on with any level of frequency. People will push this button like once or twice a month I imagine. I don’t see why that’s the end of the world.
What the hell are you talking about? I push the power button every single day on my PC. I’m aware that wake on LAN is a thing, but your average computer user doesn’t utilize that feature. And only a psychopath who doesn’t care about their power bill nor the environment would leave their PC running 24/7.
laughs in home lab
Not that I’d buy it but, if I did, that power button might get used twice a year. Likely less since I wouldn’t be able to upgrade or maintenance its hardware.
Why need Wake on LAN when basically any USB input device can take your computer out of sleep?
Because it’s way too easy to accidently bump into your mouse or keyboard and un-intentionally wake your machine. I disabled that shit cause I was tired of my PC constantly waking on the rare occasion I put it to sleep.
And like I said elsewhere in this thread, my PC uses 5w when asleep, and 0w when off. 5w is not a lot, but multiply that by the billions of PCs that are out there and it adds up. A modern machine with an NVME SSD takes less than 10 seconds to boot anyway, so there’s really no point in using sleep unless you just like destroying the environment and paying an extra $12/year in electricity for no reason.
The power draw of these things when sleeping is negligible. They’re basically off, so there’s no real need to shut them down with any regularity.
I can use my MacBook for a whole day and still have half the battery left. Their power efficiency is genuinely remarkable.
Maybe, but desktop computers use about 5w when asleep, and 0w when off. I’ve measured this with a Kill-a-Watt power meter. 5w may be negligible to the individual, but when you multiply that by the billions of desktops all around the world, 5w isn’t so negligible anymore. Please just turn your computer off at the end of the day.
This is correct, but still, fuck apple. What if I just prefer to turn my computer off instead of putting it into sleep mode? And how exactly am I supposed to wake up my computer from sleep if the power button is inaccessible? I know macs can be configured to wake up on keyboard/mouse activity, but that makes them too easy to wake up on accident.
It would be annoying, but to be fair, it’s the Mac Mini, which is small and easy to pick up. I would guess you could just tip the corner up to press the button.
I still think it’s a dumb design. It’s going to confuse everyday users
It’s going to confuse everyday users
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe this is the intention. I think big companies deliberately put in confusing and bad design to “test the waters” and see if people will still buy their products. It’s the same with the apple mouse charging on the bottom, or why companies keep making their logos uglier with each iteration. It’s a psy-op to condition the masses into accepting worse products without complaining.
You know this thing is tiny, right? It’ll be shockingly easy to pick up and press the button. Even with cables hanging out of it.
I use a 2014 mini with all cables hanging out the back, and it’s really easy to pick up.
The average user uses sleep mode and wakes from sleep. Sleep mode should be under 10w, or around $1/mo.
Unfortunately “punish them by not buying it” won’t work for someone as big as them.
Here we go again making mountains out of mole hills for Apple.
I am all for calling out Apple for their treatment of workers in ASIA, or their wealth, heck even the closed garden, but this… nah fam I don’t care where the button is.
It’s stupid. Do you need any other reason to laugh at it?
Yes.
Well, that’s sad.
I would argue getting mad over something so trivial as sad.
The genocide being committed in Palestine is something that makes me mad.
The fact that we are happy for our largest companies to outsource work to poorer countries makes me mad.
The fact that corporations seemingly control the world and don’t pay their fair share makes me mad.
Apple making a MacMini with a button on the bottom is irrelevant to me, in the grand scheme of things it’s not even an issue.
Oh no, I’ll have to slightly lift a tiny box on my desk several times a year!
I can’t wait for Apple to reveal a desk, with a keyboard built-in underneath the back side of it.
It would be an electric standig desk as well, battery powered obviously, and you would need to flip the table top 90 degrees up sideways to recharge the battery every other month.
People would sleep outside to get their hands on it ASAP.
That desk would have a hidden monitor as well, like a fucked up pimp my ride car.
24" but 24K pixels.
okay, I was gonna say that it’s not that big of a deal because you can just slightly lift it when you want to turn it on (or just slide your finder under it, if they’re small enough) but judging by that photo, it seems like the power button is at the back of the computer? whyyyy??
anyways, im more impressed by the fact that their new shiny mouse who finally uses USB-C still has the charging port at the bottom. im starting to think they think it’s a good design???
My theory is: free publicity. Just like the fashion industry comes up with ridiculous clothes that no one would ever wear, attention whores will constantly do outrageous things so that people will talk about them. The number of electrons spilled over this stupid mouse port placement over the years is uncountable. But the repeated conversations keep Apple in the public consciousness as a fashionista.
I just think it’s weird that people are complaining about the power button and the mouse charging situation, but no one is complaining that this DESKTOP computer does not have any USB-A ports. If you want to use any wired keyboard or a Logitech mouse with the adapter you’ll need to attach a dongle. Crazy.
I’m not an Apple fanboy, nor have I ever purchased one of their products (and I don’t plan to), but I’m actually fine with this because there are lots of USB-C mice and keyboards on the market these days in every price range. At the very most, you might have to buy a different cable because the ones I’ve bought tend to come with USB-C to USB-A cables instead of C to C. But eventually that will change as USB-A is inevitably phased out.
I actually do buy Apple products and I can accept your logic for a laptop because I use a docking station. The point of the Mac Mini is to be the cheap Mac and adding extra cords or dongles just increases the cost and creates a mess behind the machine.
My MacBook has just two USB-C sockets. When I bought it I picked up a couple of A adapters on Amazon for a few quid each. It’s never been an issue. Even less so with a desktop, as you’re able to leave the adapters in all the time.
Yes but we are bitching about trivial things and the lack of USB-A is far worse than the location of the power button on a desktop. I don’t accept the mouse criticism because it’s not required to buy a Magic Mouse. I have a MacBook but I use a Thunderbolt dock so in my use case the usb-c port increases convenience.
I read someone else musing that they must have thought that keeping it plugged in all the time would be bad, so the made it impossible to use the mouse while plugged in. Seems plausible. I suppose it would degrade the battery? Or the cord drag would be bad?
The design forces the user to use it wirelessly. Apple just wants their products to look better, meaning NO CORDS EVER. It’s entirely about aesthetic.
It’s literally just the same body as the OG Magic Mouse, which had a bay for a pair of AAs underneath. All they did was remove the bay, put a rechargeable battery in there, and a socket to charge it. It takes a couple of minutes to give it 9 hours of juice.
There’s no grand conspiracy.
Their trackpad can and does work via USB so ???
I have one of their trackpads and it works great with Ubuntu over USB but not over Bluetooth for some reason. (It connects, but Ubuntu doesn’t handle it well.)
They should have just released a mouse pad that can charge the mouse wirelessly then.
$7.000
If I worked at Apple, I’d hire you right here, right now.
im surprised they haven’t done this tbh
Apparently Logitech does have this out now, so I wonder if they patented the “concept” and it will be another 20 years before anyone can do it. Assuming that someone else didn’t already do it 20 years ago and that patented already ran out.
Ive seen one at least 10 years ago already. But that didn’t exactly charge the mouse, instead the mouse relied on always being on the pad to work.
“But it looks bad and could be bad for the battery!”
Every other wireless mouse has it in the front, Apple has no valid reason to leave it at the bottom.
The fact that everyone hasn’t taken on this design trend just shows how stupid it is.
They also take on stupid design trends, like removing the headphone jack.
This one is just several degrees more stupid.
After seeing the mouse with ports on the bottom. I’m convinced that there’s a disgruntled designer on their team and this is a cry for help.
As someone who has to use heavy/taped-on little toys to cover the power buttons on my PCs or else my cat invariably opens a shutdown dialog in the middle of something… Thank you.
I don’t know how to windows, but in Linux I just disable the power button on my laptop. Long press still works, this was to avoid accidentally putting the laptop to sleep when accidentally pressing the power button
I’ll just stick with covering it up. Without fail, if I leave it uncovered my cat will press it. She’s even held it long enough for a forced shutdown twice that I can think of.
You can set the power button in Windows to either, do nothing, make the computer sleep, hibernate the computer, shut down, or turn off the display.
Don’t you have to hold the power button in to force to shut down?
Yes, but even pushing it will bring up a prompt, which is annoying. And also my cat has held it down long enough to force a shutdown on my media server before, as well as on my wife’s PC during Overwatch.
And you can disable it in the options.
At least in Windows.
Apparently there is a button on the keyboard, so you get to buy an Apple keyboard (I guess that is bundled?) and don’t get to use your own keyboard with it.
Doesn’t look like it, or at least, they’ve not included one before (you just got a power cord), so it’s doubtful they would start including one now. Either that, or they’re about to release a power-button/TouchID dongle specifically to use as a separate power switch.
Like a Windows key?
We went full circle.
You can use your own keyboard with it
Sure, but my keyboard doesn’t have a power button.
Oh, I had one of theses keyboards!
Pushing the snooze button insta crashed the PC.
I think the special button on the keyboard is a fingerprint/lock button. Not sure if the computer supports powering on by pressing any key like the MacBooks, but it certainly will wake from sleep with any key. I don’t think you’re supposed to fully power it down as part of regular use, so they can get by with a less accessible power button
How often do you use the power button to turn on your computer? These days I might use it once a year, at most!
Literally every single time I use it. I only need it to be on when I’m using it, and I don’t use it every day.
How often do you use it, if not every day? Once a week? Once a month?
I use my laptop every day so it makes sense that I don’t use the power button even though it’s right there. I also have a raspberry pi set up to run Retropie that I only turn on once or twice a year when I have an old friend in from out of town. In that case I use the power button every single time but I don’t mind that it’s kind of finicky (I have to turn on several other devices with it as well as a power strip to power them all) because I don’t use it that often.
I could see the new Mac Mini being a bit annoying with its bottom side power button if you’re using it every other day. But honestly I would be more annoyed at the boot time taking 30s than the 2s it takes to reach under the case and power it up. If I had one I would probably just get the keyboard with built in power button and finger print reader though. I use the finger print reader on my laptop all the time because it unlocks my password manager.
Why am I buying a machine that small if I need to make space for two separate keyboards? I can just buy a different thing instead.
So they created more vertical space on the case, which would be a perfect spot for a power button - or even more ports… and then didn’t use it.
True to form, if I’m honest.
That aside, I love that they’re getting rid of the idiotic 8GB baseline spec.
Don’t worry, there will be suitable USB accessories available for this.
Only $299!
And a $199 stand for it, sold separately.
The generic Chinese version that does the same thing: $12
It’s going to Bluetooth since the Chinese version does not want to pay for the licensing fees.
“that’s insane!”
gets wallet out
“I can’t believe this!”
gets out card
“unbelievable!”
I’m not going to get a mac anytime soon, but at least it would stop my cat from powering down everything spontaneously
Part of the new Apple power bottom design strategy.
