This is ridiclous
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.
I guess you could flip it around and make the bottom the top 🙃
You’re thinking of a powerbottom, but that’s a totally different concept
Might make the thermal dissipation stop working properly
As long as no vents are blocked, should work fine. Anything with a fan is orientation agnostic.
I thought Apple did away with fans years ago
I really hope this is one of those tactile hit it from the top and it’ll trigger from the bottom designs. But more likely they just never expect you to use it.
I can’t wait for Apple to reveal a desk, with a keyboard built-in underneath the back side of it.
That desk would have a hidden monitor as well, like a fucked up pimp my ride car.
24" but 24K pixels.
Glorious 160x150 resolution
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.
This is more like a “power button” in that case lol
A power bottom?
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
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.
Sounds like you should buy a different thing. I bought one, though. None of this keyboard stuff matters to me, since I won’t even be using a keyboard with it
Sure, but my keyboard doesn’t have a 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.
Why? This isn’t 1998 anymore.
Well unless you have my shitty ass Thinkpad that can’t reliably go into S0 standby to save it’s life.
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.
Oh, I had one of theses keyboards!
Pushing the snooze button insta crashed the PC.
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???
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.
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.
USB-C has been out for years. The only issue IMO is that since USB-C negotiates power delivery, it might not be as easy to split out a USB-C port into multiple USB-C ports. Spitting USB-A ports is easy since they only do 5V, and spitting USB-C into multiple USB-A ports should be fine. But if your peripherals all become USB-C, you might find yourself running out of ports fast.
I am not an expert. I probably got something wrong there, but that’s my understanding.
The things that I would plug into a computer are generally peripherals, webcam, printers, scanner, etc. They generally come with USB A plugs. Also nearly every useful USB-C hub is designed for a laptop and has a built in short cord. The new Mac Mini has three Thunderbolt 4 ports which is more than adequate for high speed applications and video. TB4 allows for hubs like the CalDigit Element Hub which has 4 USB-A and 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports but costs $180.
It’s a desktop, so you will obviously need an external monitor. Most of the new monitors these days also work as USB hubs - you just run a USB C cable from the computer to the monitor and you get both display and additional ports.
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.
A hub costs $10 if you really need all those ports.
Most people buying these machines don’t, which is why it lacks the ports.
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 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?
On the battery, they should have been able to do whatever they thought best in the battery management system, in that case.
Simple answer is easiest, that they are obsessed with the “clean” minimalist look and want to abolish every visible port and buttin they can.
Surprised though that the mouse didn’t do the magsafe thing.
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.
They should have just released a mouse pad that can charge the mouse wirelessly then.
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.
That’s not true. It charges very slowly, about 12 hours to charge a completely dead battery, but it does charge
The bigger problem is that it’s expensive af, and since current gen Logitech mice have months of battery life and charge in an hour with the usb cord it’s really pointless.
$7.000
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.)
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.
I’ve said too much they’re coming for me they know they know they know
“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.
Apple doesn’t want people using the mouse with the cable attached because it would cost them a fortune due to failed charging ports within the warranty period. It’s a wireless mouse. Using it plugged in will fuck it up.
I fix computers and an apple mouse with a bad charge port is just a throwaway.
They wanted to put it inside the unit originally
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
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.
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.
That is hilarious.
I spent a while trying to figure out how a cat could possibly long press a power button, even pressing it at all should be a challenge…
Then I remembered that most people use laptops.
I would be impressed if a cat could hold the power button in for several seconds on my tower, you have to depress the button about a 1/4 inch.
I would be impressed if a cat could hold the power button in for several seconds on my tower, you have to depress the button about a 1/4 inch.
My friends cats do this all the time. Their paws are small enough to be able to push the button down easily.
Don’t you have to hold the power button in to force to shut down?
And you can disable it in the options.
At least in Windows.
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.
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.
excellent marketing strategy to get us talking about their stuff that would otherwise get almost completely under our radar.
i mean fuck where the power button of a product ill probably never need is.
This is the epitome of a first-world problem.
exacly. like how is this even news.
At least they didn’t put the fucking power port on the bottom.
Why can’t they put the power button on the front where it belongs. It’s already stupid that they put it on the back, putting it on the bottom is downright idiotic. If they don’t want to mess up the oh so important Apple aesthetic just make it an invisible touch button or something. Apple hates usability.
Desktop macs (not tower macs) has had the powerbutton on the back for decades, it’s fine, bottom us shit though…
Back is already bullshit. We have a few trashcan mac pros at work and usually they’re just turned so all the cables stick out towards the user because then you can easily reach the power button. Which makes it look worse than just having a power button in an accessible place aka the front or the top in the first place.
Yeah, I can see that, I was just trying to say that there Mac followed a standard
Yeah, make the logo a button or something.
For you to put your nasty fingerprints all over it?? I don’t think so
- Apple, probably
Every person I have ever met that uses an iMac for the first time naturally assumes that the Apple icon is the power button. Fact that it isn’t the power button is utterly idiotic
You realize how ironic your suggestion is right ?
invisible touch button […] hates usability.
Wait, WHAT?
They put the powerbutton on the underside?
For fuck sake Apple…
It’s very bad idea to put power button under the bottom, Who think the designer should need to be fired here
Wouldn’t surprise me if it was the same guy who put the charge port on the magic mouse on the bottom.
That at least has a logical excuse if dumb as hell, this has zero reason to be like this
Apple didn’t want to muddy their nice design by including functions.
Frankly you’re lucky it has any ports
Honestly though, they should have added Qi charging to the magic mouse, as well as magnets to you could easily place it on the back of the iMac and have it charging when you leave the computer…
“Our new Mac Mini is so powerful, so extraordinary, you’ll never want to turn it off.” – Tim Apple, probably.
Lol, Tim Apple. Who was it that said that? Was it Biden?
No… it was tRump.
Oh good, that’s better.
Or they got inspired by the Ericsson Cobra telephone.
Uh how often are you having to power on your Mac mini? I think mines been off like twice last year.
Having the power switch away from where I often blindly poke around to plug cables in, sounds like a good choice.
Damn, that is some amazing copium…
They had a well established place for the powerbutton, why change it?
As an IT guy, if I worked with Macs this would be terrible to work with
Well first off if you look at the picture, this is a much smaller device. If the power switch was in the same place as the larger case it would be on the side edge.
Secondly because it’s now moved into a space where it’s not going to be accidentally hit, and requires an intentional effort to press.
That’s great, how many IT guys have to manually go around turning off hundreds of computers at the switch instead of running some automated method across the whole network? Such a rare and unlikely situation that the average home consumer and user of a device such as this really doesn’t ever have to factor in.
it’s not going to be accidentally hit
How often do you accidentally press a power button on a desktop computer?
Is your power button at the back of your pc next to the usb and hdmi ports? The place you dont look when trying to plug in a memory stick by feel.
Of course not, who would put a power button on the back or bottom of the computer? Front, side, or top are the places it goes for almost every computer out there.
My phone case has a magnet in it (so it mildly sticks to metal surfaces).
I’ve put it on a laptop and accidentally triggered the “lid close” sensor
As another IT guy at a university, having to manually turn on 30 computers in a classroom for updates or whatever is already a pain in the ass. Wake on LAN is not a reliable solution. Havin to manually flip over every box, then putting them down, and then fixing the cables that got yanked… I’d throw those fuckers in the trash.
The Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro’s form factor is perfectly tiny without compromising user comfort.
You’re a Windows shop? Why don’t you deploy a policy that prevents users from shutting down computers?
Mainly because our students are idiots and will complain if the computer doesn’t turn off. Or worse, take independent action and hold the power button, or actually yank the power cable. Maybe I should just lean into it and convince them that the monitor is the computer.
Jokes aside, how could I implement such a policy? I’ve only found one that hides the power buttons from the start menu, but Windows still responds to ACPI.
Jokes aside, how could I implement such a policy?
The policy you’re looking for is in Computer Configuration->Policies->Windows Settings->Security Settings->Local Policies->User Rights Assignments->Shut down the system
This policy takes account or group names from your local or domain AD as its variable (like Domain Admins). After it’s successfully applied, only those users or groups will be able to shutdown the machine gracefully.
Create a new GPO or edit an existing one and apply it to the ADUC organizational unit containing the computer objects you need to target.
Why would they be idiots for wanting to turn these computers off?
If the computers aren’t running something important while not in use, I think they should turn them off as we’re already wasting far too much energy.
I might be missing something, but it sounds like leaving your car running or leaving lights on in your home the whole year.
WoL is amazing when it works
I had to update a remote laptop where windows was EoL for patching cutoff on a weekend and I threw my arms up on the air when it reported in a few minutes later
It looks like it’s raised up off the desk by the circular portion in the center. Still annoying to press but a finger probably fits under there.
I have never bought an iPhone or a Mac and I agreed at first that this seems an extra step. But you surely wouldn’t have to flip it over? The device will be raised enough it appears that a finger could slide in the gap and hit that button. But maybe I don’t know shit or have slender fingers or something but feels like it could be operated without flipping.
What am I missing?
Still a daft design but yeah…
I have been using a MacBook trough work for 7 years now and I think I actually clicked shutdown once this year too keep the battery at ~80% during my 1 month holiday. Otherwise I maybe reboot it once every month or two to fix some weird homebrew upgrade issues. And that’s it. The thing is just “on” in deep sleep, forever.
If the Mac mini’s behave similarly to the MacBooks, the standby energy usage is so low it’s probably easier to just keep it in on/standby/sleep all the time and just wake it by keyboard or mouse. And because Apple develop their own hardware, standby and sleep actually work reliably. So they probably intend for you to only use that power button for a hard reset. Even shutting it down and moving it, plugging the power back in wil probably start it up again. Just like opening the lid on my shutdown MacBook also boots it before I even touch the power button. Even a keypress or mouseclick will probably turn the damn thing on.
Yes it’s an odd design choice, but in regular day to day use it probably won’t matter. Especially if you realise that its not a windows machine that needs to shutdown or reboot often.
As an IT guy, if I worked with Macs this would be terrible to work with
You know, now that you say it, I’d bet that’s exactly why they did it. They probably want to fuck over companies that would otherwise have racks of Mac Minis (for clusters, colocated servers, etc.) and force them into Mac Studios or Mac Pros instead.
Nah, if you are racking computers, and they don’t have built in lights out management, you open them up and connect remote triggers to the power button leads, allowing you to remotely start them if they get shut off. I’m sure lots of companies do have Mac farms for Mac and iOS development, but I doubt Apple give a crap one way or another about them.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. The only time I use the power button is when there is an issue which has been like 4 times in 3 years maybe? I think people complaining about the power button location have never worked with macOS and are used to shittier standby in other operating systems.
I’ve never owned any Crapple stuff and never will, but even I can see from the thumbnail that the circular vent is lifting the whole unit off the desk, so slipping your finger under to switch it off is going to be a bit odd the first time, then you’ll instinctively know where the button is.
We’ve been doing it with monitors for decades
On the one hand, I agree. Apple has positioned their power buttons with the assumption that the devices wouldn’t be turned off very often for quite a while now. It was on the backside of the previous mac mini design and also on the backside of the 2013 trashcan mac pro, for example.
That still doesn’t make it less annoying though. We use a lot of macs for work, including aforementioned mac minis and mac pros and we do turn them off regularly because there’s no need for them to use power 24/7. Having to turn them around to find the power button is just stupid. That’s form over function in its finest. But if you’re the type of person who never turns off their computer, obviously it doesn’t really matter.
That’s not to say, that the new mac minis aren’t remarkable machines. The redesign was necessary and is very good in general. It’s a tiny powerhouse. They could’ve just chosen less of afterthought of a power button location.
I feel like it’s such a waste of energy when powering off your computer when you’re not using it is so easy.
The standby drain is negligible and it allows for the device to stay updated and synced.
A lot of negligible things added together can make a lot.
My computers are perfectly up to date by just running the software update manager while using them.
But of course, being veggie, not having kids, biking or walking has a bigger impact than just turning off your computer.
As I have two lovely kids and my work involves a lot of car travel, I can’t blame you for not turning off your computer though 😇
I… uh… I know it’s going to be an unpopular opinion, but it makes sense. It’s not intended for daily usage - macs wake up on a keyboard or cursor movement. Sitting on the back increases the chance of accidental presses when you are trying to plug something in.
You have a very few specific incidents where you would need to press the power button. 80% of their user base will not use the power button after the first initial press.
Standby pointlessly draws power. I switch off all devices that don’t run on battery for that reason. But I’m not exactly Apple’s target audience anyway since I also consider the price before buying stuff.
These machines draw 1 watt in sleep. There’s no need to turn them off.
You’re probably using more power shutting down your PC every day than if you just put it in sleep. A minute of chugging away booting and loading all your junk at 100 watts vs 1 watt, and no waiting.
They are doing the Nike mistake - they are targeting users that have already purchased a Mac. Data-driven decisions are great, but this would just result in alienating people who are not already customers, or chase people out who are unhappy with this decision, so their next purchase will not be a Mac.
