I’m very satisfied with a fully maxed-out 2012 Mac Mini (quad i7, 32GB RAM, 2x 1TB SATA SSDs). It’s plenty powerful for my needs (productivity, and occasional u

I’m very satisfied with a fully maxed-out 2012 Mac Mini (quad i7, 32GB RAM, 2x 1TB SATA SSDs). It’s plenty powerful for my needs (productivity, and occasional use of Mathematica) and at any rate over the past ten years or so I’ve migrated progressively towards using iPads (having been almost compulsive in my upgrading every single generation from the very first back in 2010 to the latest iPad Pro 2020). When yesterday I saw the news of the new ARM mac, I thought “aha, OK, I want it”. Keep in mind that at one point I had a quad-G5 PowerMac. I really like power, flexibility, and expandability. I’m not much of a laptop believer either. But what I’m trying to say is that over the course of the past decade or so the Mac has been sufficiently stagnant that a 2012 Mac Mini, albeit one that is highly upgraded, is an entirely workable platform. I was thinking to myself last night (or this morning, depending on one’s perspective): “What will Apple’s Intel Epoch be known for?” and I had an instant answer for myself: “It will be remembered for stagnation. There was a switch and things were better for five years and then nothing really happened for a decade,.”