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A mac mini is not a usable piece of hardware on its own; it's an unpowered box with no means of input or output. A brick. To make it viable you must connect all
by notjustanymike 5y ago
A mac mini is not a usable piece of hardware on its own; it's an unpowered box with no means of input or output. A brick. To make it viable you must connect all the elements that are integrated natively to a laptop: keyboard, mouse, screen, and power. If you showed up to a completely empty desk with just a mac mini, you'd get very little done.
- mulmen 5y agoRight but I already bring my laptop to a desk with a keyboard, mouse, monitor and dock. So the practical difference is nothing. In fact the Mac Mini is actually less duplication of capability. My MacBook Pro has been out of clamshell mode less than 25 times in a year. Almost all of them to wake up after an OS update.
- notjustanymike 5y agoWhat you're describing is two desktops with a shared piece of hardware between them. If that works for you, great! However it does ignore my original point of "freedom from a fixed position", and why I made it in the first place. If you don't need to move around, then by all means use a Mac Mini. I personally find myself in a lot of places where there are no traditional workspaces, hence I use a laptop.
- mulmen 5y agoI addressed why this would work for me in my initial reply. I don't need to work from any point. It is enough for me to work from one or two fixed points. The difference between two desktops and carrying a Mac Mini between two workstations is that the computer itself is the same in both locations so all data is still local. It's all the benefits of a laptop that I actually use. I do not use the screen or keyboard on my MacBook, but I suffer the compromised thermals and bulky form factor anyway.