568
M4 Mac Mini Power Button Has New Bottom Location
(lemmy.world)
This is ridiclous
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this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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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.~~
Edit: Thanks for the insight. You were right, I was wrong. My bad.
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.
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
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.
Poke your finger under the corner and push up. It doesn't take a rocket surgen to figure out how they want you to hit this button. You can tell from their promo images that they designed the base to make the computer sit up enough for this.
Why does it matter? It's just gonna go back to sleep in 30 seconds if you don't mess with it.
A key on the keyboard turns it on afaik. You don’t need to press the power button.
The Mac mini draws 5 W when on, and 0.5W when sleeping
This is short-sighted. The amount of extra power the computer draws at a high power state while performing boot-up tasks makes the sleep power draw a better option. Not to mention the sleep power draw happens at off-peak hours where the grid can provide more green power vs. the dirty mid-morning peak power. The break-even point that I’ve calculated across the machines I’ve plugged into my meter is approximately 3-4 days. With a big ol’ “it depends” sticker slapped on top.
Edit: and my lazy methodology doesn’t even account for the extra energy used by the machine throughout the day when it has to cold-start various programs and tasks without any caches.
Double-edit: if you want to go the extra mile you can use the “hibernate” feature of windows after force-enabling it or the “pmset sleepmode {whateverthefuckitis} “ of macOS to split the difference. Or you can take a shower that’s literally 10 seconds shorter because heating shower water for literally only 10 seconds will use more power than any of these things. I strongly implore you to calculate your trip to the grocery store in kilowatt/hrs as well. Optimize where it matters!
Is the 5 watts on an M series Mac?
Thats the thing i have never turned off a mac in my entire life… always sleep and wake
You seem very pissed off about absolutely nothing. Maybe a Mac just isn’t for you. Chill out and maybe log off for a bit
You can accurately preach best usecases all you want it falls flat before peopled experience.
I always shutdown my desktop. So did i with all my previous desktops.
Ive always shut down every windows/linux laptop i ever had.
I shut down my android tablet after use.
I owned and mainly used a MacBook pro for 5 years, i never shut it down, i never shutdown my iPhone. It was also ironically the best windows laptop i had owned at that point (in dual boot) and i always shut down when i worked in Windows, just never in macos
Apple did not tell me to do this, it is not difficult to shutdown a mac, no one told me to change what i am used to. It just somehow made the most sense so thats how i used it. And i reverted naturally when i ent back to non apple desktops. I cant explain it better then that.
This does not excuse having a power button on the bottom, thats just ridiculous. Just a hint that what your saying about downsides is irrelevant to how people realistically use it.
Asking in earnest, but why is a power button on the bottom so egregious? I've owned various Macbooks over the last decade and I rarely use the power button - and when I do in recent years it's for TouchID. I leave my MBP open regularly, but have my battery settings set to automatically turn off the monitor and put the computer into sleep mode. I'm just not getting why it's such a big deal and it's mostly coming off as "grr apple bad, no like"
I recognize this may be a very autistic answer (i am)
The function of a button is to be pressed, to put functionality on the bottom of a stationary device feels incredibly wrong. Thats really all there is to it.
I can forgive a reset button being on the bottom because ideally they aren’t ever pressed and you definitely don't want them accidentally pressed. I recognize that for macos a restart is usually a reset troubleshooting step and i would be probably be fine with it the button was renamed with an explanation on its actual usecase scenario.
In any regards i feel like it makes much more sense on the back where the cables go in.
I have nothing against apple besides the general capitalist/consumerism stuff. I hate google and meta much more.
I should have considered that I was posting this comment to Lemmy before posting it.
Maybe you push the dedicated power button on your computer’s case everyday but I’m very confident most users of any computer do not. And in that regard I’m including all computers - wearable, handheld, and laptops. We’re well past the age where most users feel the need to fully shutdown and boot their computers everyday, AND there are plenty of software buttons and even some physical keyboard buttons for shutting down a computer so I mean it when I say that I think most computer case’s power buttons go untouched for definitely days and possibly weeks at a time.
You can wake a Mac by clicking the mouse or hitting literally any of the hundred+ buttons on the keyboard.
…also this power button is dumb.
The average user uses sleep mode and wakes from sleep. Sleep mode should be under 10w, or around $1/mo.
Sleep mode on the mini < 0.5W
Why need Wake on LAN when basically any USB input device can take your computer out of sleep?
Here you were saying the average user isn't going to use Wake on LAN, but you expect them to disable USB devices waking their computer?
I have my USB's disabled as well, but I was talking averages here.
This mac mini on uses less power than your desktop in sleep.
Your desktop also doesn't use 0 watts of power when off. If you have a gaming computer with a full power supply it's probably using a couple watts completely off. Vs an M1 Mac mini that uses about 1 or less watts in sleep.
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.
To be fair, if you have a home lab setup (or even a simple server), you're not the average computer user.
I think it’s more about design. Apple is a company that has set a high standard for design and premium looking/feeling products. I understand that it still works, but I also think it’s not the best design. It’s just not the expectation Apple has set as a brand. Same goes for the mouse that charges on the bottom.
On one hand, I’m happy that Apple is breaking away from some of their earlier values (e.g. recently allowing for more iOS customization) but I do appreciate how well designed their products tend to be. I hope they don’t get sloppy with future products. So yeah, it’s just a silly power button, but it just seems out of character for their brand.
You are just asking for issues not turning off your PC. All the software on your machine is buggy. ALL OF IT. Plus updates require a reboot and we have SSDs so your boot takes like 10 seconds.
Keeping your PC in sleep mode is dumb.
What? I booted my Linux machine sometime last year and my Mac gets rebooted for updates.
Not all of us use Windows, my friend.
A Mac is not a Windows PC
The last time I turned off my Mac Mini was when we moved. The time before that was when my UPS battery died and I had to swap a new one in.
I do reboot it though, but why would I bother turning it off?
You're much more likely to just restart than to shutdown and need to hit the power button. I don't think I've shutdown my MacBook since I turned it on, or my Linux box either. IMO unless there's a power outage you'll never need to hit that button. Still dumb though but i can't imagine this as a deal breaker.
$599 for this thing is an insane deal.
I do turn off my PC. But most of the time, I do it by pressing the software-based “restart” button in my OS, not by pressing the physical button on the case. Otherwise I normally use hibernate which is also software-bound and can be undone by pressing the space bar. I’m not saying I never press the physical power button or that I never turn off my computer. I’m just saying it’s in no way a big deal to have to lift up a small box sometimes to press a button like one a week