Let's have a look at the Late-2012 Mac mini. Lower-case m. Apple spells it that way. They made the world. Their thoughts made the world. They made the thoughts. The world, the thoughts.
Preferably one with FireWire, which last appeared in the 2012 mini. I miss FireWire. As a PC person I never had to deal with FireWire when it was a thing. FireWire was a mysterious other, beloved of Apple people. Apple people and their iPods.
The mini is an interesting proposition on the used market. The original G4 mini, way back in 2004, was sold as a budget Macintosh for PC users who might want to try out the Apple ecosystem. It was keenly-priced even by PC standards, but that didn't last. The mini became more and more expensive to a point where it was poor value for money outside a handful of niches.
What were those niches? At various points in its life the mini has been a gateway to the Macintosh ecosystem, a more versatile Apple TV set-up box, a media server, a style icon, a viable alternative to the Mac Pro as a server and audio-visual editing machine, furniture. There has long been a feeling in Apple circles that the Mac Pro is de trop for most things, that the iMac is lumbered with a built-in screen, and that an expanded mini is just right. Especially given that it sips electricity, and despite not being a laptop it's still portable enough to carry in a backpack to work or university etc.
The mini has never had the power and expandability of the Mac Pro, but it has always been a lot cheaper. As of this writing the M1-powered Mac mini has about two-thirds the power of the cheapest Mac Pro, but it's one-eighth the price, so you can buy a rack of the things and still save money.
And at other points in its life the mini has been an overpriced dog. 2012 was one of the good years, although my dual-core i5-powered model isn't a patch on its quad-core i7 contemporaries. But read on, dear reader. Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven, and read on.
A Brief History of the Mac mini
And I do mean brief. The mini lowercase-m mini was launched in 2005, during the twilight of Apple's PowerPC era. The original model had a G4 processor, with a 1gb memory ceiling and two USB ports. At around £400 it was good value as an ultra-small-form-factor PC albeit that it was very limited. The GPU was no use for games and 1gb of memory was stingy. Two USB ports was no fun. The nearest PC equivalent was this horrible thing from AOpen that was slightly more powerful but a lot more expensive. Would you have been better off with a G4 iBook? Probably, but it was three times the price.
Apple switched the mini to Intel Core Solo and Core Duo processors in 2006, and upgraded the range to 64-bit Core II Duo processors in 2007. All of the aforementioned are cheaply available on the used market but they're only really useful as novelties, or perhaps as more elaborate alternatives to a Raspberry Pi.
The PowerPC models no longer have an internet browser, because development of the excellent TenFourFox has been discontinued. The early Intel models are also obsolete, partially because the 32-bit minis can only run up to OS X 10.9 Snow Leopard, which was discontinued in 2011, and partially because even if they could be patched to run modern versions of OS X their unimpressive built-in GPUs and lack of multi-monitor support are out of step with the modern age.
The 2009 models were the last with the original case design, pictured above. They introduced multi-monitor support and will run OS X 10.11 El Capitan, which was discontinued in 2018. El Capitan was supported by Google Chrome until August 2022, so you surf the internet at your own risk.
For 2010 Apple introduced a new unibody design that complemented the contemporary MacBook. The 2010 Core 2 Duo models had an optical drive, so they had a slot in the front. In 2011 the range switched to i5 and i7 processors and the optical drive was removed. In 2012 the processors were given a significant boost, with the top-of-the-range models moving from dual-core i7s to quad-core processors. The quad-core i7 2012 minis were, for a while, pocket rockets, especially if they were maxed out with dual hard drives and 16gb of memory.
The 2012 i7s still fetch a decent price on the used market. The 2014 models that replaced them had soldered, non-upgradeable memory, and for whatever reason Apple dropped the quad-core processors, which meant that the 2014 models were in some cases less powerful than their predecessors.
The 2014 models remained on sale unchanged for four years, a very long time in Apple terms. The mini had originally been intended to drive people into Apple's arms, but the staggeringly successful iPhone and iPad did that job far more effectively. There were rumours that the 2014 mini would be the end of the line. There were even rumours that Apple would give up on desktop computers entirely, especially given the company's seeming lack of interest in the 2013 Mac Pro.
But some of the mojo returned with the 2018 models, which were a solid upgrade. The most powerful 2018 mini had a six-core CPU with support for up to 64gb of user-upgradeable memory, which wasn't bad at all.
That was the last generation of Intel-powered Mac mini. A a single, mid-range Intel-powered mini remained on sale through 2022, perhaps for server farms, or educational markets who absolutely had to replace their machines like-for-like. But as of this writing the core product is the Apple Silicon-powered mini, which uses a ARM-based CPU of Apple's own design. Physically the Silicon mini uses the same case as the later Intel models, but the CPU is simultaneously more frugal and more powerful. On the downside nothing is user-replaceable, but on the upside the performance of the Silicon models is excellent, and they're back to being good value again.
And that is the story of the Mac mini. For a brief period in 2005, 2006 it had the stage to itself, but then it was overshadowed by the iPhone, the iPad, the MacBook, the MacBook Air, the Apple TV, and the Mac Pro, but it was too cute to die. Have you ever seen a mini in real life? They're more attractive than they look in pictures. Bigger, too.
I briefly considered buying an M1, but I would have to buy a bunch of adapter cables as well, perhaps a new audio interface, and why not buy an M1 MacBook Air instead? I could carry it around. But the Air only has two ports, so I would still have to buy a bunch of cables, and I don't want to spend literally all of my money. And the MacBook Air only supports one external monitor. But it has a nice built-in monitor. But I want a monitor at head-height. Such is the horror and pain of living in the First World.
Let's have a look at my second-hand 2012 Mac mini. It's a 2.5gb late-2012 dual-core i5 model, with 16gb of memory. Technically very similar to a 13" MacBook Pro of the same year. Let's check out the ports:
The unibody models have a bigger footprint than the pre-unibody models, but on the other hand they have an internal power supply. The pre-unibody models have a big external brick, so the overall system footprint of the modern mini is smaller, or at least less awkward:
The 2012 unibody model has Ethernet, FireWire 800 so that you can transfer needle drops of Talib Kweli's Quality and Norah Jones' Come Away With Me to your iPod, a HDMI port that also transmits audio, a Thunderbolt-in-the-shape-of-Mini-DVI port, four USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and audio in and out. My 2009 Mac mini's built-in audio was hissy, to a point where I wondered if it was broken, but the 2012 model has no such problem. Compared to the 2009 Mini the 2012 model drops a USB port in favour of an SD card slot. I would prefer an extra USB port.
The 2012 models predate Apple's retina displays and the 4K craze, so the video output can only go up to 2K, and only on the Thunderbolt port. The oldest version of OS X they will run is 10.8 Mountain Lion. Mine came with 10.13 High Sierra, but I downgraded to 10.11 using Apple's very own instructions. Surprisingly it worked without a hitch.
I am only a fellow traveller of Apple, not a disciple, not a priest, not a devotee. My understanding is that the good versions of OS X were 10.4 Tiger, because they finally got it right; 10.6 Snow Leopard, because they finally got it right with Intel; 10.11 El Capitan, because they continued to get it right; and 10.14 Mojave, but only compared to 10.15 Catalina, which controversially dropped support for 32-bit applications entirely. This included pretty much every game from before 2018 or so, not that Mac people play games, but the option would be nice.
I picked 10.11 because Logic Express 9 isn't compatible with 10.12. At some point I'll bite the bullet and buy Logic Pro X, but my wallet is still recovering from Christmas. Modern versions of OS X / MacOS apparently still include FireWire drivers, even though the last FireWire Macintoshes are a decade old at this point.
Upgrade-wise the 2012 model is easier to open than the 2009 model. The 2009 model requires a sharp knife and a cold heart:
