“Apple” and “value” are not two words that usually go tremendously well together. Quite the opposite in fact, but with their new M2 Mac Mini, you have to ask yourself, is there a better computer for the price?
The short answer is “No.” $599 (unless you’re in education where it’s $499) buys you the base Mac Mini with the new M2 chip. A perfect computer for people that need to buy general use computers by the dozen, or have a relative that just needs “A Computer” for “Reasons”. Or just someone who wants to try a Mac but don’t want to buy used. 8GB is enough for all of those cases, though admittedly the storage is a bit constrained as well. Soldered components also mean that you’re betting that base model will be enough until you get bored or it dies. Between its low power consumption and solid-state everything, it can be quite some time before it does the latter.
For years people, myself included, have derided apple for the ridiculous prices of some of their items. the base $5000 iMac pro boasted specs that could be kindly described as “not worth it unless you really needed macOS”, and we all had a good chuckle at them not including a stand with the Pro Display XDR. About as much as we seethed with anger when they removed the charging brick from new iPhones, knowing that everyone else was going to follow suit on their cheapness dressed as virtue.
And now, here we are. Looking at an extremely powerful computer at an extremely low price, even if you do need to go out and buy your own monitor, keyboard and mouse (and probably some speakers). Bold from a company that charges $1500 for a product that, people who will immediately recommend a Fairphone remind us, is only worth about $400 in materials.
What those people can’t do now is follow the recommendation with the sentence “and you can’t really tell where that money goes.” Not when they made one of the smoothest transitions between architectures that the computer world has ever seen. When they have leapfrogged their competition so hard that emulated x86 is still faster than it would be on native hardware.
That’s where all of the money has been going.
And this is even before we get into the other new jewel on the lineup, the M2 Pro Mac Mini. For those people still clinging to the release of a new 27" iMac, here’s your killing blow. It’s not all bad, since target display mode went away, an iMac is an inherently wasteful purchase everywhere, buy a VESA mount for your Mac Mini and enjoy the ability to swap either the screen or the computer, depending on what broke. I’d already claimed the death of the larger iMac previously, but it’s nice when nothing is done to dispute your wild guesses.
So there you have it, the best computer buy for people who just need a computer at $599, versions with more storage and more energy are subjected to the apple tax in the way of stupid pricey upgrages of course, but the much more reasonable 16GB/512GB version is still under a grand, so cheaper than most phones apple makes these days.
Unless you do gaming, serious (and very heavy) graphical work, or have personal objections against Apple, there’s no reason to buy anything else.
EDIT: In the midst of simping for a really good computer, I forgot that Apple also makes the best mid-tier phone with the iPhone SE. It’s more expensive now than it was and it only has the single rear camera, but it has the SoC of what was the most powerful phone on the planet until a couple of months ago and frankly peerless support. If you can muster your phone looking like an older phone, your tablet to look like an older tablet, and your computer not looking like a Mac, the Apple tax is something to be paid by someone else
