Anyone here use a Mac mini

as your main workhorse machine? I can’t decide between another Mac Book Pro or a Mac mini. Only concern I have is the limited amount of ports.

I have a mac mini. Get a thunderbolt hub for more ports. For two monitors you need a thunderbolt-to-HDMI (or VGI) adapter. It has one HDMI port already. Get a decent sized hard drive and the full 16 gigs ram (or 32 if you to with the Mac Book.

Or check out the new Mac Studio. I’m still gonna wait a bit on that one…but it looks promising and the price point is pretty decent.

Are you currently running Big Sur or Monterey? Printer drivers have been a tiny issue. Opt for the better graphics card if you can. There are still some glitches in Adobewares on the M1 (its using a Rosetta translation.) Photoshop and Illustrator are pretty much up to speed. I’ve not had issues with InDesign, but I don’t use it to design, only production work so I don’t know if all the bells and whistles in that are tied together.

Thanks PD. I’m running Monterey right now. I was also looking at the Mac Studio. I like what I see so far, but I want to wait for a bit if I go with that one.

In my opinion, they’ll both work just fine. I use both, and as far as getting the job done, there’s no significant difference since both will connect to a desktop display, keyboard, and mouse (or whatever).

With that being the case, the relevant differences are cost and portability. You’ll get more bang for the buck with the Mac Mini. However, if you need the portability of a laptop, and if that portability is worth the extra cost to you, the MacBook Pro might be the best option.

As for the number of ports, that kind of thing is in a constant state of flux since cables and connectors keep changing. Apple seems to have addressed the issue by including a couple of universal ports that can be plugged into whatever hub you need. It’s annoying, but if Apple put all the common ports into their machines, you’d be paying for them there. At least with a hub, you can pick and choose the ports you really need.

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