Apple Defends Mac Mini Power Button Relocation (9to5mac.com) 157
Apple executives have defended the relocation of the power button to the bottom of its new M4 Mac mini, citing the computer's significantly reduced size as the driving factor behind the design change.
In a Bilibili video interview, Apple's Greg Joswiak and John Ternus explained that the Mac mini's form factor, now half the size of its predecessor, necessitated finding a new position for the power button. The executives said that the bottom placement allows for convenient access despite initial user criticism.
In a Bilibili video interview, Apple's Greg Joswiak and John Ternus explained that the Mac mini's form factor, now half the size of its predecessor, necessitated finding a new position for the power button. The executives said that the bottom placement allows for convenient access despite initial user criticism.
form over function (Score:5, Informative)
Re: form over function (Score:5, Funny)
I read this as "petty" and it still made sense.
Who uses a power button on a Mac? (Score:2)
laptops don't even have a power button. Macs want to be shut off by software command to preserve state. The power button is just a last resort. It most likely is not actually even a power button but an affirmative shutdown signal. I think poking your finger under a lip or lifting the brick to find it are hardly impediments if you really really need to use it a lot
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Desktops don't have a power button either. That button just sends a signal to software too, and has for decades. There might be a rocker switch on the back of the power supply itself that actually cuts power, but have you ever used it?
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Hell yeah, when testing new software/hardware in a lab setting it's not uncommon to get a locked situation when you can do absolutely nothing. The choices are to click off the power supply switch or unplug it, the power supply switch is generally easier.
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You're just holding it wrong! Seriously, turn the Mac Mini upside down, and now the power button is on top! An additional advantage is that it hides the Apple logo.
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What's weird is for all Apple's minimalism: that they didn't make the apple logo on top clickable and have that be the power button, then one part would serve both functions.
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I like this, not that I'm in the market for a new PC now,
https://forums.macrumors.com/t... [macrumors.com]
The power button is accessible this way. It's the red button.
Re:form over function (Score:5, Insightful)
Mine all stay on pretty much 24/7...with automatic backups running, etc. during the late night hours.
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I shut my computer down when I am not using it. I guess I must be alone here.
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Nope. I'm at work. My PC is off at home. It gets turned on when I get home and stays on until the morning when I leave for work. No point wasting electricity and running up my bill.
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No point wasting electricity and running up my bill.
It is completely unnecessary. Especially for the new Mac mini. You can just let the unit go into automatic sleep.
You probably have a wireless AP or internet router using 5 to 10 times the power that a sleeping Mac uses.
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You can just let the unit go into automatic sleep... You probably have a wireless AP or internet router using 5 to 10 times the power that a sleeping Mac uses.
So what you're saying is that we should just let sleeping Macs lie?
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I said PC, not Mac. No, I do not have a wireless AP. I do have a router which has exactly one port on it because that's all I need and yes, it probably does use more electricity than the PC, but not having the PC on for roughly 10 hours each day is still a savings.
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There's a good fucking chance it takes more power just to boot the damn thing up once a day.
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Lots of people do, that's why they made the button in a slightly more inconvenient place so that turning it on or off via the button is a slight hassle, and a lot of people who turn it off will eventually start leaving it on, is the goal.
Often minor inconveniences over time will direct people the way you want.
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I have no idea what my electricity "costs" in terms of KWH....
I do leveled billing so my monthly rate is roughly about $200/mo or so....
My AC is the primary driver of energy cost, living in the New Orleans area....
I have a decent job, this certainly isn't any type of drag on my income or disposable income....
It's kinda like gasoline....I have to have it, I really don't
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I'm far from being rich....I'm easily middle class, I manage my money fairly well and there are things I don't have to look at.
I mean, when grocery shopping, I start by scanning the weekly grocery store ads and pick what's on sale to build my meals around and I hit 1-3 stores on Saturday buying the best deal.
I tend to buy individual items with best price...BUT, I don't keep a running total or anything in my head and I really don't even look to see what the final
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The Mac Mini with the new M4 chip takes 4 watts at idle. https://support.apple.com/en-u... [apple.com]
Sleep mode will be a fraction of that.
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I've measured it at around 2.
I wonder what that Mini was doing... probably does take more power to drive a display.
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Let's put it into perspective.
At idle, that Mini takes 1 ~10x10cm photovoltaic to keep running.
Put another way, the battery in my laptop could power it for 50 hours.
While I agree with the sentiment of not wasting power, the fact is, one of these isn't going to tangibly affect your power usage. Period.
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That was literally the design choice reason. For users who tend to turn them off to make it slightly more inconvenient, so they leave it on.
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I rarely use the power button. Maybe after a power outage and I shut down the machine before the UPS dies, doing a DFU restore, or when adding an Apple Keyboard which requires tapping the power button as part of the authentication process. Or, if there is a hard shutdown for any reason, I hold the power button to go into recovery mode, and then go through each attached disk and run a fsck on it. (Technically isn't needed, since APFS is a COW filesystem, but it gives me peace of mind to know that there is
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Actually, I am quite the opposite.
I work on my desktop Mac daily during the week and quite often I'm on it on the weekend for fun things (editing videos, etc).
For portable things, I take my iPad....my phone is primarily for well.....phone calls and texts.
I bought a higher end deskt
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I think they even fixed multi mon support.
Fixed?
M4 supports same number of displays as the M1: 2.
Do they just expect you to never turn it off?
Correct.
They keep "defedning" these decisions, loudly (Score:3)
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1) You are that stupid
2) This saves you some money.
3) Prioritizing looks, don't give a f*ck about functionality.
Apple isn't dumb so its not #1, so its either 2 or 3 possibly both.
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Other companies don't think different.
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Those other companies will soon start copying Apple's genius design features. Pretty soon everybody's power buttons will be on the bottom.
Who turns off their computer in the first place? (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't shut down any computer in my house in years and I don't know anyone else who does. I reboot for patches or I let it go to sleep- but that's it. Are people really turning their computer on and off all the time?
Re: Who turns off their computer in the first plac (Score:2)
A few times a year I need to long-press the power-button 'cos everything locked up. It's rare, but it's not zero.
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I definitely turn my computer off when I am not using it.
It's not like the old days where it would take well over a minute to fully boot a computer. It takes seconds. Why wouldn't I just turn it off rather than have a power draw on something that I am not using?
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I don't want to spend those "extra seconds" for it to fully boot up....
I actually don't ever give it much a thought....I mean, compared to my AC drag on my power bill....anything else I leave on is so minuscule I'd not notice it on the bill one way or another.
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I don't want to spend those "extra seconds" for it to fully boot up....
What do you do with all the time you save? I mean other than post nonsense on Slashdot? No I'm not being funny this is a legit question. If you have a potato then sure maybe sleeping the computer instead of powering it down for a boot can make some sense. If you're still running Windows XP it makes sense, but if you think you are doing anything meaningful or productive in the few seconds difference between a boot and a wake from sleep then maybe you should use those seconds to look up the definition of "del
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That's unlikely. Unless you're actually unplugging it, flipping a switch on a power bar, or possibly a switch on your power supply, the computer isn't off. What you're actually doing is putting it into a standby state.
In the ATX standard the power button is a software switch, which is why you can configure it in most operating systems. In order to register the "power on" press something has to be already running. So when you think you're turning it off it's in much the same state as if you put it in hiberna
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Because it usually takes me another 5 minutes to re-open all my applications and browser tabs and other things after I turn on the PC again.
Thus, my best option is to use Sleep or Hibernate mode. Or because I have a dozen SSH sessions open, just leave the PC on so I don't have to log in to every one of the
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Because the M4 Mini draws less than 1W during sleep and because most of us use our computers all the time. You almost certainly have countless devices in your house that draw a lot more power even when "off".
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You do not have to power your computer off and back on just to reboot it. I reboot mine for a variety of reasons, but I never bother to power it off.
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I haven't shut down any computer in my house in years and I don't know anyone else who does. I reboot for patches or I let it go to sleep- but that's it. Are people really turning their computer on and off all the time?
Career (30+ years) IT guy here. I don't turn off computers in my house (currently have 2) unless I'm going out of town as I don't need to access them remotely. One of them is a Windoze box and it will install critical patches at night and reboot, but generally speaking if I'm in town, my computers are up. People act like the power costs for leaving them running all the time are astronomical, but they really aren't. Only in the summer do I ever pay $100 or more for electricity in a month.
Me (Score:2)
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> Are people really turning their computer on and off all the time?
No, but have you tried turning it off and on again without a power button?
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Uhhh, yes- I select "Reboot", "Restart", or type shutdown -r now depending on the hardware and OS I am using. What hardware are you using that requires frequent physical power-cycling?
And it's not like there is no power button- you can still physically power cycle it if you need to for some reason- the button just isn't front and center because it doesn't need to be.
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Yes. If I'm not using it tomorrow it gets shut down.
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Why though? The M4 Mini uses less than 1W of power when asleep. You're not saving any significant amount of power, and you lose the option to do things like wake it remotely if you need access.
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Are people really turning their computer on and off all the time?
Yes. And why not. The days of Windows taking a minute to boot up are long gone. These days a modern PC will perform a complete boot in almost the same time as it takes to wake from sleep, and the main misguided concern that it will wear out HDDs as they spin up and down is gone too. There's frankly no reason not to shut down a PC unless you haven't finished some current work (my work PC is sleeping right now, but it's an exception rather than the rule).
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The M4 Mini draws less than 1W of power when sleeping. If you shut it down at night- at most you'd save 240 watt-hours of power in a month- that's less than 10 cents of power where I live. Not to mention the system can install updates and it's easier to access remotely if it's just sleeping.
So I'd argue the exact opposite, there is no reason to shutdown a system that uses that little power. You almost certainly have devices in your house that use more power when they claim to be "off".
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Congratulations on living in a thunderstorm-free zone.
Or you just don't care buying again all your home computers.
I wish I could say the same.
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Too right. My system uses ZFS with encryption and I need to enter a passphrase to decrypt the keys to unlock the volume. Turning off the computer means nobody is getting to my homedir, remotely or locally.
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Because in sleep mode it draws less than 1W of power according to folks who have tested it. There are probably countless devices in your house that draw significantly more power even when "off".
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How often (Score:2)
Are people using the power button? When the machine is asleep it takes milliwatts.
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Yeah, I mean I still think it is dumb, but all my machines are on all the time anyway, they just hibernate when idle. I turn them on by slapping a key on they keyboard, and put them to sleep with a menu item or by just walking away and leaving them idle. I only use the power button when there's been a power outage or I had to unplug something for some reason. Even then, several of my machines are configured to boot if the power is interrupted and restored via the BIOS, so the power button is basically ve
Easiest response ever (Score:5, Insightful)
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Who needs a giant full tower case anymore? Certainly not your average user. If you did buy one then it's going to be mostly empty space inside. My next desktop is going to be a mini tower.
Re: Easiest response ever (Score:2)
I was going to go smaller on my latest PC but then I thought about how heavy GPUs are now and I went horizontal instead. I could have got a smaller case but all the ones I could find that didn't suck cost a lot more.
When I can do SFF without paying a substantial premium, I will do so.
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I spent over a decade and a half in physical security, and some time before that supporting a restaurant POS system, it was not infrequent for those systems to be strapped under a desk or counter or mounted on the wall of a network room. Small form factors make this easy to do on systems which spend 99% of their time barely above idling so heating is not an issue.
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I read your title and thought, "Yeah, that's the ticket! Make the power button bigger!" Make it cover the entire bottom surface of the device. Then you can just push down on the whole top of the computer to turn it on and off.
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The new M4 chip takes 5 watts of power maximum. It doesn't need a bigger heatsink or airflow.
No. The M4 chip is limited to consume 5 watts of power at maximum due to the restrictions of the heatsink size. The M4 is like any other processor, it can consume a shitton of power if it wants to. Specifically the one in the Mac Mini has a turbo consumption of 14watts, and will maintain that speed until it hits a limit of its operating envelope. Providing more cooling extends that operating envelope, just like any other small device.
For a laugh you can look up people who run benchmarks of CPU heavy loads o
"Work on this carburetor till you're normal." (Score:2)
Every time I read a story about Apple's user interface hardware, I feel like Hank Hill confronted with one of Bobby's flights of fancy. Except Bobby was only ever trying to be a theater kid, not... replace the escape and function keys with a touchscreen.
Just... be normal, please.
Apple's Defense (Score:5, Funny)
Apple: "Well, it had to go somewhere"
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I think you're on to something! Make it a capacitive touch sensor that covers the *entire* surface of the computer. That way, you can touch it *anywhere* to turn it on and off!
Missed oppourtunity (Score:2)
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That would be bad. Set clipboard down, dump project.
I use a power strip, you insensitive clod (Score:2)
I turn *all* my gear off at night with just one button. Subscribe to my newsletter and you can too!
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I can't remember when I first realized that most countries don't have power switches on their wall sockets. In the UK it's very unusual to find one that doesn't have its own power switch.
Other things about our electrical systems suck, but that's one thing we got right.
The 2024 version of... (Score:5, Funny)
"You're holding it wrong".
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Yep.
"You're turning it off wrong".
"You're holding it wrong!" (Score:2)
While it truly sucks for Mac Minis held with a bracket, but OTOH, how often do you ever touch a Mac Mini?
In other news, I currently need a reasonably fast, reasonably priced arm64 server... but I don't think Apple qualifies.
Ease of use takes the back seat. (Score:2)
There you go slashdot ... (Score:2)
Always on--always using power (Score:3)
Mac Mini Takes 4W at Idle--Each (Score:3)
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They don't sit at idle. They go through various levels of sleep, and when they get to the bottom one they use the same amount of power as they do when you turn them "off" using the "power" button, which is the same as any other computer you've likely used in the last 30 years.
The "off" power draw isn't nothing, it's about a quarter of a watt for a Mac mini. A desktop PC with an Energy Star certified ATX power supply is usually going to be a few watts, as is your TV, and most other devices that have a power
Re: Mac Mini Takes 4W at Idle--Each (Score:2)
3rd party ecosystem enrichment! (Score:2)
Apple is just throwing a bone to the 3rd party ecosystem.
Now there's an opportunity to:
1. 3d print a button extension
2. Sell a dock that moves the on/off button somewhere visible (using an extension)
3. Offer a service to disassemble your mac mini and rehome the innards into a different case form factor, that puts the on/off button somewhere visible (using an extension)
4. Sell furniture or a plinth with a cutout for the button for easy access, or a button located on the desk that presses the button for y
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https://forums.macrumors.com/t... [macrumors.com]
Done.
Let me just alter a Simpsons quote really quick... (Score:2)
Customers: Apple, customers won't like a power button on the bottom of their Mac Mini.
Apple Execs: Apple customers will like what I tell them to like!
Simple solution (Score:3)
Run the Mac upside down.
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No worries, mate!
I rarely shut my mini down... (Score:2)
Just flip it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Saw a review on YouTube, looks like a decent machine for modest tasks, where they'd addressed the "controversy". Guy just flipped it upside down, the black "top" looks pretty good and it had the added benefit of moving the headphone jack to the left hand side of the unit where he'd typically kept his headphones, keeping the two front USB-C ports clear.
It's not like there's a spinning disk or optical media in there and USB-C / Thunderbolt are unidirectional, just turn it upside down if you turn your computer on and off so much. I'm far more upset at the ridiculous pricing for the 32GB ram upgrade or the absolutely insane amounts they charge for internal SSD storage, there is absolutely no possible way for an $800/CDN base machine to suddenly cost $2,424/CDN - three times the price! - because I decided to drop in 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD!
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Guy just flipped it upside down, the black "top" looks pretty good
What do we call this? "Think un-different"?
I despair at the level of slashdot discourse (Score:2)
stealth_finger:
Really?
Is that the best you have?
And this fool got voted up to 5?
It's a 5" x 5" x 2" hunk of hollow aluminium with innards that pack an almighty punch in terms of compute power with a crazy low power consumption.
Are you stupid?
Did your parents drop you on your head?
This is MAGA levels of idiocy and delusion, but then again, slashdot has always attracted the crazies.
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And Apple fanbois.
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You must be young and new to the world of computing for not recognizing a satire of Apple behavior, and for bringing politics in this otherwise technical discussion, while simultaneously insulting the parent poster and the forum itself.
Get off my lawn, as they say.
I looked up the placement (Score:2)
Watched an unboxing video just to see where the button is. This is not significantly different than positioning it in a rear corner. The button is not uniformly flat to the desktop. There's a recessed pedestal. You still have to lift it slightly, but the thing weighs 670 grams. Compared to the historical minis it's a featherweight.
Getting bent out of shape over this is just plain stupid. It's nitpicking for its own sake. Nobody actually owning one of these will be bothered by it. Hell, my beefy mid tower PC
Who really cares? I don't. (Score:2)
Just got the mac mini m4 . It's plugged into a UPS and yeah, the power button is on the button and I don't even care.
It's not like I intend to use it very much and even if I did power down every night it still wouldn't be an issue.
I just don't get how people get hung up over trivial things.
Someone mentioned apple removing the headphone jack and honestly, I don't even miss it.
If you are the type of person that gets put off over these types of things then don't buy the product.
Seniors vs. Design (Score:2)
The first Mac users are now in their 80s. They'll never think to look there. There will be phone calls.
Screw the users, we need to save a dollar (Score:2)
Profit margins are the holy grail of Steve Jobs Apple and Tim Cook continues that outlook. So putting the power button on the metal case probably would of increased costs about a dollar reducing profit margin so screw the customer. Then when users said it was stupid Apple immediately told is official fanboy Youtubers to say "who ever turns a Mac off". Servers you never turn off desktop computer turn it off and go out and spend some time in the real world.
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You have odd fantasies.
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I saw the headline and instantly thought "oh they put it on the bottom like the charging port on the mighty mouse" it was going to be my shot at a +Funny but it turns out that's exactly what they did.
Putting things in bad places for visual design reasons has definitely been a trend at Apple. As much as I don't like it they're big on my ever shrinking list of preferred electronics companies.
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Next stop: NO physical start button, like many routers.
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Good call on the power button dissappearing soon... you can save a few pennies in build cost, and guarantee that you can reach out and touch your customer any time you want... in the new authoritarian world, that makes perfect sense. Surely this will be done for your "protection". You cant argue against Motherhood.
And as others have pointed out in this discussion, putting the power button in a difficult to reach spot is clearly a dete