27/04/2022; 989 words; 4 minutes to read.
I recently retired my iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013) after Apple had decided it was too old to host macOS 11 Big Sur. This is despite my having replaced its standard mechanical HDD with a Crucial 500 Gb SSD, using an OWC upgrade kit. I can recommend OWC. Their products are first class (I put the iMac’s old HDD into an OWC enclosure and used it as a Time Machine backup disk after the upgrade) and the OWC instructions/video on how to carry out the upgrade were also first class. The performance of my upgraded iMac was very good and certainly good enough to run Big Sur but I really wanted to move beyond Catalina so getting a new desktop machine was unavoidable …
The obvious option was the new 24 inch M1 iMac. However, the most basic, i.e affordable, version lacked both a large enough SSD and ethernet; the cost of the machine with a 500 Gb SSD and ethernet made me think twice, especially when I became aware of the lack of expandability resulting from the (admittedly very alluring) physical enclosure. After much research I decided to buy a Mac Mini M1 with a 500 Gb SSD, alongside a set of peripherals that I hoped would give me a machine that came close to the 24 inch iMac (with the 500 Gb SSD and ethernet) but at a reduced cost and with more upgrade potential later on in its life. Although I could have reused the Magic keyboard and mouse that were part of my old iMac set up, I have always hankered after the wired extended keyboard and mouse that I had used with my first ever Mac so I bought myself refurbished versions thereof; I find the need to replace batteries (or to recharge) an unnecessary bind in a desktop setup.
So what did I end up with?
I am lacking the iMac’s 4.5K display with its built in speakers, its stylish looks and its touch ID capability. However, I now have a machine that is otherwise much the same but is likely to be more easily upgraded in the future and, more to the point, I have saved myself around £400.
So how does it perform? I have to say that am very impressed! It boots up in a heartbeat - much much faster than my old iMac, even with its SSD, and much much faster than my 2015 MacBook Pro. The display is very pleasing and I remain unconvinced that I would appreciate the 4480x2520 resolution offered by the M1 iMac fully, as I am not a gamer, streamer or video editor. I am enjoying being able to run iOS apps on macOS - iNetWorth runs particularly nicely - and Xcode (as well as its iOS simulators) really flies. The only downside is the quality of the built-in speakers in both the AOC monitor and Mac Mini M1. Fortunately I have a BOSE SoundLink bluetooth speaker to use if I want to listen to music. However, the monitor’s built-in speakers are fine for Zoom calls and the video quality of the NexiGo N60 1080P Webcam is very good (as long as you are OK with the slight distortion caused by its fish-eye lens).
I did have some drama setting the Mac Mini M1 up for the first time. It refused to recognise my wireless Magic Keyboard - even with the assistance of Apple telephone support. I had to borrow an old Microsoft USB keyboard from a neighbour to get past the early set up dialogue screens; strangely enough the Mac mini M1 found my wireless Magic Mouse without any issues. Transferring the contents of my old Time Machine backup to the new machine was straightforward and I was soon up and running on my new dream machine. I have had no problems using the apps installed on my old iMac on the Mac Mini M1 - Rosetta 2 handles apps compiled for Intel processors very ably and many of my existing apps run natively (and happily) on Apple Silicon.
Based on my experience I can recommend moving to Apple Silicon as soon as you can wholeheartedly. Furthermore, and if you are on a limited budget, you can save a few hundred quid by putting extreme style behind substance and building your own Mac Mini M1 based system like I did 😉.
Created with Ignite
© 2022 - 2026 Christopher Hull. All rights reserved.