A few weeks ago, I bought a couple of Mac Minis just because they were cheap and local and I had some ideas for them. I'm ultimately looking for a quad core 2011 Mini(best version that will run Snow Leopard for some specific applications I have and don't have room for a Mac Pro now) but thought I could put these to use. There were two 2012s and one 2014. All of these are base model units-the 2014 is 4gb/a mechanical drive and the 2012s are basically the 13" MBP stuffed into a Mac Mini case(oversimplification, but same CPU and other major chipsets). The 2012s came to me SSD upgraded and with 8gb RAM.
I miss having two big monitors, which is something my M1 MBP can't do when docked. Consequently, I figured I'd give one of the 2012s a spin as a desktop.
As of now, I'm waiting on 16gb RAM for it to be delivered from Amazon, but it's doing okay(could be better) on 8gb. I have it running 10.14(Mojave) as that is the newest OS that supports some of my older 32 bit software.
Now that my school is going back to fully virtual for a few weeks at least, I'm glad to have this set up, and hopefully the 16gb RAM will really help it.
In any case, I love Thunderbolt, and here's how I have it set up:
1. The Mini is plugged into an Apple Thunderbolt display. This is a 2650x1440 display that with a single TB cable breaks out to 3x USB ports, a Firewire 800 port, ethernet, and also has built in speakers, a microphone, and a 720p webcam. A lot of the ports are redundant on the Mini as it has Firewire and Ethernet, but more USB ports never hurt anyone.
2. Daisy-chained to the display is an OWC Thunderbolt 3 PD dock. I bought this to dock my M1, but it works just fine with this also. This offers another pile of USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port, ethernet, audio out, an SD card reader, and mini-DP out. I have the Mini connected to the "Back end" of the TB display, and consequently can easily connect my M1 to this dock as well and get all the benefits plus use the TB display(and also get the sometimes-useful Firewire port)
3. Off the mini-DP on the dock, I have an Apple 27" Cinema display. This has the same 2560x1440 panel and also has a lot of the same features, although only USB ports on the back, a lower resolution webcam, and so forth.
4. Semi-permanently attached to this "docking set-up" is an Apple USB superdrive(which will also work with my M1) for optical media, a graphics tablet I use for online teaching, and a Unicomp Spacesaver M keyboard(an absolutely wonderful buckling spring keyboard made in Lexington KY from the original IBM Model M tooling).
I also typically have lighting, micro-USB-C, and an old 30 pin iPod/iPhone connector hanging off all of this, and sometimes have left an external drive plugged in that I use as backup for a lot of other things.
This has proven to be a very useful set up and I'm looking forward to using it for the upcoming semester. This nearly 10 year old computer still has a lot of useful life in it.
I miss having two big monitors, which is something my M1 MBP can't do when docked. Consequently, I figured I'd give one of the 2012s a spin as a desktop.
As of now, I'm waiting on 16gb RAM for it to be delivered from Amazon, but it's doing okay(could be better) on 8gb. I have it running 10.14(Mojave) as that is the newest OS that supports some of my older 32 bit software.
Now that my school is going back to fully virtual for a few weeks at least, I'm glad to have this set up, and hopefully the 16gb RAM will really help it.
In any case, I love Thunderbolt, and here's how I have it set up:
1. The Mini is plugged into an Apple Thunderbolt display. This is a 2650x1440 display that with a single TB cable breaks out to 3x USB ports, a Firewire 800 port, ethernet, and also has built in speakers, a microphone, and a 720p webcam. A lot of the ports are redundant on the Mini as it has Firewire and Ethernet, but more USB ports never hurt anyone.
2. Daisy-chained to the display is an OWC Thunderbolt 3 PD dock. I bought this to dock my M1, but it works just fine with this also. This offers another pile of USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port, ethernet, audio out, an SD card reader, and mini-DP out. I have the Mini connected to the "Back end" of the TB display, and consequently can easily connect my M1 to this dock as well and get all the benefits plus use the TB display(and also get the sometimes-useful Firewire port)
3. Off the mini-DP on the dock, I have an Apple 27" Cinema display. This has the same 2560x1440 panel and also has a lot of the same features, although only USB ports on the back, a lower resolution webcam, and so forth.
4. Semi-permanently attached to this "docking set-up" is an Apple USB superdrive(which will also work with my M1) for optical media, a graphics tablet I use for online teaching, and a Unicomp Spacesaver M keyboard(an absolutely wonderful buckling spring keyboard made in Lexington KY from the original IBM Model M tooling).
I also typically have lighting, micro-USB-C, and an old 30 pin iPod/iPhone connector hanging off all of this, and sometimes have left an external drive plugged in that I use as backup for a lot of other things.
This has proven to be a very useful set up and I'm looking forward to using it for the upcoming semester. This nearly 10 year old computer still has a lot of useful life in it.