Apple Executives Explain Why The New Mac mini Has Its Power Button On The Bottom, While Also Mentioning That Users Do Not Have To Always Switch It Off

It took some clever engineering to reduce the footprint of the redesigned Mac mini while also equipping it with some incredibly powerful internals. Still critics will be quick to point fingers at Apple on certain decisions, such as moving the power button to the bottom of the chassis. While it can become an inconvenience to power the machine, two Apple executives explain why this position exists and why it is not a big deal for people who brought up the issue in the first place.

Most Mac mini owners would never power off their device and would rather put it on sleep; Apple executives say that bottom power button placement was also chosen because of the reduced size

A content creator on Bilibili with the machine-translated name ‘Film and Television Hurricane’ that was spotted by ITHome spoke with Apple executives Greg Joswiak and John Ternus, who were questioned as to why the Mac mini’s power button was present at the bottom. They responded that the reduced size forced the company to switch positions, making it the ideal spot. In a recent teardown video of the compact computer, which shows a spiraling heatsink, we noticed a separate tiny motherboard that features the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, likely because it would take up a ton of space on the rest of the chassis.

Given that a second logic board had to be added to the configuration reveals a ton of how focused Apple and its engineers were in making the Mac mini as compact as possible without compromising its performance. Apple’s executives also said that despite the change in the power button’s position, it is easy to access, and all users have to do is tuck their finger in. Furthermore, given how Apple’s software is designed, most Mac mini owners will choose to put their hardware to sleep rather than perform a complete shutdown.

Waking up a Mac mini from its sleep state is much quicker than performing a power cycle, but most critics probably like to blow these things out of proportion. Fortunately, one thing they cannot lambast Apple for is the $599 pricing of the base M4 Mac mini, which comes with 16GB unified RAM and 256GB SSD. Even better is the deal on Amazon, which has shaved off $50 from this configuration, which now starts from $549. The 512GB storage model is also discounted by $50 and is available for $749, with the top-end M4 Pro option also cheaper at $1,355 instead of $1,399.

News Source: Bilibili