Mac Mini's have utility. I have an office full of Mac Mini's, a dozen of them or so, and keep buying more.
I still love them for my team. I have it down to a routine now, I buy one of the cheaper ones from the Apple refurbished site for about $400-500 or so, and buy an SSD from Crucial on the same day.
When it shows up I swap out the unusably slow internal 5400rpm drive for the SSD. That's a little tricky but once you've done it twice you can do it again in 10-15 minutes no problem.
Then I get it all fired up. I have a bunch of Dell IPS 4k screens in various sizes and get a another used one or two from B&H if I need more.
I'm very happy with this workflow, but it's still a hack. It sure would be better if Apple just made more reasonable desktop machines.
I’ve had two Mac Minis. The higher spec G4 Mac Mini and the first Intel Mac Mini - a Core duo 1.66Ghz. Apple abandoned it relatively quickly but I put Windows 7 on it and my mom still uses it to this day as a secondary computer when she tutors.
I also recommended Mac Minis as single purpose computers. A non profit I volunteer for uses one for live-streaming with WireCast and s Black Magic box, one to control lights, and a third for Propesenter.
But when I spec out a Mac Mini with a decent processor and RAM, I’m paying as much as I would for s low end 21” iMac with much better specs.
I still love them for my team. I have it down to a routine now, I buy one of the cheaper ones from the Apple refurbished site for about $400-500 or so, and buy an SSD from Crucial on the same day.
When it shows up I swap out the unusably slow internal 5400rpm drive for the SSD. That's a little tricky but once you've done it twice you can do it again in 10-15 minutes no problem.
Then I get it all fired up. I have a bunch of Dell IPS 4k screens in various sizes and get a another used one or two from B&H if I need more.
I'm very happy with this workflow, but it's still a hack. It sure would be better if Apple just made more reasonable desktop machines.