For a while I did have an iMac at work, iMac at home and small laptop for whatever. But it was too much hassle.
Additionally depending on OS / hardware similarity at each end you might even be able to make it bootable and carry your toolset everywhere too.
Two decent desktops are each going to be individually more powerful than a good, expensive laptop.
But realistically we're probably not working on a fixed budget. My job is how I get almost all of my income, so I will do whatever is necessary to continue being able to do it. If that means spending more money on another computer so be it -- what that money is buying is less hassle from having to move a computer around twice a day, and reducing risk of forgetting it or not having it at the right place, as well as reducing risk of damage or theft in transit.
I don't pay for these extra computers anyway, though. I simply have two work laptops. The refresh cycle here is two years long, and the first laptop I had was a top spec 15" ~2014 gen Macbook Pro, so it's still way more than adequate. I simply didn't turn it in when I got another laptop two years later, so now I have two -- the powerful Macbook Pro at home, and a lighter Chromebook at the office I carry around and primarily use in meetings (nothing comes close to touching my monster of a workstation in performance anyway).
It's something I do semi frequently currently and it's totally do-able, but there's enough friction that I'd rather not ever worry about it. Hell, I'd rather not have a travel laptop either, but as mentioned I don't want my high end machine to be taken with me.
I'd look into protective bags for DJ gear: some of that has similar sizes and should make a good equivalent to a laptop sleeve.
One benefit of the mac-mini is that monitors usually outlast hardware. Think of how many laptop/iMac screens still look amazing, and amazing you paid for, but have to be ditched with the rest of the machine because the screens is so tightly integrated with the rest of the hardware.
The external Dell ultrasharp bought at the same time is still in use daily. (but now it's not as pretty on Mojave as it was on High Sierra)
I also have a MacBook Pro 2015. I'm doing lots of Java/JVM languages development including Android from time to time and using Parallels for VMs. The MBPro feels considerable slower to work with than the 2011 iMac.
The big plus of a mini is that, just like you describe it, I can put it in the backpack and bring it with me pretty much anywhere and plug it in. I do travel and work remotely from time to time, so this would be of a benefit to me. Right now I have to always keep my iMac and MBPro in sync and that costs time.
What product is that?
I bought 32 for the one we ordered and will wait on moving it to 64.
It will survive. I've hauled my 2011 mini between my home and my girlfriend's home on approx 200 round trips. Sometimes I hike the distance; usually I take 2 buses.
At first I'd haul it in the very-high-quality white cardboard box it came in but a year or 2 ago I stopped bothering. Since then my only precaution has been to try to remember to put the mini in my travel bag with the "holes" (ports) up so that cruft from the bottom of the bag won't work its way inside the mini.
My model of the mini uses laptop components. If Apple has changed that in the new model, then my experience might not apply to you.
Interestingly, it never bothered me that the mini is about an inch thick. I'd rather it weigh a few oz less than it be as thin as a Macbook or an iPad.
I think I would've bought the equivalent Mac mini had it been out at the time I got my MBP. Would've saved me about $1,200, while seeming to offer many more ports, more options for self-upgrade, while taking up less desk space. My main hesitation is the lack of discrete GPU, but I suppose that's not much of a concern with the Mac's support for external GPUs.
Have done that for 3 straight years without a hitch. Yes, you might feel the weight a bit, but the only time I had to carry it was from home to home parking and office parking to cubicle.
For portability (think making presentations in a conf room), I would just have Screen Sharing & Remote access enabled. Worked fine.
I used Carbon Copy Cloner for bootable backups to 2 disks, the second disk being my bootable volume for the Air. When traveling and updating my Air volume, I would just use Chrono Sync to sync my home folders on the mini and the Air.
This was at my earlier workplace, and hope this helps.
I hope Apple is not seriously thinking that the laptop market isn't worthwhile because sales are poor. No, sales are poor because people were/are terrified of keyboard issues! Myself included.
Edit: At least you're guaranteed you won't have keyboard issues with the Mac Mini!
1tb SSD upgrade + dual 8gm ramses and its currently my favorite machine VS a tricked out windows box, 2014 mbp and the shitpile of 2014 minis I have.
To be fair, Apple's hardware seemed a lot more solid back then.
The storage is but the mini still has moving parts, a fan. Still, I wouldn’t worry much about transporting it daily.
Have you personally used hibernate mode more than a few times?
(I ask because if you have, then I'm willing to try it on my mini.)
Why? Well, I already do that. I have a MacBook Pro 2017, and I treat it like a MacMini. I don't use it like a laptop. Partially because I have monitor/keyboard setups that I prefer at both work and home, but also because I simply don't trust the laptop to withstand any real usage. The keyboard, mainly. I have two friends with the same laptop, under sane conditions and both have experienced problems (with the keyboard).
So what do I do when I actually need a laptop? I travel with my trusty 2014 (or whatever year it is) MacBook Pro. I love it to death. And when it dies I guess I'll upgrade it. But I've realized I prefer a lesser, small and portable machine for my travel laptop. My "main" work machine is too expensive to feel safe traveling with. My travel laptop is in a separate category.
So when the need occurs, I'm debating hauling a Mac mini between work and home as my daily driver. For travel, it will be a smaller, much more cheap laptop that if I lose/damage I won't be out $3.5k. It just seems to fit my needs better.
On that note, anyone think a Mac mini will survive daily hauls like that? I am concerned that it will be too much movement for a non-laptop. Thoughts?