The key is to use an external SSD via USB. Much better bang for your buck than Apple’s storage pricing.

Or, just as a wild thought, stay away from overpriced hardware.

What’s overpriced about the base model Mac mini? I agree that Apple way overcharges for upgrades, but the base model looks reasonably priced to me.

I dunno, the fact that you can get a much beefier machine for the same price?

I wouldn’t say much beefier.

They’re $599 at full price and easily found on sale for $500 or less.

While that’s true it kind of ruins the point in getting a small factor computer like a Mac Mini. You want as small a footprint as possible.

Personally I have a USB disk plugged into my router and my HTPC just grabs files over the network.

> as small a form factor as possible

This is what I want. And the Mac Mini does it better than the nuc as the power bricks the Nucs use are big, ugly and annoying to deal with.

It's hard for me to put my finger on it exactly but at this point NUCs just feel more hackable. For me, that's why the mini is not a satisfactory replacement.

If you want a little kube node, if you prefer the way ubuntu and debian upgrade over the way osx upgrades (and have the linux experience be decent), if you want to shuck it and slap the board in a robot and run ROS, if you want it to be a steam box with an eGPU, there's a bunch of things NUCs do well / places they fit that mac minis don't quite (yet, at least).

Mac minis are great but they're not the same thing. The "tight hand" of Apple makes them great but also limits them. Like you probably can do all the above, with sufficient effort but is not a first class experience, in the same way that an orange pi is not a raspberry pi.

The last mac minis i worked with were the final gen intel ones. Very similar to a NUC, you could run whatever linux on them fine (and even windows with the bootcamp drivers). I think we'll get to m* series mac minis running linux eventually, it's just going to take some time to get it all ironed out.

My fairly old NUC has a fanless case, 2TB NVMe, 64GiB RAM, and a VESA mount hiding it behind my screen.

I see there are aftermarket VESA mounts for the mini, and I suppose you can tape or glue the disk to it somehow.