Does the mac mini have 3.5mm jack for speakers

FYI, the 3.5mm headphone jack on the M4 mini is 2-channel stereo out. It does not support surround sound output.

If you want surround sound you will need to use either the HDMI out or an external USB audio interface that supports surround sound. In my own case I use an HDMI audio extractor like this one.

The front jack on the mini would work. However, I have also installed a Raycue dock under my Mini for more ports and it adds an additional audio out jack in the rear which is more "neat" to install the speakers.

256 GB SSD is quite small. But it will do fine for light use if you take care to keep large files and folders on external disks and in cloud services and large libraries (Photos, Music, Final Cut Pro etc) on external disks (and remember to backup also them).

Matti Haveri wrote:

256 GB SSD is quite small. But it will do fine for light use if you take care to keep large files and folders on external disks and in cloud services and large libraries (Photos, Music, Final Cut Pro etc) on external disks (and remember to backup also them).

I agree wholeheartedly with Matti that the size of your boot drive is small and you must be careful to not let it get too full. I recommend a minimum of 80-100 GB of free space at all times to facilitate optimal system and application performance. So get yourself an external SSD formatted to APFS to keep your large files, i.e. Music library, Movies library and Photos library. on and operated from. OWC (MacSales.com) is probably the premier provider of 3rd party hardware for Macs.

PennineAcute wrote:

I have a My Cloud Home 4TB. All my work files are stored on there. Reading up, I can use this with a Mac.

Notice that some Mac libraries (Photos, Final Cut Pro, maybe also Music, etc) must be stored on APFS or MacOS Extended formatted local internal or external disk volumes. Non-Mac formats like exFAT, NAS and cloud storage, and Time Machine volumes are not supported and might produce obscure errors and finally corrupt the library.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Mail.app also stores its contents in internal disk's ~/Library/Mail and large attachments might bloat it so using some cloud mail service might be needed instead.

You can get good quality (big name) 2TB NVMes in USB-C enclosures for just over £100 on Amazon to keep your boot drive as clutter-free as possible.

Smaller (cheaper) ones are available of course. Thunderbolt enclosures are completely unnecessary for the type of work you will be doing.

You can get the M4 mini for £530 from Amazon or John Lewis.

John Lewis is better because you get a free 2 year guarantee and should it ever go wrong you can take it into one of their stores if that is more convenient than posting.

The £530 mini has only got a 256GB SSD but as I mentioned a 2TB NVMe would bring the total cost to well under £650.

You can use pretty much any mouse, keyboard and monitor. You can even plug it into any TV with an HDMI socket.

If you buy it from the Apple Store it will set you back £599 and only have a one year guarantee.

I don't understand what you are referring to? The NVMe?

You purchase a 1TB NVMe for around £50 together with a USB-C enclosure for about £15 and plug them into any USB-C socket.

The NVMe clips into the enclosure . . . the process is about as involved as putting new batteries in a remote control.

I can give you more details if you wish.

Incidentally if your "name" refers to your location we are probably in the same neck of the woods . . . depending which side you are on!

Yes it's interesting to note that you can buy a base M4 mini with an extra 1TB NVMe and a 2 year guarantee for less than the cost of the mini in the Apple Store.

Furthermore, if you buy a mini with a 1TB SSD installed it will cost £400 (not £50) and you are only getting an extra 744GB for all that cash.

A plugin SSD/NVMe is also far better because should you ever sell the mini or if it broke you would still have that 1TB NVMe to keep in perfect working order . . . like not having all your eggs in one basket.

That's the problem with the iMacs. I have a 2017 27" iMac which packed in just before Christmas due to a failed power supply unit. Because the iMacs are glued together, the cost of repair would have been as much as a new M4 mini and there was no guarantee something else might not go so I have just stuck it in the loft.

The point is, I didn't simply lose the computer, I lost the SSD, the monitor, the webcam etc. because of one simple fault.

I don't know what you mean by Touch ID on the Magic Keyboard but rest assured that anything you buy from Apple is price inflated many times and probably just a gimmick.

You have to realise that Apple products are in many ways status symbols and fashion items. The keyboards and mice look pretty, simple and elegant but they don't work any better than wired items a tenth the price.

Also when setting up your Mac initionally you will need a wired keyboard and mouse!

Not sure what you mean by the second part of the question but I have a number of old USBA items like hard drives, webcams, mice, keyboards etc. which can all be connected with USB A to USB-C converters.

I also use a 7 port USB A hub plugged into the M4 using a converter.

7 Port Powered Hub

Note that you can get cheaper unpowered hubs but it's false economy if you intend using it with hard drives.

Don't hesitate to ask questions, that's what we are here for. 23 years ago I came onto these forums trying to get the most basic of information about using Macs and I stayed . . .