When the OP talks about how troublesome the power cord is I can't help but think of those people in the infomercial who have so much trouble with normal blankets that they have to get the blanket with built-in sleeves.
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Add a battery to Mini
- Thread starter HowardEv
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Someone got me one of those blankets with sleeves for Christmas one year, and while it's very secure and warm when I put my arms in the sleeves, getting out of them is a hassle when I want to get up. Result is I hardly ever use the sleeves, just use the thing like a regular blanket. I suspect a battery in a mini would similarly go mostly unused.
The Liberty, being a MacBook without a screen, would use a MacBook power brick, smaller because it doesn’t power a screen.
I would recommend an alternative name, instead of calling your concept “liberty” I think a better much better and appropriate name would be Albatross
And though it would come with a small power brick same size as MBP, when it was at your desk it could be getting charged from the display, and not need a power cable or a brick. Just one power cord from wall to the display, and just one thunderbolt cable to the Liberty (or MBP) to keep it charged.
I just don't think this is going to matter to anyone. With Apple silicon, laptops are more appropriate for most people's usage. Those few who remain on these lower powered desktops like the Mac Mini probably value the simplicity of having no power brick, over the idea of being able to power it off a display or a USB-C cable. Or they just don't care at all.
There is absolutely no guarantee that even if Apple did give the Mac Mini a battery for the purposes of safe shutdown in the event of power loss, that they would actually change the power supply and go with a power brick and USB-C power.
As others have pointed out previously, if the house loses power and the Mac Mini is running on battery, the display it's connected to is going to have no power anyway, so the fact it can keep running on battery is of essentially no benefit. The reason it's fine on a laptop is because you can still use the laptop with its own screen. And you can't say "but you can control the Mac Mini from a laptop in the event of a power loss" - nobody is going to do that.
Randomly pulling the power can result in corruption of the SSD and data loss. Having a way to ensure a safe shutdown in the event of power loss does have an important benefit.
And way to completely ignore where was saying that if loss of power to the house then the rest of the equipment also loses power.
so no display to see what doing, no Wi-Fi router to make remote connection from laptop.
the joys of cherry picking part of a sentence.
disconnection of power cable from a desktop machine whilst moving the desktop is just an entry level Darwinism. Use longer cables for power or do the cable management so has enough slack so can move the desktop to dust underneath.
wouldn’t place the power so that could be locked where place feet when sitting on desk would you, Or at least I don’t think is a good idea to have feet and legs around the area that have the power or even other cables,
The post made an unqualified assertion there was no benefit to having a battery. My snippet quoted the relevant part of that sentence:
Moreover you appear to be ignorant of at least one of the power management features of macOS. macOS supports automatic shutdown when there is a power failure. Thus you need power for a period of time for the shutdown to complete. Hence, the battery provides a short term uninterruptible power source. There is no requirement for network, display, etc.
A problem with a small built in battery is that batteries have a short lifetime. So, either you make it user serviceable or external. I think I prefer an external battery that powers the mini using a TB port which also provides for communication of the charge status. An 18650 would likely have enough energy to provide a clean shutdown.
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If you are just concerned about saving work/system state in case of a power outage, why isn't an UPS good enough? In fact, how is this external battery you describe different from existing UPS devices?
What I found interesting in this discussion was a power path through a TB port in addition to the built in power supply. That way, you could add an external USB PD battery and use it as a UPS.
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Gotta be a big market for buying a headless battery powered Mac that you can control with a Macbook Air in a coffee shop.
it stated that there was no point having the Mini have a BATTERY if the rest of the house lost power.
please note the word BATTERY, and it does not say UPS.
you seem to be ignorant of the differences between a battery and a UPS function.
firstly I am not only aware of the power management in Mac OS I even used it in the past. When you use a compatible UPS and connect via USB (or other compatible data connection from UPS to Mac) then the UPS option appears under energy saver. Under that then can the Mac to shutdown either based on time or battery within the UPS.
I used a mac mini 2009 and external storage on UPS. USB cable to Mac.
when the power went off then the external storage stayed up as well. When the mac shutdown after the 5 min period then the storage would see the Mac not there and sleep, thus ensuring that data not lost if the UPS ran out before the power restored.
even if instigate a UPS function as opposed to simply the actually mentioned battery in the mini itself would not have been sufficient as the storage would drop out with loss of power so simply having the Mac mini stay on would not prevent loss of data unless your entire environment is just the mini and the single internal SSD With absolutely no external or network storage used.
to make use of the Mac power management then this would be appearing as a UPS to Mac OS. You are describing a UPS not a battery.
you would also have to DIY hack the mini to support being powered by TB/USB-C interface.
at this point then an existing off the shelf UPS providing power to the mini and any external storage makes much more sense..
Let's look at the situation. Mac Mini is the cheapest Mac. Nobody who buys one of these things cares about having battery in there. Nobody wants to pay to have a battery in there. Maybe 2 or 3 people on this website. The kind of people who buy this computer wouldn't have ever thought about this. They just like the price, the fact it's a Mac, and how simple and clean it is.
Even if you're talking about the unit automatically shutting itself down safely once battery power is about to run out, is the storage it's connected to still powered? Is the workload they're doing going to be salvaged by a clean shutdown?
There are niche situations this would benefit, but we've had 30 years of Mac desktops without a battery, and it's been fine. If you're a Pro with a desktop Mac with important enough work for a UPS, you're probably going to have a UPS, and probably going to have a Studio or Pro anyway.
In a time where we've got Apple silicon and laptops are suitable for most people, for the first time ever, I highly doubt Apple is going to go and add a battery to their entry level desktop.
I agree with you on this point. The OP was suggesting a battery inside the mini. As I pointed out earlier I would prefer to see a TB port that can be used to power the mini from an external USB PD power source in addition to the existing AC power supply. This would allow the user to use the AC power by default and switch over to the USB PD power source in the event of a power fail of the AC power. USB PD sink would allow the user to power the mini from a DC source where you do not have an AC source available.
Steve123, I think we'd all agreed that the only possibly generally useful suggestion in this thread was adding the ability to switch to USB power to work as any one of: Monitor data/power cable, allow for an external power brick to move warm PSU external, UPS, or a power bank for temporary portability.
That point was made and supported by a few of us by page 3. Howard/John didn't even bother to comment on me asking if it would solve all his issues or not. That's when it became clear he's not actually looking for an answer.
That point was made and supported by a few of us by page 3. Howard/John didn't even bother to comment on me asking if it would solve all his issues or not. That's when it became clear he's not actually looking for an answer.
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Yeah it was clear pretty early on that this guy isn't looking for information or even an honest discussion, just for people to indulge an obsession.
That’s covered by a different idea that’s popped up here, changing the power connector to USB C. Upon reflection, I’m not as fond of the idea as I was.
The big problem is that you’d need to use an external power supply to use USB-C/Thunderbolt for power. You’d need to design it to run off both the internal power supply and external for that to be effective, and you’d either have to use a USB C lead connected to a 60Hz/120V/15A (of course, substitute your local power stats outside of North America) standard outlet lead or you’d need two power connectors (the current circle 8 and a USB-C). It’s extra complexity for a niche purpose.
...or you could get a UPS (or a generic power bank with a mains A/C inverter) and use it as, well, a UPS - with the advantage that it would also keep key components like displays, external storage, network switches running in an outage.
It's not that there's zero situations in which a battery-driven Mini would solve a problem - it's just that it's not a high-priority problem - risk x consequences - that the majority of people want solving on its own. I'm sure I've accidentally disconnected the power cord from a computer (not a Mac Mini) at least once in the last, oh, 20 years or so, and maybe taken advantage of being able to keep working on a laptop during a power cut on a similar number of occasions (with modern workflows, though, that's not much help if the network is down, so it's time for a cup of tea*)...
An important production system needs a full UPS in the same way that it needs a fire extinguisher (low risk x major damage), but a UPS is just not really necessary for a personal computer, unless you have a problem with power cuts (which, again, demands a proper UPS that can keep your infrastructure going). It's not as if yanking the power on a computer is guaranteed instant death anyway - it's just something risky to not make a habit of. If your cable management is bad, you risk yanking network, disk drives etc. which also risk disruption, if you don't save & back up regularly you're at far greater risk from crashes and fat-finger errors than power disconnections.
Not that I'm opposed in principle to USB-C power as an alternative but I really don't see Apple implementing it without also removing the internal PSU, which would be bad. I don't want to "waste" a high-bandwidth I/O and display port just for power.
(* A way will be found. I'm British and pre-millennial - in the event of a crisis, flame will be kindled and tea will be made... with boiling water... somehow.)
Why would removing the internal PSU be bad? The USB C power port would also be the display port. Ideally, the AC powered plug-in display would charge the computer, so only one outlet is used, and only one cable comes out of the computer. (Two cables would come out of the monitor still, AC to the wall and Thunderbolt to the computer.) In a power outage, the monitor would shut off but the laptop or liberty would stay on. Make some tea, and when the power comes back, turn the display on and get back to work.
I wouldn't be surprised if they remove it from a future Mac Mini. They did it with the iMac. It's that way with the laptops. ...maybe their use in server farms affect this decision.
I’m looking to get Apple to make a new product, by describing it through honest discussion. I didn’t ask anyone for information.
No, you created a fantasy which makes no sense and you keep it alive by feeding the nonsense.
Mac Mini doesn't need battery nor do we need another product like that with a battery. Just let it go and move on.
Mac Mini doesn't need battery nor do we need another product like that with a battery. Just let it go and move on.
It doesn’t make much sense with the iMac because it is a display, and big displays still need more wattage than thunderbolt can provide, and are not supposed to be portable, so could easily fit an internal PSU. But in spite of that, 70% of this Reddit poll said they were fine with Apple removing the PSU and using a power brick. Even though it still has no battery.
Yes... if you use a USB-C PD display with sufficient power to drive it (I guess a Studio Display has a beefy enough PSU, but many other USB-C displays offer less). According to the Apple specs the "maximum continuous power" is 150W for the M2 and 185W for the M2 Pro. I actually do have a display with USB PD, but its only rated at 65W.
In this house we don't plug loads rated at 150W into sources rated at 65W - so let's not get into a discussion about whether the Mini can get away with 65W.
I like the Mini having an internal PSU. I like not having another warm brick trailing fray-prone leads sitting on my desk, lying on the carpet under it, or another wart hanging off my wall socket.