I had been planning on replacing my 2018 Intel Mac Mini (which was placed into service in early 2020) with an M5 Mini. But as it became apparent that prices were likely to increase I decided to get an M4 24GB/512GB Mini for $969 from Costco online. (No membership required just a 5% surcharge but paying for a Gold Star card is basically the same amount for one-year.)
It is obviously a significant upgrade from my 3GHz 6-core i5 with 8GB RAM. That was an experiment to see if I could live post-retirement with less than 16GB (I could install more RAM myself if needed. . .) Turns out 8GB works pretty well for my current needs. But I have some new projects in mind that will certainly appreciate the extra memory.
I am in very good health with no chronic conditions but at 72 I think that it is possible that this will be my last Mac. . .
I ordered the M4 on June 12 and paid around $11 for 1-2 day delivery. Suffice it to say that it didn’t arrive until June 30, along with a $11 refund after contacting customer service. But it shipped much faster than Apple’s estimates at the time. U.S. refurbs were not available (they are always my first choice if there isn’t a comparable retail discount online).
As far as Glasswing security goes I agree with this quote from Rich Mogull’s article:
“If you’re on an M1, M2, M3, or M4 Mac, or any iPhone older than the iPhone 17 series, you do not have Memory Integrity Enforcement, but you do have the rest of Apple’s hardware security architecture that’s been accumulating since 2018. You are not suddenly insecure overnight; you just don’t have the latest protections.”
And I really appreciate the contrarian rebuttal of Marcus Hutchins originally quoted by Ron Wisely that ends with this: “Marketing teams get paid lots of money to hype up new products. Why are you doing their work for free?” 