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Comment by avidphantasm | Hacker News Reader

It's a desktop. Use an external disk. Much cheaper.

It kind of undermines the sleek form factor if you need to have a clunky NVMe enclosure dangling off the back though. Even with this tiny new design I bet they could fit a hatch on the bottom with space for a 2230 M.2 drive, but they don't want to because that would let you upgrade to 2TB of fast internal storage for $200 instead of $800.

There are a number of companies that specialize in making hubs/NVMe enclosures that match the aesthetics of the Mac Mini and sit directly underneath it.

For example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08S47KBMC/

It looks like the power button was moved to the bottom of the new Mac mini, maybe to make this experience worse.

> clunky NVMe enclosure

We really are living in the future if people are using these words in combination.

Though compared to this new mini a lot will feel clunky. Any HDD enclosure is certainly larger.

It’s not the size of the NVMe enclosure that makes it clunky. It’s that you now have an extra dongle hanging off the back of your Mac and cluttering up the desk.

There is a reason for the popularity of those enclosure/hub combos that have the same footprint and color as the Mini.

Until someone brings out little two or four drive NVMe enclosures that fits exactly under the Mac Mini with a Thunderbolt bridge/plug that doesn't snag cables, because we all know Apple can't resist gauging buyers by refusing to include two easy to access M.2 bays on the underside.

I can't imagine anyone but Apple shareholders drooling at the taught of overpriced soldered memory would prefer a smaller Mac Mini case if ~0.5" more height would get you M.2 bays for storage.

these exist on amazon

You mean like this [1]? I would shocked if OWC didn’t have a version of this for the new mini form factor in the works.

[1] https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-drives/owc-ministac...

It even looks like the standard iconography for "Database"!

With heat now venting downward, that would work better above the new Mac Mini.

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