The screen on my 2013 MacBook Pro has stopped working. Taking a guess that it is not worth fixing. I went to look at prices for a new 15″ MacBook Pro and the cheapest price is £2,249. Gulp. I need the 15 inch screen for graphics work, and Apple do not offer such a big screen in lesser models.

While on the Apple site I noticed the Mac Mini is only £800. So I thought why not just a get a screen and keyboard and use this setup and just transport them if I need to. Is anyone else doing this? Do Mac Minis travel well?

I suppose the other option is to get a 13″ base model MacBook and an external monitor…. but this is £1,249, £450 more than the Mac Mini.

PS. I am not the sit in Starbucks and work on my Mac type so use on the move is not really a requirement.

Buy used? I have 2x ‘vintage’ 15″ MBPs a 2012 and a 2013 and both are working well that I use for my business – both running the latest IOS. I got the 2013 with Retina display for £600 with a warranty from a dealer who’s an Ex-Apple tech.

That Mini is the base model, if you want the full-fat version, with a shit-ton of RAM, and a 2Tb SSD, it’s up there with the 13” MacBook, price-wise, but probably worth the money for the better performance and built-in storage.

Thanks DB, could be an idea. Any recommendations on ‘reputable’ dealers?

Andy, I’m running a 2016 15″ MacBook Pro and the current models are so eye-waveringly expensive to the point where I question if they’re really worth it.
Having said that – open the box, power up and use; that’s it so I’ll probably just live with whatever the price is when mine gives uo the ghost – should have a few more years so time to save or rob someone…….

It’s a couple of years since I went around this but the Mini Mac is not the thing it used to be. My brother has the original mini Mac and its strength is that it is totally upgradable. He does a fair amount of video and photo editing and music stuff, so not just browsing the internet and his getting on for 10 year old mini Mac handles all his software fine. He’s heavily upgraded it over the years which is the key and the strength of the old mini Mac. Unfortunately the new mini Mac is locked out just like most of Apples kit these days and in fact the architecture is now the same as the previous generation MacBooks. I discounted the mini Mac on the basis of this lack of upgradability and started looking at the iMac’s…but they’ve given the smaller screen iMac’s the same treatment…they’re no longer upgradable and have the MacBook internals. I then looked at the larger screen iMac’s and surprisingly you can still upgrade these and they still have proper desktop internals and by the time you’ve spec’d up the 21″ iMac the price wasn’t too far off the mid spec 27″ iMac which was a far better spec along with the bigger 5k screen…whcih is just a thing of beauty. SO I pumped for that and have not been disappointed. Was more than I wanted to spend, but got an upgradable high spec piece of kit which I know will last me a good ten years or more.

I’m an Apple fanboy but the Apple premium is way too rich for me now especially for the MacBooks. Shame they’re getting too greedy, if they just kept them as expensive premium products they’d continue to do well, but now they’ve ventured into the silly price league I think they’ll put a lot of people off..they’re already seeing a drop in iPhone sales.

Running my business on a pair of 2012 Minis with SSD and second internal drives. The Mini is great, the weak link in you idea would be transporting a screen everywhere.

hm, I’m thinking of off loading my old rMBP.
Might PM you.

The battery seems OK but it doesn’t hold charge easily. Like you I was using it for heavy dev work so usually at home.

Andy, have a gander at the apple refurb store, a wee link right at the bottom of the website.

Apple Bay is local to me – you can check out his reviews elsewhere. He’s fixed stuff for me that other “specialist” Apple dealers couldn’t sort.

Another former machouse here – we had imac (anglepoise) then 3 mac minis – one run headless to feed the apple tvs, others used as desktops.

We’ve now reverted to windows 10 all round – apple went too fanboy, too expensive and not enough oomph. Windows10 mostly just works these days. I’d buy a 2nd hand lenovo t440 for when out on the road…

Whatever you do don’t buy the base model Mac mini. We’ve had a couple of older Mac mini’s and super happy with them, so I went cheap and bought my daughter the base mini when her previous Mac finally gave up the ghost. Current generation base mini is almost unusably slow – even for simple browsing and MS Office – and is nearly impossible to upgrade.

Why not just get an external screeen for your MacBook with the bust screen?

I am already running an external monitor with the broken Mac…. but I get the feeling it is going to give up the ghost soon.

Thanks for the info chaps I will check out Apple Bay.

Might surprise you – my 2011 air has has had a new screen, new clam case and keyboard and I’ve just fitted a new battery to it after the last one decided to swell up – that was a bit scary. The thing refuses to die. They’re built to last.

£300 for a new screen or £100 used – I’d be getting a bit more life out of it.

They took so long to update it that the current Mac mini is quite a few CPU generations on from the old. Even the base one gets 4 cores at 3.6ghz – the old based one may have been a bit slow, the new one certainly is not.

Memory is user upgradeable if you’re handy with a screwdriver. Storage is not, although with USB-C/TB3 ports you can just hook up a bigger external SSD or hard drive.

The only thing it’s weak on is GPU performance. If you run things that make use of it, you may be better off with a MBP instead. If it’s pure CPU then the mini will be quicker.

check for screen delamination before considering anything else- this was an issue on a lot of macbooks around 2013and later. If you have signs of it (google for pics) Apple should replace the screen (in my case, it was the whole hinged unit) under a recall.

the new mac mini’s have poor graphics but the idea is you use an eGPU. i’m contemplating one for retouch work on big files and it’s coming in at £2200 (ex vat) which is good value for a six core machine/64gb ram/1tb/8gb graphics card. they are a better option than an iMac as i already have a screen thats more accurate than an iMac plus they have 2 thunderbolt 3 bus’s and the 1tb drive has faster read/write speed. so the expansion i need with raids or a super fast nvme drive is better handled by the mini.

but in your case why not just get a new MacBook? they updated yesterday to an 8core so the 6core machines left on inventory will be hitting the refurb store and i would imagine the slightly higher clock speeds will actually be quicker in some instances if your software doesn’t make use of all the cores.

as for the price? well if you look at the cost of ownership over 3-4 years working life it’s peanuts (well about £3-£4 a working day. if your business can’t sustain that then maybe think a bout a career change that can run on a £250 pc?

The Adobe creative suite runs just as well on Windows nowadays you know…….

edit: suggested already.

btw what kinda graphics work are you doing on a 15″ screen, that’d melt my brain! 😆

Graphics work is CAD and Affinity Designer – I do have a larger monitor available to avoid eye strain.

I would rather spend 2K plus than ever go back to Windows Smokey Jo….