enossified

I’ve been holding off purchase of an M4 Mini (not Pro).  

I currently have an M1 MacBook Air and use a CalDigit TS4 dock to connect all peripherals…monitor (DP), USB-A (some are only USB 2) and USB-C (all USB 3, either 5 or10 Gbs) connections. Other than the cable to the laptop I have no TB devices connected of any kind on a regular basis. I have been able to successfully mount a TB2 SSD using the Apple adapter, but I have never left it connected after transferring files. I’m still running Sonoma.

My idea was to plug the TS4 into the M4 Mini and keep everything else connected to the TS4 as it is today.

I keep reading these horror stories since shortly after the M4 Minis arrived and I’m worried for two reasons:

1. For a brief while I was getting drive disconnects, this stopped once I started shutting down the laptop from 10PM to 7 AM every day. I was worried about the disconnects causing disk errors, but after running First Aid all seems to be OK

2. I’m still using Sonoma. I only update the OS when I need to and (don't laugh) the usual reason is when Intuit informs me I need to update my OS in order to run Turbotax for the next tax year. I prefer to not update an OS until just before the new OS drops in the fall. I figure that way most of the buggy behavior will have been fixed. I’m assuming that if I buy a new Mini it will come with Sequoia and I won;t be abel to back up to Sonoma. Plus OS 26 is about to drop. Ugh.

I read that some users have had no issues. Obviously the people who do have issues will be vocal about them. Those who don’t have issues may not know that anybody is having issues. So…is it safe to buy an M4 Mini or not?

If it’s anything like the auto industry back in the 1980s and 1990s when all the major foreign car makers from Toyota to BMW to Volkswagen opened plants in the USA, foreign companies will open factories here. It will still take years to get semiconductor foundries up and running so unless you know who flipflops based on promises of massive foreign investment (like the recent TSMC $100 billion offer). there will be higher prices down the road.

Time for Mac and iPhone users to file class action suits against the Microsoft Store and Android Store for blocking our access to those apps.

There’s one perfectly valid reason for having external bootable drives: testing OS updates before committing to them. I’ve been doing this for years. I'd like to know what applications are broken by a new OS and deal with that in advance rather than trying to back out of the OS update because I am blocked from working.