As I type this on my very own Mac Mini – M4 Pro based actually – I’m getting a little tired of seeing what seems like the same old subject covered in YouTube video after YouTube video about the new Mac Mini. “Just purchase the base model, the performance is brilliant, and either a) with Thunderbolt 4 [on the base model] you’ll be able to extend your storage much less expensively than Apple’s exorbitant prices”, or b) it looks like “DIY” SSD upgrades are going to be / are already available.

There’s one part of that argument I agree with wholeheartedly. The performance of the M4 is a quite remarkable for the price point – $599 USD, or $999 AUD (in Australia) where I’m based. It is a genuinely great price. But, I’m much less certain about the second piece of advice.

• The Mac Mini is really fast – agreed.
• Apple’s storage upgrades are too expensive – yes, they’re eye wateringly expensive.
• You’ll be able to easily upgrade your storage later on – mmmh, not as convinced about that.

It’s this last point I have a problem with. Let’s take both options being suggested:

• Thunderbolt External Storage: It’s a good option for extending your available storage, BUT, No matter how much additional external storage you add to a Mac, unless you’re brave enough to do so, and re-install the OS on that external storage as your boot volume, the original 256 GB will remain your System Volume – and therefore all of the constraints that imposes will still remain.
• DIY / or Assisted DIY Storage Upgrades: Now this is more viable I suspect, BUT who is the base Model Mac mini aimed at? The bottom end of the Market. The student with little money, the Mum and Dad with kids still at school, all who want their own user account. Is Dad going to be keen to pop the lid and perform the relatively daunting task of changing the Mac Mini specific SSDs? Or are they going to pay the local Computer Repair shop to do it, and by then the cost of the upgrade is probably getting pretty close to having purchase the storage upgrade from Apple in the first place.

As a result of that I don’t think that the recommendation of “upgrade it later” is that viable. And that’s where I believe a lot of less experienced Mac users will struggle with a base model Mac Mini. Let’s go through some of the things that use up space on a not particularly remarkable Mac Mini with Sequoia installed:

Example Estimated Storage Usage of a Moderately Used Modern Mac

Component	Approximate Size
macOS Sequoia – 15.3	20 gb
Photos – say a user has been inside the Apple Eco System for a while – My Photo Library is HUGE – so I’ll make a generous “under-estimate” here	10 gb
Applications – I have a few specialist applications, as I’m a developer, so I’ll divide the size of my Applications by 3	15 gb
Documents – Even if one starts with only a few documents – or is “migrating” from an existing Mac – as I did – it would not be hard to get to 50-60 gb easily. I personally have 550 gb synchronised via iCloud. But for the sake of this argument. Also consider if the user is using one of the many Cloud storage providers – iCloud / Drive / OneDrive. However, Let’s be conservative and say 30 gb	30 gb
Music – Depending on the user’s music use, they may have ripped their personal CD collection? Are they an Apple Music or Spotify subscriber? Depending on that profile, Music can be a large consumer of space. Even I was surprised by how much space my Music library took up – given I have a lot of ripped CDs and I’m an Apple Music Subscriber – my Library was nearly 60 gb in size. Let’s divide that by 3 for our example here.	20 gb
Other Services and Apps – This includes services and Apps such as: – Mail – Messages – Podcasts – TV / TV+ Depending on how these are used, they can begin to take up considerable space. These shouldn’t be huge consumers of space, unless the user has chosen to download their latest Apple TV+ series to watch in their downtime!	5 gb
Other Users / Multiple Profiles – If you share the Mac with another User, and have separate logins, then there are a whole bunch of files duplicated in this “second” (or perhaps “third”) profile. For this example, I’ll ignore this situation, but please keep this in mind when considering the Base Model solution.
Total So Far	100 gb

You’ll note above that I’ve said Total So Far. The reason for that is that there’s one other Category of Storage that is visible whenever you visit the General | Storage option in System Settings on any Mac, and that’s the most mysterious and difficult one to deal with of all. System Data: Apple has an excellent article with discusses all of the different categories of storage. Here’s a link:

Apple Support – Find and delete files on your Mac – Open in new Tab

However, the description of System Data isn’t particularly precise.

[System Data] Contains files that don’t fall into the categories listed here [i.e. above]. This category primarily includes files and data used by the system, such as log files, caches, VM files and other runtime system resources. Also included are temporary files, fonts, app support files and plug-ins. You can’t manage the contents of this category. The contents are managed by macOS and the category varies in size depending on the current state of your Mac. You can manage your data that falls outside the other categories using the Finder or the third-party apps that created it.

I’ve emboldened one sentence there, which isn’t strictly true. with sufficient skill and knowledge, or using certain tools, you can manage and keep the data in this category “in check”. And although my machine may not be typical, it’s a reasonably recently migrated M4 Pro, it currently contains 640 gb of System Data.

Now clearly on a Mac with less storage the Operating System would more aggressively prune System Data itself – otherwise its storage would be full. And I could do more to reduce the amount of System Data on my machine. As stated above, some of the key categories that contribute to system data are:

• Log Files,
• Caches,
• Temporary Files,
• App Support Files, and
• Plug ins

Given my skills I’d feel reasonably comfortable searching for the appropriate documentation, or using one of the tools I have to tidy this up should my machine begin to run low on space.

BUT once again, I’m a technically skilled person. The target market for the Base Model M4, are generally not technically skilled people. And the many YouTube videos I’m seeing – all seem to be saying the same thing – “yes, just get the base model, you’ll be fine” – well, I’m not convinced that’s a responsible recommendation. Based on my analysis, I would never recommend a modern Mac with less than 512 gb.

One final comment I’ll make, and one that I hope doesn’t put me off-side with the video content creating community, was the absence of original ideas on the topic. What prompted me to write this piece was the seemingly unending videos repeating the same advice I’ve challenged above – get the base Mac Mini model with 256 gb, you’ll be able to upgrade the storage later on – almost verbatim. I hope I don’t tread on anyone’s toes by making that observation.

Interested in your thoughts.