Until last November, Windows was all I ever used on my computers. I've been a Windows user my entire life, and while I very briefly dabbled in Linux, I had no interest in staying there. When I chose to review the M4 Mac Mini, I thought I'd feel the same way about macOS.

However, my feelings shifted somewhat quickly. While I voiced numerous annoyances with the first few days on macOS, I came to like a lot about it, and truth be told, it's been my go-to platform ever since. I always choose to use the Mac Mini over Windows 11 PCs now. Why? Let me tell you.

7 It's so much quieter

I've never heard anything like it

I didn't realize just how loud all my Windows PCs can get until I reviewed the Mac Mini. Intel processors have historically been less efficient and harder to cool than Arm devices, but even with the Honor MagicBook Art 14 I recently reviewed, almost any time I'm using that laptop, I can hear the fan go wild.

The Mac Mini has been dead silent almost the entire time I've used it. The only time I got it to be seriously audible was when I tried running Metro Exodus on it while recording video. Sometimes I'll be using the Mac Mini and I have a Windows laptop on my second desk in the background, and I'll hear a subtle fan noise. I've held up the Mac Mini up to my ear multiple times only to realize the noise is coming from the idle laptop behind me.

I've grown to really appreciate the quietness, not only because it's silent, but because it conveys the feeling that this is a truly efficient device. I love using as little power as possible, and I trust the Mac Mini to do that more than any Windows PC I've used.

6 Performance

Yes, despite being quieter

Even aside from being quiet, Apple's Mac Mini has also been the best for me in terms of overall performance. Even with just 16GB of RAM and the base M4 model, this PC is faster across the board than anything in a similar form factor or category. Intel's Lunar Lake processors may have a better GPU (maybe), but the CPU performance is far worse. Meanwhile, the Snapdragon X Elite can pull ahead in multi-core CPU performance, but the GPU is way worse.

And again, in either case, the best-case scenario in performance means you're going to hear the fans spin up on those Windows machines. The Mac Mini makes great performance seem effortless. Of course, I could get far better performance on Windows with proper desktop processors and discrete GPUs, but that would be even more problematic in terms of noise, cooling, and power usage.

5 I have fewer hardware issues

"It just works" has surprisingly held up for me

I know Apple's slogan of "it just works" has been made fun of quite a bit over the years, but since using the Mac Mini, I've found it to really be true in ways I didn't think of. I've had numerous little problems with most of my Windows PCs and my monitor (an LG UltraWide 49WQ95C). Sometimes the screen flickers, it fails to recognize any input after the computer reboots, or it just takes a while to wake up. I wasn't sure if the issue was the monitor, the cable, or something else.

As it turns out, though, the Mac Mini has none of these problems. Everything has pretty much just worked for me, and I almost never have any problems whatsoever. It's just nice to be able to rely on something to work whenever I need it, no questions asked.

4 Most apps I need are here

Windows may be popular, but macOS is also big

One of the big benefits of Windows is that it's such a huge platform that the ecosystem of apps is larger than any other desktop operating system. But when it gets down to it, I don't need all of these obscure pieces of software, and everything I do use is here and accounted for.

My favorite browser, Vivaldi, is available on macOS. My video editor of choice, DaVinci Resolve, is also here. Slack, Beeper, Photoshop, OBS Studio, it's all here. Microsoft 365 apps are also available, and while I stopped using it recently, most Office apps are also available, including OnlyOffice, WPS Office, or LibreOffice. I'm not really sacrificing much of my workflow here.

3 I can make it feel like Windows

Restore behaviors I'm familiar with

Changing to a new platform is always a challenge, not just because of the apps, but because different operating systems often have different interaction models that make the core of the experience different, too. And while macOS definitely has some behaviors I hate out of the box, there are plenty of apps — even free ones — that can restore some of the things I miss from Windows. And some things can also be fixed in the OS settings, too.

The biggest example for me is advanced window management and tiling. To be clear, though, even on Windows, I use PowerToys FancyZones for this, and thankfully, there are some great replacements, including MacsyZones, which is my current solution. It is a bit more buggy than FancyZones, but for the most part, this works very well, and I haven't had issues with it in a while.

Other things, like the task switcher, can be fixed with the AltTab app, I can get a clipboard history with Pasty, and more. I don't really feel out of place on macOS, and I can survive on it just as well as I could on Windows.

2 It's made editing my videos easier than ever

This is the big one, honestly

This may not be at the top of my list, but rest assured it's only because this point may be oddly specific for most people. In my eyes, this is the biggest reason to keep using the Mac Mini.

I have a personal YouTube channel and prior to this, I was editing my videos on a Windows PC using discrete graphics. It was pretty fast, but the one thing I really don't have set up very well yet is audio. My room is pretty echo-y, and I think my microphone could be better. On Windows, I tried RTX Broadcast to remove noise from my recordings, but it caused some big issues when recording in OBS, so my audio was always choppy. Then I tried the noise filter in OBS itself, but some sounds would get removed and make my speech sound weird.

When I tried this on the Mac Mini and I was about to edit the audio from my video, I saw a series of audio effects labeled AU that never appeared on Windows. I'm not entirely sure where these filters come from, but they seem to be Apple-exclusive, potentially powered by some tools in Garageband, based on a quick Google search. Anyway, one of these filters is called AUSoundIsolation, and it has been the best option yet for making my audio sound clear. There's only so much you can do with a messy recording, but this filter is nearly perfect, I have had almost no issues with my voice getting cut off, and the audio quality is the best it's ever been for me.

Sure, a professional in this area would just have a better setup, but for someone who doesn't want to invest too much in what's basically a hobby right now, this has been amazing.

1 Spotlight is so much better than Windows search

Putting Microsoft to shame, really

Finally, we have another big one, Spotlight. I've recently realized that search bars are a better way to launch apps than app launchers like the Start menu or the Launchpad, and Windows Search is just kind of terrible. It suggests results you don't want and takes a while to get the right one sometimes, it forces web searches to open in Edge and Bing, and it's just kind of slow sometimes. I ended up using Flow Launcher to launch my apps and do all kinds of other things.

On macOS, I don't need anything like that because Spotlight works incredibly well by comparison. Whenever I want to launch an app, I know I can open Spotlight, type the first few letters, and press Enter, and it will always open the app I want (barring any typos on my part). Sometimes not all the search results appear immediately, but the top result is always ready to be launched with no delays, and it's perfect.

Plus, a web search in Spotlight actually respects your default web browser, what a wild concept. I also like the unit converter here more than the Windows one, it's faster and it offers an easy way to copy the target number with a single click.

I only wish I had a bit more RAM and storage on the Mac Mini

All of these are what I'd consider pretty good reasons to stay on macOS for the foreseeable future. I would like to be able to go back to Windows full-time at some point, and I will keep using it on my laptops since I don't plan on buying a MacBook, but as it stands, macOS is going to be my main work platform.

The only thing holding the Mac Mini back for me right now is that I really didn't think I'd get very invested in the platform, so I got the lowest tier of the product with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. I would definitely like a little more for long-term use, but thankfully Satechi is going to be launching the for it soon enough, and I can use that to add more SSD storage. I'm pretty jazzed about that.