Measuring 7.7 x 7.7 x 1.4 inches and weighing 2.6 kilos, the Mac Mini is extra moveable than most desktops. However so as to use it at, for instance, a café, you additionally want to hold some type of show. As an alternative of relegating desktop-level work to, properly, the highest of the desk, one maker has taken issues into his personal fingers. The “Transportable Mac Mini,” as he calls it, is meant to make it simpler to work with the Mac Mini anyplace. It additionally creates a pseudo-Mac laptop computer with a helpful function that Apple would not provide in its actual clamshells.
Though the Transportable Mac Mini that YouTuber Scott Yu-Jan created has a show you possibly can angle and folds shut like a laptop computer, it needs to be plugged in, and it would not have a built-in bodily keyboard.
Nevertheless, the pc does have a display screen connected: a 2021 iPad Mini. The pill brings contact performance to the Mac Mini through Duet Show, an app that principally turns iPads or iPhones into second screens. Apple would not make any MacBooks with touchscreens, so the consequence here’s a maker-made unique.
The guts of the Transportable Mac Mini hack is a 3D-printed case that allows you to slide the Mac Mini and iPad Mini out and in. A USB-C cable connects the Mac Mini and iPad Mini whereas serving to the pill keep within the chassis.
There’s additionally a spot to retailer an Allen key, which might tighten any bolts which may come unfastened after utilizing the hinge “just a few occasions,” Yu-Jan mentioned.
If you happen to’re questioning what the purpose of that is, you are not alone. In a video shared final week and noticed by Hackaday on Thursday, Yu-Jan known as the Transportable Mac Mini “essentially the most controversial factor I ever made.”
A 2021 Mac Mini (begins at $700) and iPad Mini (begins at $500) collectively value greater than an M1-based MacBook (the MacBook Air begins at $1,000).
Inspiration for the Transportable Mac Mini additionally got here from seeing how loud and scorching laptops can get, the YouTuber famous. However as commenters, and our evaluations of MacBooks, have identified, Apple’s M1-based laptops can maintain their very own towards the M1-powered Mac Mini. And within the case of the MacBook Air, there are not any noisy followers to listen to.
However Yu-Juan defined that his channel is about “getting extra out of the belongings you already personal.” Since 3D printing appears to have made this miniature pc further moveable and has given it a touchscreen, Yu-Juan has apparently succeeded.
