Mac Mini? Nah. This Workflow Cost Less and Works Better

by

I Didn’t Need More Power—Just Less Hassle

My workflow had a subtle but annoying problem. Every day, I walked out to my office carrying a backpack like I was still commuting—16” MacBook Pro, cables, half-empty coffee cups, a random bowl from lunch, probably a protein bar wrapper. Then I’d do it all again in reverse at the end of the day.

Why? Because I needed my one machine everywhere. It was my desktop, my laptop, my everything machine.

Eventually, I asked: What if I didn’t?

A Brief Detour into Justifying Stupidly Expensive Hardware

Let’s back up. My main machine is a 16” MacBook Pro with an M1 Max chip. It’s fantastic. It chews through dev work, never spins up the fans, and makes me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth (because I paid a lot of it).

Naturally, I tried to convince myself I needed something newer. Maybe a fresh M4 MacBook Pro? Maybe the new Mac mini Pro? I went to the Apple Store, poked at a few models, ran them side by side. I couldn’t tell the difference. The M1 Max was still crushing it. The only thing the M4 had over it was a slightly louder fan on the 14” model I tested for about 10 minutes.

I spent over a week comparing, reviewing, watching YouTube videos of the newest Macbooks and Mac Mini’s trying to inform myself, or maybe just convince myself. I ever took a hard look at the framework laptops thanks to DHH. In the end, I decided that I didn’t need more horsepower. But I did need something that lived on my desk—always-on, ready to go. Something that didn’t require me to unpack and repack my mobile life twice a day just to get work done.

Desktop, or “Just Get a Second Mac”

I considered a Mac mini M4 Pro. But once you outfit it with 48GB of RAM (because Apple won’t give you 32GB anymore), you’re looking at $1800+. For a second machine. A desktop. That I don’t really need.

That’s when it hit me! I wasn’t solving for power, I was solving for convenience.

Dragging the 16” MBP around the house was annoying. It’s not heavy, but it’s also not the kind of thing you lazily carry to the kitchen counter for a quick Slack check or sit down with on the couch. Compared to my wife’s M1 Air, it felt like a brick.

So I pivoted. I picked up a 13” MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM.

Not because I needed the compute. But because I needed something I could grab with one hand, open instantly, and work on without thinking. Something that would allow me to leave my powerhouse at my desk. It also had the added benefit of letting me take my powerhouse with me when I needed the extra screen real estate, or memory, or gpu power. That was a plus.

How It All Comes Together

Here’s the final setup:

  • MacBook Pro 16” (M1 Max): My “desktop” machine. Lives in the office. Plugged in. Always on.
  • MacBook Air 13” (M2): My home machine. For notes, tinkering, light dev, or writing rants like this one.

No more backpacking gear around the property. No more “oh right, my laptop is in the office.” If I get inspired at night, I just open the Air and go.

Remote Development Done Right

I don’t even do much local dev on the Air. When I’m on my home network, I just SSH into the MBP and work there.

VS Code and Zed make this painless. They spin up a remote dev server and forward ports automatically. So I can still hit http://localhost:3000 while running rails; even though the server’s on the other machine.

If you prefer terminal workflows (hi, Neovim gang), a basic SSH config handles the port forwarding:

# ~/.ssh/config
Host bandicoot
  HostName bandicoot.local
  User myuser
  LocalForward 3000 localhost:3000
  LocalForward 8080 localhost:8080

tmux or GTFO

For dev server persistence, I use tmux. Every server runs in a detached session. That way I don’t lose anything if my network hiccups or I log off.

tmux list-sessions
tmux new-session -A -s rails

You’re back where you left off, instantly.

iCloud Keeps It All Synced

Thanks to iCloud Drive, all my documents, downloads, and desktop files stay synced. Lightroom exports, markdown notes, screenshots—they’re all available on both machines.

I don’t sync huge folders (like raw photos or movie files), but everything else is seamless. Even with a 2TB vs. 512GB split between machines, this hasn’t been a problem.

Setup Sucks—So I’m Automating It

What’s the downside? Honestly, just getting the second Mac set up.

It’s been 20 years of blindly using Apple’s Migration Assistant and calling it a day. But now, with two machines and a remote workflow, I’m finally motivated to build a real dotfiles repo or Ansible setup.

I miss my .vimrc. My Git aliases. My terminal theme. It’s all muscle memory, and when it’s missing, it hurts.

When I build that setup script (and I will), I’ll either post about it, or rage-write a post while debugging it.

Leave a Comment