The Space Grey Mac mini is too little, too late and too much

I've got a stack of G4 minis here, one of which will probably be repurposed to act as a network bridge with NetBSD, and a white C2D mini which is my 10.6 test machine. They were good boxes when I needed them and they still work great, but Apple to its great shame has really let the littlest Mac rot. Now we have the Space Grey mini, ignoring the disappointing and now almost mold-encrusted 2014 refresh which was one step forward and two steps back, starting at $800 with a quadcore i3, 8GB of memory and 128GB of SSD. The pictures on Ars Technica also show Apple's secret sauce T2 chip on-board.

If you really, really, really want an updated mini, well, here's your chance. But with all the delays in production and Apple's bizarrely variable loadouts over the years the mini almost doesn't matter anymore and the price isn't cheap Mac territory anymore either (remember that the first G4 Mac mini started at $500 in 2005 and people even complained that was too much). If you want low-end, then you're going to buy a NUC-type device or an ARM board and jam that into a tiny case, and you can do it for less unless you need a crapload of external storage (the four Thunderbolt 3 ports on the Space Grey mini are admittedly quite compelling). You can even go Power ISA if you want to: the "Tiny Talos" a/k/a Raptor Blackbird is just around the corner, with the same POWER9 goodness of the bigger T2 systems in a single socket and the (in fairness: unofficial) aim is to get it under $700. That's what I'm gonna buy. Heck, if I didn't have the objections I do to x86, I could probably buy a lot more off-the-shelf for $800 and get more out of it since I'm already transitioning to Linux at home anyway. Why would I bother with chaining myself to the sinking ship that is macOS when it's clear Apple's bottom line is all about iOS?

Don't get me wrong: I'm glad to see Apple at least make a token move to take their computer lines seriously and the upgrade, though horribly delayed and notable more for its tardiness than what's actually in it, is truly welcome. And it certainly would build optimism and some much-needed good faith for whatever the next Mac Pro is being more than vapourware. But I've moved on and while I like my old minis, this one wouldn't lure me back.