I run Scrivener on my Mac Studio MacOS 15.7.5 and it works super, has done for years.
I am highly reluctant to try Tahoe on my existing setup.
Due to the option to add another desk at my office, for a specific research project, I consider purchasing this Mac, running Tahoe, and in a way isolated for my other projects.
Unit will have its own 12TB Raid
Are there anyone out there that uses “the smallest Mac” with good results, or “know of” a better setup?
Kind regards
Palle Jensen
Scrivener works perfectly on MacBook Air M1 8Gb, running Tahoe. It, and everything else, will run like a dream on your Mini.
Sounds reassuring… but the projects I envision may grow to hold hundreds oF GB each, so if there arises the need for rebuilding the index ( like a power outage) what then?
Palle
I have the smallest 8gb RAM Mini from around two years ago, and it runs 26 fine. I think the OS looks like a child’s concept of an operating system, but it isn’t slow. 
Indexing is mostly a storage speed matter, and it has a good quality SSD.
The caveat in all this is that I don’t really use it. It’s just a thing I boot up for testing Mac software. On the other hand, testing sometimes means making ridiculously huge projects and trying to break stuff with them. In such tests I generally feel it takes a lot more to slow it down than I figured it would.
As part of testing I do also tend to have a good amount of stuff open at once. Coding editor, browser with several tabs, console, our software, terminal, image editor for screenshots, usually a document editor or two such as LibreOffice or Sigil, and Obsidian to access my knowledge base. Even with all of that, 8gb never feels stressed, so I would imagine twice that would be plenty.
If your projects may have “hundreds of Gigabytes each” then the 256GB is going to be the problem; you’ll have to either to go for a bigger SSID or you’ll need a fast external SSD… the latter probably being the cheaper option.
Apart from that, no problems with Scrivener.
Mark
Under normal circumstances, an external SSD would definitely be far cheaper. But over the past 6 months, SSD prices have gotten out of hand, an many options might cost just as much as upgrading the storage.
I’ve opted for buying refurbished Macs directly from Apple. They’re usually about 15% off the price of configuring the same Mac new, but they still come with the same standard 1-year warranty.
Edit: It looks like currently there aren’t any refurbished Mac Mini’s available on the US site at least. That’s the only problem with buying refurbished: you have to wait until the configuration you want is available.
As it happens, there aren’t any refurbished Mini’s in the UK either. I’m looking for one as I realise that when I purchased my M2Pro Mini I spent my money on a 1TB SSD, but now realise I should have spent it on more RAM… I got 16GB, but I have some software that really needs ≥32GB. You can off-load files onto an external SSD, but you can’t do anything about RAM extension.
I might have to bite the bullet and go for new.
Mark
The gotcha long term will be the 256 G. You will want some form of external drive eventually. It doesn’t have to be fast, just reliable. Or you ahve to have some form of cloud account that doesn’t automatically sync. iCloud is a pain.
I have an M4 Pro, and an external disk that does time machine, and also has a TB set aside for secondary backups. But I only buy computers about every 10-12 years, becuse changing computers is such a pain.
In terms of processing, it’s fine.
In passing: I avoid upgrades too. Too often things break. Security patches fine. But I won’t upgrade to Tahoe until the next two operating systems are out. Mac normally supports an OS for at least securtiy fixes for 7 years. So when Tahoe is 4 years old, I will look at moving to it.
Works perfectly on my MacBook Neo, which is a fraction of the power of an Air… which is a fraction of the power of a MacBook Pro. The Neo also has 8Gb. Working with full-length novels & lots of research stuff.
(Edit: I also have a MacBook Pro M1 Max 32Gb for work stuff, so I can compare!)
Honestly? My recommendation would be to use some other application to store those files. Scrivener is not intended to be a video or image archive. This is what the “Research Files as Aliases” functionality is for.
Well they did mention a dedicated 12TB external RAID, so I would imagine the 256 is just for system stuff, user folder, and applications. I don’t think speed or storage should be a problem with a setup like that. That’s the drive size I use, and for that kind of stuff I not only have that, but all of that three times over with multiple boot volumes (for different macOS versions).
I’m thinking of Scrivener itself. 100-GB projects are known to encounter performance issues.
Oh sure, I was commenting more on the other responses above, cautioning on how the internal SSD might be too small for the use case.
If they have experience in working with this scale of project on an older Mac Pro, they might be pleasantly surprised by how fast the newer Minis are. I routinely struggle to reproduce performance issues that others report (and M4 is faster than M2). But it’s hard to say. If the Pro was a beast, even several years of hardware advancements might not be equivalent.
Personally I would buy it under conditions that would allow a return if it doesn’t work out, or alter usage patterns if that matters less. Enough hardware can get over certain types of large scale uses of Scrivener, the unknown is whether a budget Mac is enough hardware.
UPDATE
Inspired by your valuable feedbacks, a look at the finances AND the dly, I have just ordered my new Mac Mini M4, 24GB / 512GB.
Once it arrives after 2 months I will add the Satechi companion, holding an existing Samsung 2TB SSD, and connect my 4 disk RAID.
In the meantime I’ll enjoy Sequoia on my other units
Palle
One way to get “The chopper view” is, for me, to use the app FAF (Find Any File).
I find it extremely useful, simple to use, and have used it for years..
You may point FAF to any file, folder or disk(s) and. you will get “the high view”.
Palle