Is My Mac Good?

Is my Mac good?

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Mac mini, macOS 26.5

Posted on May 26, 2026 3:50 AM

Top-ranking reply

MrHoffman

Level 10

161,475 points

Posted on May 28, 2026 8:20 AM

Three things noted:

No backups. Backups are the only way to mark data as being valuable.

Storage capacity that will require ongoing and manual management.

Add-on security apps.

General comments:

I haven’t seen longevity for the recent Apple flash storage, though running near capacity can most definitely wear the flash storage more quickly.

HDDs do tend to fail differently than flash, and different grades of HDDs can fail differently than different grades of flash. Or put differently, comparisons are not easy. Running flash near its storage capacity is, however, bad. (One thing that can help with wear leveling is applying the Apple updates as they arrive, as those shuffle the sectors.)

I wouldn’t pick a Mac for heavy gaming. That tends to be a Windows PC thing, or maybe a SteamOS thing.

Call of Duty for Mac as shown on Steam lists only Intel processors, and requires 15 GB. Apple silicon support is not listed.

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26 replies

Owl-53

Level 10

113,659 points

May 28, 2026 12:57 AM in response to Servant of Cats

Servant of Cats wrote:

Owl-53 wrote:

It is my considered opinion that Apple should have never made Mac Mini with the punny 256 GB Capacity Drive

Apple no longer sells new Mac minis with 256 GB SSDs. The minimum SSD capacity is now 512 GB – and the starting price has gone up from $599 USD to $799 USD. The minimum SSD size for new Mac notebooks now ranges from 512 GB to 2 TB depending on the model and main processing chip.

Apple still does sell new iMacs and MacBook Neos that have 256 GB SSDs.

Thank you for chipping in there 👍

Yes, am very aware of the new configurations you have outlined

We are also very aware of the Wait Times on all new purchases of Mac Mini and Mac Studio

None of which addresses OPs' punny 256 GB configuration

At least, not for using Xcode to develop whatever they are developing

rkaufmann87

Level 10

149,360 points

May 28, 2026 7:31 AM in response to weeklycod

Unfortunately you were mis-informed. Spinning HD's are more reliable in general than flash drives. If you want the highest reliability your best bet is to either get a RAID (look it up) system which I believe is overkill for a simple Time Machine backup External Hard Disk. The next solution is to purchase an external SSD. SSD's (again look it up) tend to be be the most reliable solutions however they are also the most expensive too.