But of course with careful firewalling it is going to be fine. Then Catalina is the latest officially supported which is already not receiving security patches.

For instance, many people like using minis as iTunes server and Time Machine target. Running macOS or not depends on how much you want Mac apps doing the serving. No plans on installing anything else on them. These really meet all my needs and are dead simple to manage and use. The fileserver is headless with an HDMI 'dummy plug' which makes it appear to have a 1080p monitor with screen sharing. The media server has a screen connected for watching video when I'm in that room and is also connected to my home stereo with speakers in different rooms. No special software, they have virtually nothing on their startup disks, just the minimum standard MacOS distribution. It has four 5tb hard drives connected for legacy files and a network Time Machine destination. Then I have a 2012 2.6ghz i7 quad-core 16gb Mini with 256gb internal SSD running Catalina as a file server. Access it through two AppleTV's, another Mac, iPad and iPhone. 2014 2.8ghz i5 8gb Mini with internal 128gb SSD runs Mojave with iTunes/Home Sharing and all my local media on a USB 4tb SSD with another 4tb hard disk for nightly CCC backups. So if you want to beef up your home office, this Mac mini is a fantastic way to do it without breaking your bank.Have been doing this for about 8 years or so myself.

Plus is one of the few Macs that let you add RAM after you buy it. There’s also macOS Server ( coming soon to Monterey), which offers more powerful tool for managing multiple Macs, iPads, and iPhones. Rather, it would make a fantastic Plex media server or file server using macOS Monterey’s built-in features.

Now that the M1 Mac mini is here and the M1 Pro model is likely on the way, we don’t recommend buying this for everyday use. In our 4-star review from 2018, we called the Mac mini “an intriguing combination of performance and value” and “a no-brainer” upgrade from the previous model. For ports, it’s got four Thunderbolt 3 ports, HDMI 2.0, a pair of USB Type-A, an ethernet port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. This Mac mini has an 8th-gen 3.6GHz Intel Core i3 Quad-Core processor, 8GB of 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM, and a 256GB PCIe SSD.

Mac mini mail server