In recent weeks, I’ve been captured by a thought: What if I had a computer in my kitchen? Usually I would set up my old trusted tablet for watching a show or reading something, but that is just not convenient enough.
Fueled by my fascination for Apple Silicon the focus quickly landed on the new M4 Mac Mini. The base model has a surprisingly good price to performance ratio and the computer would also serve as a first foray into the Apple ecosystem and macOS in particular.
I have been daily driving various Linux distros on my machines for many years now, but the tight integration of software and hardware, a beautiful design and currently unmatched efficiency have indeed made me quite curious. It makes me feel a bit guilty to own a Mac as I am somewhat of a proponent of free software. But damn it is nice when things just work. As the old saying goes: “Linux is only free if your time has no value…”
The project was also a nice justification for the purchase of my 3D-printer! I could find perfect, ready-made parts on printables.com to mount the Mac Mini and the “IKEA Koppla” to the underside of my kitchen table. Additionally, some printed clamps and guides allowed for clean cable management. 1
The biggest trouble was actually finding a screen that fits my needs and a matching monitor arm. I got a very light portable monitor that has an OLED panel and 120Hz refresh rate at a weird 3K resolution. 2 Most monitor arms require a minimum weight for their gas springs to work, so I had to opt for a simpler model. Moreover, 5K would have been better as the scaling in macOS prefers certain resolutions. But then the high refresh rate would not have been possible. What a problem to have, right?
As ridiculous as it sounds: Using a computer in the kitchen felt —and still feels— like a different experience. The convenient location and the different setting make very useful and a nice changeup during the day: I can quickly type answers in the morning while having a coffee. Push an update to my jellyfin deployment. Spin up the Prusa Slicer to reprint cable clips. A fully fledged operating system is just much more flexible. 10/10 would recommend!
