Our 2017 iMacs (Ventura) cannot be upgraded further as they use Intel chips. Everything requires Apple Silicone these days. We use our iMacs for e-mail, WP, Spreadsheets, photos, and other home stuff.
It occurs to me that I can get a top of the line Mac Mini for less than two new iMacs but it is unclear if I could set up two independent workstations perhaps sharing drives. So new mac Mini, two new screens, and if needed, two new keywords, two new mice, etc.
Has anyone done this and which is the best way. I have done a lot of searching which suggests not, but I thought there may be some ways to achieve it.
Basically looking for 1 piece of hardware to support two independent users.
Windows and macOS are designed to hold only one local user session, there’s no way to assign the keyboard/mouse per user.
However you can let one user use the mac natively, whilst the other user use it remotely, perhaps using a RPi as the tiny desktop to connect to the mac (or just use one of your current old iMac). Unfortunately the VNC protocol gives subpar user experience. RDP (the protocol implemented in Windows) is really good, on a fast stable network, such as local network, I can’t even tell if it’s the native machine or RDP. You’d need to research though if there are any good RDP servers for mac.
PS. For the usage you’ve described there’s no point of buying top of the line mac mini. I’d just go for the cheapest M4 mini, attaching external storage if needed in the future to hold vast library of audio/video, but normally 200GB is really plenty for mail/doc/web user.
The M4 is really blazing fast compared to any Intel configuration. Even the lowest spec used in Air has plenty underutilized power for a web/mail user.
It can be done but you are going to hate it, the main reason is that you are sharing resources in a device not designed for that.
If I were in your shoes, I would be looking at two refurbished minis.
Unless you specifically want the macOS I couldn’t recommend more the “Ryzen AI” powered minis. The CPU/GPU works like a charm in Linux and overall it is really efficient. The AI in them is rather a gimmick, the overall architecture is just good, especially in models with soldered DDR5 8000 memory
