Yeah, it’s not like felt tips. Just a little softer and a touch more friction. It’s not quite enough for my taste and that’s why I mentioned the PET film screen protector, which is not rough like full-on “paper feel” protectors but it adds enough extra softness and friction to get there for me. We’re definitely in YMMV territory. 
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So I guess add me to “The Experiment Succeeded” list. My M1 Mac mini return period has ended and I have no dissatisfactions with my device garden.
I’m now glad I got the 8GB RAM/512GB SSD version instead of the 16GB/256GB one. I would have had just over 100GB left right now on 256GB SSD which would be getting tight. Plenty of room on my 512GB SSD, however.
As for RAM, I’m not going to try Parallels or CrossOver this time around and I have yet to feel any need for more RAM. As a test I opened the Activity Monitor, Steam client, Stellaris, Paradigm Launcher doing an update download, Safari with six of my usual websites open in tabs, another somewhat beefy graphical game that wasn’t through Steam… no Swap used, 1.5GB free after it settled down, 2.7GB compressed. “Yellow” memory pressure.
I never come close to that kind usage in my day-to-day. If I load up a game it’s after closing everything else I don’t need, naturally, for best performance. Safari seems to do fine with multiple tabs open. I have no idea why people at MacRumors (the ones who say 8GB is never enough) run out of RAM, use Swap, and have “Red” memory pressure after opening a handful of Safari tabs. Is that even possible? Until I resumed a Stellaris save, with all those other things I mentioned open my memory usage was a bit over 4GB, same as right after startup, and “Green” memory pressure. Come to think of it I believe one of them mentioned a 4GB+ Safari tab… or was it Chrome? Amazing if true, but not applicable to my usage, clearly.
Now if I were to open Rebelle 5 and start filling up dozens of layers at high resolutions with dripping watercolors I bet I could quickly hit the RAM cap, start using Swap memory, and see that “Red” memory pressure for the first time. But that’s not something I normally do either.
Bottom line, this M1 8GB/512GB Mac mini is more than enough for my needs at this time. I think I’ll skip the M2 mini when it comes out and maybe consider the 3nm M3 version down the road. Or M4… or M5? That’s how I’m feeling now, anyway. We’ll see. 
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Welcome to Appletraz Ted - happy trails…
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As for the rest of the ecosystem:
- Nike Watch SE — Good ‘nuff till they add something exciting or useful health-wise (I’m over 65 and watching my health, so to speak, isn’t optional anymore); the cellular was a waste so next time I’ll go GPS-only
- iPhone 13 Pro — also good ‘nuff, at least until they add a periscope zoom or liquid lens or something
- M1 iPad Pro 11 — absurdly good ‘nuff until they tempt me with OLED or maybe miniLED (my guess is they’ll skip miniLED on the 11” and go for OLED in 2024)
- M1 Mac mini — see previous post ^
Then there’s the multiplying good nuff’ness factor that comes with a unified ecosystem. That can’t be overestimated.
TLDR — all’s good ‘nuff in the Garden of Delights. 
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I know it’s a fools errand, but somehow, someway, I am going to make this my entire computer kit for office and personal computing (well, of course big monitors at office and home)…so let it be written, so let it be done…
You’ll notice the absence of my MBP14 - it’s still here, but I want it only for its Ford F150 properties until I figure out how to bend iPadOS 16 to MY WILL!
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I do hope you’ll add a mouse to the mix. Or will it be the micro trackpad all the way? 
Of course old buddy - not counting accessories here - printer, scanner, etc. - just wanted to be clear it would be me, my watch, phone, and tablet sailing off into the sunset…
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Sailing…
Sailing…
You have arrived at your destination!
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Interesting, I also have finally left the Surface Pro behind. My current ecosystem is
- Gaming PC: AMD Ryzen 5600X with nVidia 3060Ti, 16GB RAM. I am wasting this thing - it is only used for gaming now
- M1 Macbook Air 16GB/512GB. This is my main workhorse now. Works amazing. Loooooong battery life, utterly silent and powerful.
- 12.9" Ipad Pro 2018. Used as a note-taking, sketching, consumption device.
- iPhone 13. Functional and perfect. Will last me years
- Apple Watch 3. LOL, but it still works and I am cheap.
My life became easier once I accepted that my overpriced and overpowered gaming PC was just going to be for gaming and for nothing useful. LOL. Now everything works together. (And I don’t have to fight with making iTunes work on Windows for Apple Music…)
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OK - THROW IT AGAINST THE WALL TIME RANT
Everything has been going fairly well, but lo and behold the trenchers in the alley (for our forthcoming AT&T fiber option) cut the existing local internet line I’m on. I go to edit a contract I’ve been working on the iPad and of course it wants to connect to iCloud to open it BECAUSE there is no way on heaven or earth to force iCloud to maintain a local copy on your iPad, as it does with the Mac.
Gritting teeth I use my iPhone tether to connect, but this is BS Apple - get your $hit together and get over your “We can’t have a real file system on the iPad” if this experiment is ever going to really work. At least allow the “iCloud Drive” to be in the sky and on the iPad you wankers!
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I hate to say it @dstrauss, but this is why I always use the M1 MBA as my main device. If I had a 14" M1 MBP, I would dang sure be using that as my main device. I tell you that iPadOS 16 is going to be like an “uncanny valley” situation where the closer you get the more stuff you find like this until you are going crazy!!!
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Haha, I like that terminology. The situation where iPadOS gets so close to a real OS that it gets creepy (or in this case: infuriating).
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I hear you, but that severely strains my synapses because then I wonder why I just didn’t stick it out with SP8 and a Mini 6???
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The Experiment Succeeded ?! 
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No, no,no, a thousand times NO!
The experiment has actually “exceeded” in that each impediment is more frustrating than it should be. There is a simple answer here - I’ve switched out my current M1 iPad (which I’ll be listing here shortly for the adventurous) for a 5g model and I plan to set it up on a different carrier, so I always have THREE ways to connect (WiFi, AT&T and carrier X) and learn to live with iCloud until I can bend Apple to my will - paraphrasing mark Watney, “Apple will come to fear my relentless pounding!”
Don’t let my rants let you down…you either @desertlap
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Aww, that’s way too rational. :vb-agree:
Rational or “rationalizing”?
So … never?
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Ha ha ha - well I have another ace up my sleeve - I think I’m onto a work around with OneDrive that may let me store locally and on my business server as part of FileBrowser, the alternative to Files that I usually use. More one that experiment later.
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