I also switched to cheapest Mac Mini M4 Pro this year (after 20+ years of using Intel CPUs). MacOS has its quirks, but it provides ZSH and it "just works" (unlike manjaro I used in parallel with Windows). I especially like the preview tool - it has useful pdf and photo editing options.

The hardware is impressive - tiny, metal box, always silent, basic speaker built-in and it can be left always on with minimal power consumption.

Drive size for basic models is limited (512gb) - I solved it by moving photos to NAS. I don't use it for gaming, except Hello Kitty Island Adventure. I would say it's a very competitive choice for a desktop PC in 2025 overall.

I just replaced a headless nuc 9 with a headless M4.

Nuc 9 averaged 65-70W power usage, while the m4 is averaging 6.6W.

The Mac is vastly more performant.

That's pretty amazing, I've never heard of that before .-_-!