The 2012 mac mini can allow you the user to update ram to 16GB max where as the newer mac mini models I believe are only upgradable by the factory with a custom design. This is the same for all mac notebooks unless you pay more for the custom builds they are all released with fearly lowish specs, still very useable The 13” mac book pro with optical drive can have harddrive and ram updated but the individual if you have the knowledge of how to do it.
The newer models don’t have that ability. Terminal is useable with Voiceover although feedback isn’t great but it is useable. I use it all the time to run installation and diagnostic commands. Running mac OSx versions from external drives or USB devices is great but My personal recommendation is a ssd drive with thunderbolt or usb 3.1 especially if running VM from the externals. I have these different setups for reasons of probem solving or recovery of data from machiens having issues. For a office suite to be used with Voiceover For get MS Office, as it’s not friendly but iWorks is great. Very useable In saying that I haven’t used office 2016 on the mac so not sure if it’s accessibility has gotten better or not. I use a mac book air late 2013, 11” with upgraded processor, 8gb ram and a 512gb ssd so custom build by apple. And I can’t fault it. I use it for work and personal use, including VM Fusion with up to 4 different vm S running at once, or bootcamp running windows 10 with VM workstation running different vms’ for all kinds of reasons. With these things you can do awesome things all you can do is find the machine you want and then expand on the accessories. Hope this helps. I recently joined this group and would like to learn more about using the Mac and its accessibility. I am considering buying a Mac, and have been exploring some different models. I would appreciate any input anyone may have before I buy one. My main purposes right now for using the mac would be for learning how the OS works, using web browsing, email, word processing, listening to audio files, and trying some audio editing. I'd also like to try Apple Script, Python, and maybe the new Swift programming language. Does VoiceOver work well in the terminal? I would also like to have the option to run Windows as a virtual machine, and am considering whether to get 8 GB of RAM or go with 4. Recently when working on my resume, I found it helpful that my Windows screen reader was able to tell me the horizontal and vertical position of the cursor so that I could tell how far down on the page the text was, and make sure text was lined up horizontally. Does VoiceOver offer this kind of feedback in either Pages or Microsoft Office? I'm mainly considering the Mac Mini, Macbook Air, or Macbook. From reading Apple's OS X requirements, many 2012 or newer models of the Mac Mini are supported. If I go with a Macbook Air or Macbook, I may go for a newer machine to maximize its battery life since the battery isn't easily replaceable. Would I be ok with getting a Mac Mini from 2012 or newer if I decide to go with one of those, instead of buying the latest model, or are there any drawbacks from an accessibility standpoint? How valuable is it to have a numeric pad? I understand VoiceOver has a numpad commander that can be used to assign keyboard commands. Would it be worth considering an external Apple keyboard with a numeric pad if I buy a laptop without one? How about a trackpad, if I choose a Mac Mini without one built in? One of the things I am excited about is access to the recovery software, and being able to easily create and run Mac OS from an external hard drive or flash drive for troubleshooting or as a second system for experimenting. Can I use an existing external hard drive and repartition it so that I have a partition for backup file storage and a second partition to install OS X, or would it be better to have OS X as the only thing on the external drive? I recall reading that when choosing a startup OS by holding the option key at startup that there is no speech. Are there other screens like this to be aware of? Thanks for any ideas. 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