14 years later, the Mac mini has finally been reborn

Apple’s big week of Mac announcements continued this greeting pinch nan unveiling of nan M4 Mac mini, featuring a caller chip, a revamped design, and immoderate important hardware changes. Importantly, it marks nan first clip nan Mac mini has seen a awesome redesign since nan unibody exemplary launched successful 2010.

The footprint is now conscionable 5 by 5 inches, taking up little than half nan abstraction connected your desk. To beryllium fair, it’s somewhat taller now astatine 2 inches (up from 1.4 inches), a spot for illustration a shrunken down Mac Studio, which is 7.7 by 7.7 inches. The caller Mac mini is besides importantly lighter astatine conscionable a lb and a half. The erstwhile Mac mini weighed 2.6 pounds.

Thanks to nan simplification successful aluminum and manufactured pinch 100% renewable materials, Apple is calling nan caller Mac mini its first c neutral Mac.

3x Thunderbolt 5 ports
2x USB-C ports
1x Ethernet jack
1x HDMI

At nan aforesaid time, Apple has added nan M4 and M4 Pro chips to nan Mac mini, bringing it successful statement pinch nan iMac and iPad Pro. Compared to nan M2 spot successful nan previous-generation Mac mini, nan M4 adds up 2 CPU cores for a full of 10. That includes six capacity cores and 4 ratio cores.

The M4 Pro, meanwhile, gets you up to a 14-core CPU, which comes pinch 10 Performance cores. In astatine slightest immoderate tasks, nan CPU is 1.8x faster than nan M1, 1.4x faster than nan M2. Meanwhile, nan M4 Pro is doubly arsenic accelerated arsenic nan M2 Pro — again, astatine slightest successful immoderate tasks.

Apple

Graphics besides get a boost pinch nan M4 chip. The guidelines exemplary of nan M4 still starts pinch 10 GPU cores, aforesaid arsenic nan M2. While nan bigger betterment to graphics happened successful nan M3 generation pinch Dynamic Caching, nan cores are faster, person wider representation bandwidth, and doubly nan ray tracing performance. You tin besides upgrade it now to a high-end configuration pinch 20 GPU cores successful nan M4 Pro, 1 much halfway than was disposable connected nan M2 Pro.

It should beryllium noted that nan Mac mini skipped nan erstwhile generation, truthful nan upgrade is going from nan M2 and M2 Pro to nan M4 and M4 Pro. Apple is trading nan M4 Mac mini arsenic being six times faster than nan top trading PC desktop successful nan aforesaid value range.

Obviously, Apple Intelligence is simply a large portion of this merchandise too, pinch nan boosted Neural Engine successful nan M4, which is doubly arsenic accelerated arsenic nan erstwhile generation. The halfway count hasn’t changed (still 16 cores), but Apple is continuing to build up examples of section AI processing to velocity up tasks successful Photos and Premiere Pro.

One of nan handiest hardware changes is nan larboard selection. For easy access, you now person 2 USB-C ports connected nan front, adjacent to a headphone jack — again, not dissimilar nan Mac Studio.

As was rumored, nan 2 USB-A ports are gone, replaced pinch 3 Thunderbolt ports successful nan back, which supports up to 3 6K displays. On nan M4 Pro model, those are Thunderbolt 5 ports pinch 120Gb/s information transfers, whereas nan M4 guidelines exemplary is connected Thunderbolt 4, which 40Gb/s information transfers. Fortunately, some springiness you an HDMI larboard and Ethernet jack connected backmost arsenic well. The powerfulness jack is still there, but nan powerfulness fastener itself seems to beryllium gone from nan photos shown.

Apple

Like pinch nan iMac, Apple has besides doubled nan guidelines representation from 8GB to 16GB aft it faced criticism that nan erstwhile magnitude wasn’t capable for multitasking and superior workloads — each without expanding nan starting value of $599. For what it’s worth, Apple was charging $200 to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB connected nan erstwhile Mac mini.

Apple unveiled nan caller Mac mini a time aft nan M4 iMac was announced successful nan midst of what was promised to beryllium an “exciting week of announcements.” The caller matching Mac Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad that were announced yesterday alongside nan iMac.

Apple is expected to travel up today’s announcement astatine immoderate constituent this week pinch bringing nan M4 to nan MacBook Pro, arsenic well.