As part of the company’s week of Mac-focused announcements, Apple has just introduced a smaller, yet even more powerful Mac mini, The Verge reported. It’s now equipped with Apple’s latest M4 silicon, supports ray tracing for the first time, and ships with 16GB of RAM by default — seemingly the new normal in the Apple Intelligence era.
The machine still starts at $599 with the regular M4 chip, while the more powerful M4 Pro model has the starting price of $1,399. Like the refreshed iMac announced yesterday, the Mac Mini is available to preorder immediately and will be in stores on November 8th.
The first thing you’ll notice is the new design. As rumored, the Mini has been shrunken down considerably — and it was already a relatively small desktop machine to begin with. Now it’s downright tiny, measuring five inches in both length and width. If your wondering how Apple manages to keep things running cool, the company says its through the M4’s efficiency and “an innovative thermal architecture, which guides air to different levels of the system, while all venting is done through the foot.
Apple posted the following on its Newsroom:
Apple today unveiled the all-new Mac mini powered by the M4 and new M4 Pro chips, and redesigned around Apple silicon to pack an incredible amount of performance into an even smaller form of just 5 by 5 inches. With M4, Mac mini delivers up to 1.8x faster CPU performance and 2.2x faster GPU performance over the M1 model.
With M4 Pro, it takes the advanced technologies in M4 and scales them up to tackle even more demanding workloads. For more convenient connectivity, it features front and back ports, and for the first time, includes Thunderbolt 5 for faster data transfer speeds on the M4 Pro model.
The new Mac mini is also built for Apple intelligence, the personal intelligence system that transforms how users work, communicate, and express themselves while protecting their privacy. And marking an important environmental milestone, Mac mini is Apple’s first carbon neutral Mac with an over 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions across its materials, manufacturing, transportation, and customer use.
Starting at just $599 with 16GB of memory, the new Mac mini is available to pre-order today, with availability beginning November 8.
Engadget reported: You can likely trace the small computer trend back to the original Mac mini, which debuted in 2005 with a simple pitch: What if desktop, but tiny? Now Apple files to take that concept even further with its latest Mac mini, a five-inch by five-inch box measuring a mere two inches tall, that can tackle some serious workloads.
And while we expected it to include Apple’s M4 chip, it can also be configured with an even more powerful M4 Pro model, which is also being announced today. Take that hardware together with a standard 16GB of RAM (just like the new M4 iMac), and you’ve got a pretty compelling Mac mini starting at $599 ($499 for education customers.)
In my opinion, I think the new Mac mini could be a really good design for those who are already using Mac computers. It certainly won’t take up much space on people’s desktops.