Apple Wants to Make the Mac Mini Even Smaller. Why?

The happening astir mini PCs is… good it’s spelled retired successful the name. They’re comparatively small, tiny capable to laic comfortably connected your desktop and enactment retired of the way. The $600 M2 Mac Mini is already a good specimen of show astatine scale, but a caller study details however Apple is readying to wholly revitalize its small-scale machine on with its full Mac lineup with AI-centric M4 chips archetypal seen successful the latest iPad Pro. The Mac Mini, however, is going to get adjacent much miniaturized, adjacent smaller than the Apple TV. 

The study comes from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman who cites respective anonymous sources that assertion the Mac Mini, a revamped iMac, and MacBook Pro are each getting sequels with the M4 chip. Those are slated for merchandise this year. In outpouring of adjacent year, we’ll get MacBook Airs with M4. Just a fewer months aft that, Apple volition reportedly driblet an M4 Mac Pro and Mac Studio into our waiting hands. 

The footprint of the Mac Mini efficaciously hasn’t changed since the days of Steve Jobs. It’s a 7.75-inch quadrate weighing successful astatine astir 2.6 pounds (slightly much with M2 Pro). It measures 1.41 inches high, oregon astir 3 stacks of Post-it notes laid connected apical of each other. The caller Mac Mini would beryllium “approaching the size of an Apple TV” box, according to Bloomberg. That means a magnitude and width of astir 3.66 inches. 

The Mac Mini mightiness beryllium somewhat taller than before, but if we’re griping astir millimeters we’re astir apt obsessed astir each the incorrect things. The much important happening is ports, and the caller small-form machine could person 3 USB-C ports, a powerfulness connector, and an HDMI port.

Apple is jumping with some feet connected the AI hype bid with the merchandise of M4. The remainder of the M-series chips contained neural processing capabilities, with the M3 hitting up to 19 TOPS (trillions of operations per second, a communal mode to measurement NPU speeds). The M4 tin bash 38 TOPS, which is inactive somewhat little than the latest ARM-based Qualcomm chips powering Copilot+ PCs. 

The M4 is simply a much almighty spot than the M3, though by a precise slim margin. It comes with 1 much halfway and thread on with higher GPU speeds, but successful Gizmodo’s ain tests, we didn’t find excessively wide a gulf betwixt the M4 connected iPad and M3 connected MacBook Air. That’s a precise escaped examination considering the quality successful operating systems, truthful we’ll person to hold for an M4 with MacOS to connection a existent comparison. Like the M3, Apple’s apt going to enactment retired a M4 Pro mentation of the Mac Mini that won’t get until October, according to Gurman’s sources. There’s nary further connection connected an M4 Max, which would apt powerfulness the ultra-high-end MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, and Mac Studios.