Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Greg ‘Joz’ Joswiak wasn’t kidding, when he’d warned the world late last week, that this was going to be a busy time with Mac refreshes. Second day of this week, and following the iMac refresh, it is time for a wholesome generational switch for the Mac mini. Secondly, the Mac Mini which is a full-fledged computing device, is now almost as small as an Apple TV 4K. Is there any Windows PC that comes close to this sort of a form factor, with a chip as powerful as the M4? Not even close. That’s even before we get to the specifics of Apple Intelligence, with its envisioned on-device compute as well as Private Cloud Compute for when something’s being sent for server side processing.
The dimensions read 5-inches in width, 5-inches in depth and just 1.96-inches in height, within which you can choose from an M4 or an M4 Pro chip. In comparison, a familiar puck design of the Apple TV 4K is almost 4-inches in width and depth, and 1.22-inch in height. It’s been a while since the Mac mini was last refreshed, with the M2 series chips. Could the new Mac mini become portable to the extent, you could carry this puck-like computing device around, and connect it to another display or TV? In theory, it is very much possible.
Also Read: Apple’s colourful iMac ushers in the M4 chip, and Apple Intelligence era
“The new Mac mini delivers gigantic performance in an unbelievably small design thanks to the power efficiency of Apple silicon and an innovative new thermal architecture. Combined with the performance of M4 and the new M4 Pro chip, enhanced connectivity on both the front and back, and the arrival of Apple Intelligence, Mac mini is more capable and versatile than ever, and there is nothing else like it,” says John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering.
Apple says the new Mac mini is a twentieth the size of the outgoing Mac mini design, and yet is as much as 6 times faster than the previous generations. There are three Thunderbolt ports, HDMI, and Gigabit Ethernet at the back, along with two USB-C ports as well as a 3.5MM headphone jack at the front. The specifics of the Thunderbolt ports however changes with the processor you choose—the M4 gets Thunderbolt 4 ports, while the M4 Pro users will find Thunderbolt 5 on their machines.
In case you are wondering about the thermals and the small matter of ventilation, the puck-like design sits on a raised platform-esque base, which will allow for air intake from the front half of the vents underneath, while the rear half of those vents will be for expelling the warm air from the innards. There are four base specs to build with, prices starting ₹59,900 in India. The M4 or M4 Pro chips now get 16GB RAM as the baseline spec, supports ray tracing as part of a broader gaming and graphics step forward, can connect with up to three displays at the same time, and becomes the first carbon neutral Mac.
Also Read:Deep dive into Apple Intelligence models, optional ChatGPT and privacy approach
Apple compares the generational differences between an M1 chip and an M4 chip in difference generations of the Mac mini, and the differences are as follows—spreadsheet calculations up to 1.7 times faster in Microsoft Excel, the M4 Mac mini transcribes on-device AI speech-to-text up to 2 times faster in MacWhisper, and merges panoramic images up to 4.9 times faster in Adobe Lightroom Classic.
“With up to 20 cores, the M4 Pro GPU is up to twice as powerful as the GPU in M4, and both chips bring hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the Mac mini for the first time. The Neural Engine in M4 Pro is also over 3x faster than in Mac mini with M1, so on-device Apple Intelligence models run at blazing speed,” the company further illustrates.
Compared closer to the M2 Pro in the previous generation Mac mini, the M4 Pro powered Mac mini will be able to apply up to 1.8 times more audio effect plugins in a Logic Pro project, render motion graphics to RAM up to 2 times faster in Motion, and complete 3D renders up to 2.9 times faster in Blender. The Mac mini with M4 can support up to two 6K displays and up to one 5K display. A Mac mini with the M4 Pro can support up to three 6K displays at 60Hz for a total of over 60 million pixels.