Quick Thoughts on Apple’s M4 Mac Mini

Apple continues its week of releasing M4 powered Macs, and do I have thoughts? Of course I do.

Yesterday was M4 iMac day, and gazing into my crystal ball of infallibility, I can confidently predict that tomorrow will be… M4 Apple Pippin day. Bound to happen, been ages since Apple said anything about the Pippin.

EXCLUSIVE LEAKED IMAGES!!! (Or perhaps not…)

But before we get there, Apple overnight announced new Mac mini models. It could have just gone down the “Here’s the iMac with no screen” route… but it didn’t with some interesting implications for value and usability.

Smaller but taller

You don’t call a product the Mac Mini and not make it a small little thing, but the reality here is that Apple’s not done a lot externally to change up the Mac Mini design for quite some time now.

The new models measure in at 12.7×12.7cm, compared to the older models that were 19.7x197cm, but part of the way Apple’s achieved that is by making the new Mac Minis a little taller, at 5cm compared to 3.58cm for the older models.

That’s a decent enough trade-off, and also I feel a bit of a recognition that the very small form factor PC market had gone a bit smaller than Apple was itself for some designs.

Oh, so these ones CAN have front-facing ports?

I mentioned in my thoughts about the iMac that one of the details that really bugged me about the iMac was that it was a design-first, practicality-second machine. The new Mac Mini appears to be the reverse of that trend, because no matter which model you pick, it’s got connectivity ports on the front AND back.

Although this thing is a square. Maybe that’s the left and right hand sides? Either way, I appreciate having easy to reach USB ports, even if the “front” ones are more basic USB-C connections.

The power button is where now?

This is undoubtedly going to be the most noticed “feature” of the new Mac Mini lineup, because Apple’s shifted to to the underside of the machine.

That one doesn’t feel like it’s a “we want clean design” kind of call to me, and while I don’t sit in the group of people that would always leave a computer on — it’s environmentally wasteful for the most part — so it would be slightly irksome to me, the smaller size of the Mac mini is likely to make this a less than critical issue. It’s still an unusual call, mind you.

Mac mini: A tale of two computers

The OG Mac Mini was, let’s be honest here, just Apple’s “low cost” Mac. It never uses the word “cheap”, I’m not sure that Siri understands what that word means, but that’s what it was.

The entry level Mac Mini is still just that, with a 10 Core CPU/GPU Apple M4 processor and 16GB of RAM as standard, priced from $999 AUD.

However, there is another, because Apple’s had this split brand thing going for Mac mini for a while now, with an option for a 12 Core CPU/16 Core GPU M4 Pro model with Thunderbolt 5 ports at the back — look for that in tomorrow’s Apple Pippin MacBook announcement too — starting at $2,199.

Want a full-fat all-the-trimmings Mac Mini M4 Pro with a 14-core CPU, 20-Core GPU, 64GB RAM, 8TB SSD and 10GB Ethernet? Yours for just $7,149. That’s going to be a slightly different machine to the $999 entry level model, though.

Who is the M4 iMac for?

Given Apple’s doing a slightly-slow-burn reveal of its new Mac models this week, I feel like it’s fair to compare — and I’m really not sure what the genuine buying argument for the M4 iMac announced yesterday is beyond “it looks pretty” given the price points of the Mac Mini.

$999 buys you an M4 Processor, 16GB RAM and 256GB storage in a Mac Mini with more ports and a more easily stored or moved form factor… or you can have the same thing with a screen, less accessible ports and some colour in play for $1,999. If you can’t buy a 24 inch monitor for under $1,000, you’re really not trying hard enough.

The new M4 Mac Mini models predictably go on pre-order from today, with availability from the 8th of November, same as the new iMacs, and predictably same as the new MacBook Pros Apple will announce tomorrow.

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