Mac Mini Expected to Receive First Major Redesign Since 2010 Very Soon

[Unregistered 4U]

The smaller [optionally USB-C-powered] design will bring macOS to iPad and Apple Vision Pro by way of Virtual Mac Display and new headless boot support option.

I was thinking of one powered by USB-C, but that also comes with an internal battery. Would that be the post powerful processing at that size?

 

[AppleInLVX]

Phones get bigger, computers get smaller. Does seem a little odd given so many folks prefer the opposite. That said, if this is awesome, I’ll upgrade from my M1.

 

[nick9191]

I doubt that..

M4 in the iPad Pro is benching a couple of points below an M2 Max. The M4 Pro Mac Mini will definitely trade blows with an M1 Ultra.

 

[roland.g]

How is smaller going to provide enough room for adequate number of ports.

 

[CWallace]

How is smaller going to provide enough room for adequate number of ports.

Going USB-C only will help, since you can stack four of those in the same general space of two USB-A ports on the back and then two more in the front.

 

[kemal]

They may have to add weight to it so it doesn't tip up when a bunch of cables are plugged into the back.

 

[Nermal]

We could have a Beowulf Cluster of Minis

Now that's a term I haven't heard for a long time!

 

[CarAnalogy]

Think Apple TV box but 25% larger with five USB Type C ports that support either USB 3.2 2X2 or Thunderbolt 4.0. It may still have the RJ-45 networking port on the box, though.

It ****ing better. It's a desktop computer.

 

[cocoua]

The mac mini m4 pro probably would feature faster CPU and faster GPU than the more expensive MacStudio Max M2 and quite close in CPU to the Mac Pro Ultra M2 for 1/2- 1/4 the price for 6 months until next Mc Studio/mac pro come out in 2025

That would be very awkward!!!

In past, Intel Mac Pro suffer something similar at some point but only with the top configuration of the fastest iMac 27”, but GPU were always behind in the iMac, and price wouldnt be so different!

Mac Pro M2 has the PCI advantage, but MS only would have the extra ports advantage while the price difference would be huge

 

[JeffPerrin]

You might even need some kind of docking add-on to keep it heavy enough to stay on a desk when it has cables plugged into it.

That's a good point!

I'm wondering what kind of performance you can expect when either: A. There is no fan for a small enclosure (throttling due to heat) OR B. There is a tiny fan for a small desktop enclosure (small fan = noise)

 

[ttyRazor]

My question here is why does the Mac Mini have to be smaller? It's a desktop machine. I'd rather it stay the current size and maintain better thermal performance and also not have all the cables plugged into it crowded together in a huge mess that ends up dragging the machine around.

The current case was sized to fit an optical drive, a hard disk and replaceable RAM. A lot of that volume doesn’t make sense any more, even after accounting for cooling.

 

[August West]

My question here is why does the Mac Mini have to be smaller? It's a desktop machine. I'd rather it stay the current size and maintain better thermal performance and also not have all the cables plugged into it crowded together in a huge mess that ends up dragging the machine around.

I couldn't agree more. I've had a mini on my desktop since 2009. My 2012 was there until last year when I replaced it with an M2 mini and am glad to have the larger footprint. Additionally, I have couple of external SSDs that rest quite nicely on top of it.

 

[ttyRazor]

That's a good point!

I'm wondering what kind of performance you can expect when either: A. There is no fan for a small enclosure (throttling due to heat) OR B. There is a tiny fan for a small desktop enclosure (small fan = noise)

At worst it’d be as bad as a MacBook Pro with the same specs. None of the M series chips have shown much performance difference per core aside from the fanless Air, so I wouldn’t expect anything dramatically different here either.

 

[Justin L Franks]

If the M4 Pro supports more than 32 GB of RAM, I might go for the Mini. I just really wish they would upgrade the Mac Studio which is still on M2, instead of two product lines that are already on M3.

 

[watakoola]

I would want to attach it to the back of a monitor. In that scenario the current form is a bit bulky. Don’t get me wrong I loved my minis, but I never liked having an otherwise useless brick on my desk.

Useless brick? Uhhhhhh...

 

[drrich2]

I would want to attach it to the back of a monitor.

There are 3rd party add-on brackets for that purpose and you can find them on Amazon. Many people only look at their monitor's front face the large majority of the time. A monkey could be hanging on the back and go undetected for days.

Do you like your desk looking like this?

No, but it'd be an acceptable price to pay for easy 3rd party expansion options like towers used to offer. The option to pop in a fast 4-terabyte SSD at 3rd party prices rather than Apple's and make in the startup disk without hassles would be very nice.

Perhaps they're wait for Amazon Prime Days to pass before the announcement of the event, to avoid anybody stealing their buzz?

 

[s1m]

Might be time to replace my 2020 27in iMac given no large format iMac in the foreseeable future and this would be quite the spec boost (except for RAM - somehow I have 40GB of RAM in the iMac) - would need a decent 30in monitor as well...

 

[trip1ex]

How is smaller going to provide enough room for adequate number of ports.

A is for adapters

 

[sunny5]

Do you like your desk looking like this?

Mac mini doesn't even have a monitor and wasn't that big. But if it has upgradability and repairability, then I would.

 

[joshuaiz]

Amazed you got this far with it! My 2014 5K fusion drive died like 3 years ago.

It's like a couple hours' work to cut it open, yank out the HDD and replace it with an SSD, if you're handy and take it step by step. I think I spent maybe $250 on a repair kit from iFixit and a 1TB SSD. All that said, even with the SSD inside it was still massively slower than the M1 iMac I replaced it with...

I'm pretty handy and a developer so I tried replacing the drive on another 2014 iMac with the OWC kit and bricked the machine - the display would just not power on. I even brought it to a Mac repair place where the guy has 30+ years of experience and he could not fix it after trying for 18 months. Sooooooo will not be trying that again.

With this machine, I did not have a current backup (I know, I know) so it is at a data recovery place getting evaluated. I'm going to have them replace the drive while they have it opened up. Was a great machine and will be a good first computer for my now 5-year-old son.

 

[svish]

Eagerly waiting to see the new Mac mini. Expecting it to be announced this month. Also waiting to see how much RAM base models will have.

 

[Scoob Redux]

Phones get bigger, computers get smaller. Does seem a little odd given so many folks prefer the opposite. That said, if this is awesome, I’ll upgrade from my M1.

Exactly. This is the continuation of Jony Ive's disastrous design philosophy. Tim Cook just has no vision and cannot tell the difference between good ideas and bad ideas.

 

[_Mitchan1999]

Do you like your desk looking like this?

What model is that? I know it is from the PowerPC era.

 

[Anglagard]

Sounds like this mini will be more powerful and smaller than my M1 Mac Studio!

Most likely.

 

[sunapple]

Useless brick? Uhhhhhh...

At least the original and the 2010 versions had a disk drive that needed to be accessed, newer versions don’t need to be in sight.