The Apple Nano TV will also have a rabbit ears option for the $649 version ($849).
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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming
- Thread starter GabrieleR
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And another $200 for a 24Gb version if needed. 12 to 24 would be a $300 uplift by that same metric.
Compares well with M3 MacBook Pro 14" - 3176 / 11778, the M4 has higher clock speed.
More interestingly:
iPhone 16 Pro Max - 3562/8814
General Mac Mini M1 - 2363/8446
CPUs have come a long way.
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There is a Russian YouTube video claiming they are running the 14" M4 MacBook Pro which is the source of this specific Geekbench entry.
iPhone 16 Pro Max - 3642/9463
BTW, for surfing, which is heavily dependent upon single-core, my M4 iPad Pro feels snappier than my M1 Mac mini, but both are fast.
This time next month there may be new, expensive Mac Minis waiting to be bought.
We may not get a new mini until we get to page 800.
It's been a long time coming. I had originally predicted a new form factor with A14X/M1 (2020), and then a new form factor when it got the M2 Pro (2023). I was wrong both times. (Well I was right that it got the Pro, but wrong about the new chassis.) Finally, we are likely to get that new chassis (2024). Better late than never.
There will be lots to consider….and I thought I’d share my thought process:
My requirement is for a desktop Mac that is “roughly equivalent” to a binned M1 Max (24-core GPU), i.e.
10-core CPU or better
16-core GPU of better (assuming that M4 GPU cores are at least 40-50% faster than M1 cores)
>= 24GB RAM (preferably 32GB)
>= 512GB SSD (preferably 1TB)
If the M4 Pro Mini starts with 24GB/512GB for say US$1399 then this would probably meet my requirements without requiring any BTO upgrades, which would quickly erode the value proposition. It might be worth paying another $200 to increase to 36GB RAM (I’m assuming the same 3 module RAM layout as per the M3 Pro), and even another $200 to get to 1TB SSD. This would total $1799 - which is as close to the likely Mac Studio price as makes sense to me. A current M2 Max Studio with 1TB is currently $2199, which I think is where the M4 Max Studio will start in 2025.
However, if Apple are stingy, the M4 Pro could stay with the same 18GB/512GB of the M3 Pro MBP, which would make this a less attractive proposition, even at the same M2 Pro Mini price of $1299. The upgrade to 36GB/1TB would presumably add another $600, bringing it up to $1899.
At $1800-1900 I would start to consider whether buying a used M2 Max Studio, or even an older M1 Max Studio makes more sense. The problem is that M2 Studio prices are still high, and there aren’t many of them on the used market. We need to wait for the M4 Studio to launch before we will see a reduction in M2 prices. Maybe there will be an influx of used M2 Pro Minis after next month…but my guess is that most people will not be upgrading to an M4 Pro Mini if they already have an M2 Pro….
I guess we’ll wait and see! I am prepared for disappointment….
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Micro Center has M2 base Studios for $1,799.00. Seems like a pretty sweet deal.
Not sure I'd agree. Normal price for M2 Max base Mac Studio is $1999, so 10% off for a 2.6 year-old product doesn't seem that exciting, especially when the update jumping 2 generations is due next summer. If you need one now, sure buy it, but if you don't, it may make sense to just wait. That reminds me. Do you think the Mac Studio will get a new chassis in 2025? Even if it doesn't, I wonder if the memory options (vs memory pricing) will get revamped, given that memory options (and pricing) for the Mac mini will likely be revamped.
FWIW, Apple has the M1 Max base Mac Studio for $1529 refurb. But that doesn't seem so exciting either when you realize that at least for CPU performance, M4 is actually significantly faster than M1 Max. In fact, M4 is as fast as M2 Max for CPU multi-core.
Geekbench 6.3: 3864 / 15288
I think so. Trust me, the new Mac mini is coming fairly soon, but we have to put in the work.
Estimated sometime between 23-28 October, with some models available to order from 1 Nov. we’ll see!
Gurman states that the likely on-sale date for the new Macs is Friday, November 1, which would mean an event would occur some time before that.
2023 - Monday, October 30 - Announced October 24.
2022 - Nothing
2021 - Monday, October 18
2020 - Tuesday, November 10
2019 - Nothing
2018 - Tuesday, October 30
2017 - Nothing
2016 - Thursday, October 27
If pre-orders start the prior Friday, then the pre-order date could be Friday, October 25.
This could suggest an event date of perhaps as early as Tuesday, October 22, but it could be later, as @Fomalhaut suggests.
Anyhow, look for an event announcement in the next 7-10 days.
They'd want everything done and dusted before the election so the timeline fits.
Random question for you Mac mini fans. Do you think the current M2 Pro mini is reasonable value?
I was thinking about it the other day. For £1,400 you get 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD which is pretty shocking imo. I worry if they decide to increase it to say £1500 for the M4 Pro version.
I was thinking about it the other day. For £1,400 you get 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD which is pretty shocking imo. I worry if they decide to increase it to say £1500 for the M4 Pro version.
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Doubt that like for like price increases are on the cards, M4 Pro may get 18Gb native RAM which they won't call an upgrade. If M4 gets 16Gb as standard though there may have to be a commensurate spec bump for the M4 Pro mini as the gap will shrink - 16Gb RAM and 512 SSD as base spec for a Pro would be likely fine if the M4 starts at 16/256 with a 512 'upgraded' SKU. The price difference between M4 Pro and M4 will then become obvious on model comparison on the Apple website - would they want that to happen?
The M4 Pro to come with 18/512 would then be a logical step up but comparisons could then be drawn if an off the shelf 16/512 M4 could be purchased at an Apple Store.
An 18/1Tb SKU would likely add $400 to the Pro price which is surely too much and might need an M4 Max Studio SKU to come with 1Tb SSD too (raising that price as well).
Pound for pound though, if I were in the market for a desktop I'd have jumped on board at Costco £1299 for base M1 Max Mac Studio (instead of a similarly priced M2 pro mini) a few months ago. That offer was repeated several times over the last few months before stocks ran out.
I would say that there's a decent chance that Costco might repeat that for the M2 Max Studio up against the new M4 Pro Mac mini. The M3 Max does at least have hardware AV1 decoding/encoding though and you can expect the M4 Pro to have some ray tracing in the GPU so a direct comparison will likely be harder to square off, especially if certain use cases support the hardware accelerated features of the M4 class CPUs.
On topic reply though, the M2 Pro CPU is quite the increase over an upgraded M2 Mini (additional £350 extra after adding 16Gb RAM to the middle SKU M2) but on the basis that adding BTO/CTO to Macs is increasingly bad value, I'd tend towards trying to get the base SKU that suits you with fewest upgrades - hence the remaindered M1 Max Mac Studio I mentioned previously. It has double the number of encoders, twice the RAM, and 6 Thunderbolt ports instead of 2 or 4. Yes it's an older CPU so you lose out on single core performance and likely some GPU and a year of software support but I would be looking at performance per £ too.
Street price of the standard SKU M2 pro mini hovered around £1250 if I recall, this is the benefit of having a standard SKU which you can find at a third party retailer rather than being stuck with having to purchase upgrades from Apple for a spec you didn't want in its original state.
At the time, therefore, the choice for me would have been between M1 Max Mac Studio 32/512 at a Costco street sale price of £1299, vs a street price of £1250 from various other retailers for the M2 Pro Mac mini 16/512.
If M4 Pro Mac Nano 18/512 comes to £1399 list from Apple I'd be looking later on down the line for discounts from third party retailers - remember that the saving can be put towards AppleCare+. And I'd also be preparing a performance/use case comparison in case if Costco sell an M2 Max Mac Studio 32/512 for £1299 sometime next year.
The things I would be comparing would be:
Single Core/Multicore Bench
Video decoding/encoding performance (with AV1 hardware on M4 vs none on M2)
Graphics performance, and guide on whether hardware ray tracing may become useful in future.
And then performance per £ depending on deals from third parties.
Most importantly, is coil whine still an issue on the Mac Studio?
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Thanks for such a detailed response.
You raise a good point - how much ram does the M4 Pro mini have if the M4 base starts at 16gb (which i'm still very sceptical about)? Maybe it is all on the SSD, port selection, etc, to differentiate.
Good to know i'm now the only person who regularly browses the Macs for sale on Costco UK. I nearly bought the M1 Studio for £1599 from there, but then the M2 mini came out and I manage to use my last year of student discount (RIP) and a £80 cashback from AMEX. Think I paid £850ish in the end for a 16GB/512GB M2 mini which is plenty for my daily needs. 7800X3D & 4090 PC takes care of the rest!
I will wait for the next mini in 2026/7 before I upgrade I think. I'd like more than 16GB ram, but not enough to fork out loads of money. Got to save for that 5090 instead :X
After the M4 and M4Pro mini get released there will probably opportunities to pick up the M2Pro mini at even a lower prices. And if you are willing, there will also probably be a deluge in the number of used M2Pro mini available at even lower prices.
My hope is that the M4 Pro will start at 24GB/512GB to differentiate it from the base M4 if these are confirmed to start at 16GB. The M4 Pro will probably keep the same RAM configuration as the M3 Pro, with 3 RAM modules on the SoC, so the total RAM needs to be divisible by 3. Keeping it as 18GB (3 x 6GB) would be underwhelming, given the M2 Pro Mini had twice the RAM as the base M2 Mini (16GB vs 8GB). On the M4 Pro there will an upgrade to 36GB (3 x 12GB), but I doubt it will start there.
Makes perfect sense. It's basically how they introduced the redesigned M2 MBA to the lineup, while still keeping the base M1 MBA at $999.
Knowing Apple, and current UK pricing (£849 for the 8GB/512GB), that seems pretty punchy. Granted, they would knock at least £50 off anyway due to exchange rate improvements. The M2 version of that spec is £1,050. I would be amazed if they chopped £250 off that.
Exchange rates are hedged pretty far in advance, they won't take a spot rate on a specific day. They'd be looking for future trends. In the last 12 months though, the US/UK rate has improved in favour of the £ by a significant percentage. This might be enough to absorb some of the likely price increases due to additional RAM but will Apple pass the cost one or be more concerned about rounding up?
Interest rates in the US and Europe are forecast to come down in the next couple of years, it's just a question of how low the UK interest rate will come compared to the US one. UK has to deal with relatively high inflation so interest rates, while they might come down, might not fall as quickly as other major economies over the next two years.
Apple will generally round up/down UK prices when exchange rates are forecast to change significantly - witness the great 20% unilateral increase in (I believe) 2020 when intel iMacs (which were not updated) went up overnight during a product launch for other Macs) - down to Brexit. There was a more recent price re-alignment for the iPhone 14 when the price of those went up compared to the 13 when that was new, only recently coming down at the next refresh when the 15 came out.
I think amount of RAM and storage will be the main differentiators to Joe Public, number of Thunderbolt ports won't be important - especially if M4 comes with an extra one (up to 3 from 2).
It does seem from the rumours as through the both SKUs might be getting a net loss in ports if the USB-A ports have gone but I'd hope that the total bandwidth available goes up - example in point is the USB-C ports on the iMac 24 4 port model are 10Gb/s - twice the speed of the old USB-A ports on the Mini.
Perhaps total number of USB-C ports might be important if people have lots of peripherals they might want to add but Apple at consider this a use case scenario.
How would Apple update the iMac 24? There's only 2 models of those (M1 and M3). Unless Apple are changing the case cut outs then the lower SKU will be stuck with 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports while the upper SKU gets 4 USB-C ports (2 of which are Thunderbolt 4).
Would the upper SKU have 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports and 1 USB-C? Would they go with straight up 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports on the 4 port model?
This is what makes the 3/5 port rumour on the M4 Mac mini puzzling. My assumption till now has been for 3 Thunderbolt ports on the back for M4 with 2 USB-C 10Gb/s ports on the front. 5 Thunderbolt ports for the M4 Pro (not rumoured) would then be a hope for the M4 Pro assuming M4 Max (in the Studio) will have 6 Thunderbolt ports and 2 USB-A ports.
It's mainly because I can't see Apple leaving 1 solitary USB-C port next to a Thunderbolt port - seems a bit untidy. 2 USB-C next to 2 Thunderbolt like on the iMac is fine but 1 next to 1 on the front of a new mini/nano? Weird.
16Gb vs 18Gb looks like a typo for the uninformed, but a 24Gb start price for M4 Pro will almost certainly mean a price increase of $100/£100 - if people were wavering over whether or not 16Gb was enough then 24Gb would certainly be fine for them. At least it will raise the average selling price of the Mini (combined with a potential 16Gb starting SKU for the M4).
If Apple only offered a 36Gb upgrade SKU for the M4 Pro (from 24Gb) it might cost another $200/£200 - but how many people would take them up? Would those people be looking for a 48Gb upgrade (at a cost of $400/£400)?