Design
Apple hasn’t changed the Mac mini’s design in many years, and there are no rumors suggesting a design update for 2024. When the Mac mini was updated in 2023, Apple made it slightly thicker and lighter, and that same design is likely to be used for the 2024 model.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo stated in January that the “next new Mac mini” will have the same “form factor design.” In 2021, there were rumors that Apple was working on a Mac mini with a plexiglass top and other design changes, but that device never materialized.
The Mac mini remains Apple’s smallest and most portable desktop machine, with a size of 7.75 inches square and 1.41 inches thick. The Mac mini is designed to connect to an external display, keyboard, and mouse, and it doesn’t come with these accessories.
M4 Chip
The Mac mini will be equipped with Apple’s M4 and M4 Pro chips, completely skipping the M3 line and moving directly from the M2 to the M4.
Apple introduced the M4 chip in the iPad Pro, and this chip is built with second-generation 3-nanometer technology. Compared to the M2 chip, the M4 offers 50 percent faster CPU performance and up to 4 times faster rendering performance.
The M4 chip features a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU. There is a variant of the M4 with a 9-core CPU, but it is unlikely that Apple will use this in the Mac mini, reserving it instead for the iPad Pro and a future MacBook Air.
Additionally, the M4 chip includes a more advanced 16-core Neural Engine, and its GPU supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a feature not available with the M2. According to Apple, the Neural Engine in the M4 chip is a “powerhouse for AI.”
Details about the M4 Pro are not yet known, as this chip is expected to be released later this year.
Release Date
According to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, the Mac mini will be updated alongside the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models in late 2024.
The Mac mini was last updated in January 2023, so it will be nearly two years old when it is refreshed. Apple typically updates Macs in October or November, so we might see the M4 Mac mini sometime during that period.
By: Nestor Castillo, ForAllTechNews Director