Apple Unveils New Mac Mini With Dramatically Different Design And More Connections

Apple announced an all-new Mac mini—that affordable, popular unit which comes without keyboard, mouse or screen, leading to its nickname of the Headless Mac—and it’s more mini than ever.

The new Apple Mac mini.

The new design measures 5 x 5 inches, which means it takes up less than half the space of the last-generation model. The difference in size is dramatic and unmissable. It’s not like the previous model was big, but this is really petite, not much bigger than an Apple TV unit.

More importantly, the new box is faster and better connected. On the rear of the mini, next to where you plug it into the mains, there’s an Ethernet port for up to 10 gigabit transfer speeds, an HDMI socket and three Thunderbolt ports.

Rear connections of the Mac mini.

But the other big design change is perhaps the most important: the front of the unit now has two Thunderbolt ports on the front. Hallelujah! This is something that customers have been asking for ever since ports appeared on the front of the much more expensive Mac Studio. The Mac mini continues to be clad in a silver aluminum finish, though Apple says that the new design uses an impact extrusion process which means it can be created with 85% less aluminum.

By the way, because it contains more than 50% recycled content and is manufactured with 100% renewable electricity, Apple is describing it as the first-ever carbon-neutral Mac.

The last Mac mini came with the M2 processor. This time, it’s leapfrogged the M3 to land with the latest M4 processor, which Apple compares in speed to the M1, saying it’s up to 1.8 times faster.

Apple Mac mini connected to multiple displays.

The launch of the new Mac mini sees the first brand-new processor since the M4 launched in May 2024. This is, you guessed it, the M4 Pro and it’s available for those who want faster performance than the M4 offers.

The M4 Pro has up to 14 cores, up to 20 cores in the GPU and the same 16-core neural engine found in the M4. It supports up to 64GB RAM. This adds up to a device that’s up to twice as fast as the last Mac mini with M2 Pro.

And on the Mac mini with M2 Pro all those Thunderbolt sockets are Thunderbolt 5 connections, offering more than the double transfer speed, Apple says.

The M4 Pro uses what Apple says is second-generation 3-nanometer technology, for which read improved performance and power efficiency. The new chip can support up to 64GB of memory and is built for Apple Intelligence (which just arrived on Monday, Oct. 28), the company says.

The new Mac mini is available for pre-order now and goes on sale on Friday, Nov. 8. Pricing starts at $599 for the M4 model with 16GB of memory.

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's Terms of Service. We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

So, how can you be a power user?

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's Terms of Service.