Revolutionizing AI: Apple Unveils First Mac Mini Redesign in 14 Years, Packed with Power

Apple (AAPL-US) on Tuesday (the 29th) launched a new palm-sized Mac mini that’s not only more powerful and specially designed for Apple Intelligence, it’s Apple’s first redesign since 2010 and its first carbon-neutral. Mac, achieving important environmental milestones.

It is understood that the major upgrade to the new Mac Mini is to equip it with Apple’s latest M4 and M4 Pro chips. The M4 Pro is built on second-generation 3nm technology and has a CPU with up to 14 cores, including 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.

The base model M4 is equipped with a CPU with up to 10 cores, including 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, and it has a GPU with up to 10 cores and a 16-core neural engine.

In terms of pricing, the basic Mac Mini starts at NT$19,900 and the M4 Pro version starts at NT$33,900 for pre-orders in Taiwan and launch times are yet to be announced.

Analysts believe that although the Mac Mini is not Apple’s best-selling computer in terms of sales volume, it plays an important role in Apple’s product lineup and is particularly preferred by iPhone and other Apple platform application developers. Many iPhone developers prefer to use the Mac Mini as a personal development server to coordinate uploads and code management.

Another change in the new Mac Mini design is that all of the model’s USB ports are USB-C, compatible with modern ports on Apple laptops. The Mac Mini has three Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports on the back and two more on the front, making it easy for users to plug and unplug accessories to the desktop.

Among them, the M4 Pro chip is the first Apple chip to support Thunderbolt 5. Compared to its predecessor, Thunderbolt 5’s data transfer speed has more than doubled, from 120 GB/s to 273 GB/s. This means that the M4 Pro comes with 5 Thunderbolt 5 ports, while the M4 model is still Thunderbolt 4.

Apple is positioning the new Mac Mini (and all new products it launches this year) as “built for Apple Intelligence,” the artificial intelligence (AI) system it unveiled this week.

In addition, the new Mac mini is Apple’s first carbon-neutral Mac, marking an important milestone for Apple towards the “2030 Apple”. Apple aims to achieve carbon neutrality across its product carbon footprint by the end of this century.

Mac Mini uses more than 50% recycled materials overall, including 100% recycled aluminum in the chassis, 100% recycled gold plating on all Apple-designed printed circuit boards, and 100% recycled rare earth materials in all magnets.

Although the Mac series business is not as important as the iPhone, it is still an important business unit for Apple. Apple said in its June financial report that Mac sales reached $7 billion, a roughly 2% year-over-year increase.