First, we had in-person clean-outs.
Then we got our plus-long infomercials. But now, a whole week devoted to Mac announcements, including a complete redesign of the Mac
Mini. It is very cute, but that isn't even the most exciting thing we get.
So let's look at what they announced, because while the Mac Mini might be smaller, the rest
of the lineup got a whole lot more capable for the money.
Almost two years ago, we did a whole video about the value of the Mac Mini, saying that
it's very hard to get a computer that capable for the money.
This new Mac Mini is arguably an even better deal. On the Tuesday of Apple's exciting week of announcements, Apple shrunk the Mac Mini down
to a 5-inch square 1.5-pound package, seemingly the size of a typical Thunderbolt dock if
the power supply is built in, which it is on the Mac.
It is proportionally taller than the tired previous design, part of that height is from
the distance off the table, which allows for better airflow.
It's definitely an impressively densely-packed machine built for Apple Silicon from the
ground up, in contrast to the previous model which reused a chassis that was designed for
Intel chips and optical drives. It appears that Apple has finally pulled the plug on USB-A, as the Mac Mini no longer
has them. Now there's Ethernet, HDMI, 3 Thunderbolt at the back, and at the front, a handy pair
of USB ports beside a headphone jack. I'll be honest, part of me worries that the Mac Mini is almost too small.
Apple showed examples of how people could use all that IO on their desk, and because
the computer is so small, it could get buried or pulled around by the weight of the peripherals.
As someone who loves a bit of design, it's perhaps a bit sad that the Mac Mini isn't losing its presence on the desk.
That's why I love the iMac so much. Speaking of, on Monday it got new colors.
They are a little more saturated this time around, closer to the candy palette of Skittles.
I like the previous colors, and I like these ones too. Apple has also pulled the plug on Lightning.
Yes, it's peripherals now charged with USB-C, and yes, you still have to flip over the Magic
Mouse to do so. It also gets a new 12-megapixel center-stage camera, as well as a nano-texture display
option, both of which are included in the new MacBook Pro. There's not much more on the MacBook Pro side, other than the fact that the base M model
gets an extra Thunderbolt port and the Space Black option.
Just joking, the most exciting thing in Anx applies to all Macs.
I am pleased to finally report that every Mac sold from Apple from now on comes with
a standard 16GB of memory.
You can cheer. Yes, even the $1,000 M2 MacBook Air.
This is a big deal, because as I've noted for the past few years, 8GB severely limits
what you can do with your Mac. You won't even run some benchmarks, and it would be weird if you could buy a Mac that
has less RAM than an iPhone 16. I thought the higher-end M3 chips last year to be a bit lame, with the M3 Pro's performance
cores and memory bandwidth being compromised.
This M4 generation looks a lot more like the original M1.
Apple's humorous graphs showed numbers between 2 and 3 times faster.
While the typical M4 gets two more efficiency cores over the previous generation, and M4
Mac's core counts are unchanged, the M4 Pro gets 8 performance cores in the base skew
instead of 5 last year. I'm very excited to see the M4 Pro get the CPU power it observes, making it the value
king in my opinion. I'm also relieved to see that the base M4 chips can now support 3 displays.
This means that even the entry-level MacBook Pro can support 2 displays plus its own, finally.
So where can you get all these chips? The M4 is available on the iMac, Mac Mini, and 14-inch MacBook Pro.
The M4 Pro is available on the Mac Mini and MacBook Pros in both sizes, while the latter
only gets the M4 Macs until the Mac Studio gets updated if it gets updated.
It better get updated. Oh yeah, I guess that's also the last device to have USB-A, isn't it?
Now prices are largely the same in the lineup, so at $600, the Mac Mini looks to be incredible
value. Even with the standard memory increase, RAM upgrade prices are still the same at $200
per 8GB. Which tiers remain the same, too, with only 256GB standard on the iMac and M4 Mac minis.
I am concerned that this could become another unupdatable 8GB iPhone 5C situation, but the
benefit with desktops is that they don't move, so external storage is an option.
Every day in these announcements, Apple devoted a section to Apple Intelligence, the first
phase of which was pushed out this week. I do intend to cover Apple Intelligence by the way, but this rollout is quite gradual
and so I'd like some time to see how some of these more useful features integrate in
my life as they roll out. Historically, Apple was very good at producing narratives to demonstrate their products in
a holistic and integrated way. But with Apple Intelligence, it feels like a list of features being rattled off, and
after every announcement I'm left asking, what can I do?
This week was an interesting new way to do these announcements.
Each day's video was about 10 minutes long, so lumping it all together in one announcement
would be too short. But there might be a greater advertising strategy to this too.
This week, while browsing my own personal YouTube, the iMac announcement was served
to me as a pre-roll ad, which of course I skipped.
Already sawed. Oh yeah, and that reminds me.
What do you think about that effortless power ad at the end of the MacBook announcement?
I'm not sure. That was a little cheesy.
Thanks for taking forever to give this Mac Address enough memory.
Yeah, comment below what you think of that ad. And if you want to see another video we've done, since we're talking about desktops,
why not watch the one where I review a Mac Studio on the beach?