The Mac Mini
Apple’s exciting week of Mac announcements continues today with the introduction of the completely redesigned Mac mini. The new Mac mini is powered by the M4 and M4 Pro chips and features a significantly smaller design. It’s also the first Mac with support for Thunderbolt 5 connectivity.
I think this is a great update. I’m not sure it needed to be smaller, but I love that they were able to pack pretty much everything that the prior Mini had into this revision (minus some USB-A ports; keeping one of those would have been nice, but it’s probably time to start letting those ports go…we’ve had the form factor since 1998!) Love that 10GbE is still a BTO option.
I think that Thunderbolt 5 (only available on the Pro version) is a really underrated update. We’ve been stuck at basically the same version of Thunderbolt since 2016 (TB4 ran at the same speed as TB3, but it mandated some previously optional features and improved on security.) Assuming the 3rd party ecosystem follows, this unlocks a ton of fast storage, expansion options, and improved display technologies. That alone will be enough to have me looking at an upgrade from my launch-day M1 Max 14″ to whatever iOS announced tomorrow. I’m a big fan of the single-cable lifestyle, but I definitely feel the pinch sometimes when I’m driving my Studio Display, 10GbE, and a locally attached SSD through my single dock connection. Granted, that is not often, but usually when I have returned from a weekend of shooting a club volleyball tournament, and I have 200GB of photos to process and backup.