A More Powerful Mac mini
As Apple moves to its own M-series chips, it’s naturally working to push out Intel as quickly as possible, but as last year’s M1 MacBook Pro and Mac mini lineup showed, it’s clearly going to be doing that in stages.
While the MacBook Air family moved to the M1 chip in one fell swoop, the MacBook Pro and Mac mini maintained “higher-end” Intel versions alongside the new M1 models. We put that in quotes, however, because the entry-level M1 versions ran circles around their more premium counterparts.
However, the Intel MacBook Pro and Mac mini did offer a few things that the M1 version couldn’t seem to deliver: more RAM, more storage, and more Thunderbolt ports. The M1 Mac mini capped out at a 2TB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and only two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, while the Intel model had four Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports, and could be configured with up to 64GB of RAM and an 8TB SSD (although Apple still only offers it with a 2TB).
With the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models obviously pushing out their Intel predecessors, it seems likely that Apple wants to do the same with the Intel Mac mini, so there’s a good chance we’ll see an M1X Mac mini arrive next week too.
There have also been suggestions that the M1X Mac mini might get a new design, but we’re less sure about this one, since it would be odd to see that set alongside the current M1 Mac mini. Apple currently distinguishes the M1 and Intel variants by colour, with last year’s M1 model seeing a return to the 2014 silver finish that Apple abandoned with its 2018 models. It seemed like an odd decision at the time, but it makes sense if Apple was saving the Space Grey version for an upcoming higher-end M1X Mac mini.
This would leave the 27-inch iMac and the Mac Pro as the only remaining Intel machines in the Mac lineup, and while Apple could also choose to give the larger iMac the M1X treatment, we’ve heard nothing about that just yet, so we suspect it’s not slated until next year. As for the Mac Pro? Well, we imagine Apple has even bigger things in mind for that one.