News Apple's redesigned M4, M4 Pro-powered Mac Mini is just 5 x 5 inches, packs up to 14 cores, puts the power button on the bottom

So they made their own NUC, nice. Honestly it offers about what everyone else does for 600 on a new tiny PC. Thats the first time in a very very long time that i think ive been able to honestly say that about an Apple product.
Errrr, Apple have “made their own NUC” for like about the last 15 years - this is an iteration of an established NUC platform.….

This is just smaller and faster than anything else out there. By quite a long way actually….
 
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Maybe there's a power button on the keyboard.
The guy talking in the ad was so annoying that I couldn't tell.

Edit: Nevermind. It doesn't come with a keyboard.
You really don't need to use the power button very frequently on Macs. They are useful to reset a hung system, but otherwise, they turn themselves on pretty automatically in response to pretty basic interactions, and you turn them off by shutting them down from the Apple menu. Maybe they were trying to reduce the number of cases where people reset the things inappropriately.
 
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lets go with footprint... but we can only guess

Well, 5 inches square and 2 high in a housing that can host a 14 core processor, 10 of which have more perf than the top line Intel chip, provide T5, and 275GB/s of memory bandwidth and NOT have the thing spontaneiously combust, is well, nice….

lol, very true. But I was joking about the unfinished sentence. As @Rakanyshu highlights, the sentence as currently written is halfway to teenage innuendo.
 
So for giggles (since everyone is looking at the base price), I decided to spec out what would be a reasonable system for me:


Not great, not terrible. Eh, probably should have added a 2TB SSD (+$400!!!).
 
So for giggles (since everyone is looking at the base price), I decided to spec out what would be a reasonable system for me:


For fun I did a similar config for a Dell XPS Desktop is $1649 without a dGPU and 10 Gbps ethernet. Add $150 for a 10 Gbps ethernet adapter (cheapest I could find) brings it to $1799. I haven't seen any performance numbers on the M4 Pro's GPU, but the M3 Pro was roughly on par with a laptop 3050, so maybe another $200 for a 3050 in the XPS to get close to 1:1 ($1999 total).

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/rev...rationId=27ceed05-246f-4741-bd48-472cdbd4a226

https://nanoreview.net/en/gpu-compare/geforce-rtx-3050-mobile-vs-apple-m3-pro-gpu-18-core

The Geekbench score for the 12 core M4 Pro puts it close to a i7/i9 raptor lake, not that Geekbench is the end all be all, but I wanted to use it as a way to compare performance for the pricing.

https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu/apple-m4-pro-12-cores

All in all I would say the Mini isn't too bad on the Apple Tax (at least compared to the MBPs).

Not great, not terrible. Eh, probably should have added a 2TB SSD (+$400!!!).

That is where Apple gets users for sure. $800 for 2TB is highway robbery ($400 more to upgrade from 1 TB)!
 
For fun I did a similar config for a Dell XPS Desktop is $1649 without a dGPU and 10 Gbps ethernet. Add $150 for a 10 Gbps ethernet adapter (cheapest I could find) brings it to $1799. I haven't seen any performance numbers on the M4 Pro's GPU, but the M3 Pro was roughly on par with a laptop 3050, so maybe another $200 for a 3050 in the XPS to get close to 1:1 ($1999 total).

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/reviewselections/xps-8960-desktop/usexpsthcto8960rpl17?selectionState=eyJPQyI6InVzZXhwc3RoY3RvODk2MHJwbDE3IiwiTW9kcyI6W3siSWQiOjMsIk9wdHMiOlt7IklkIjoiR0pZMjFCRyJ9XX0seyJJZCI6OCwiT3B0cyI6W3siSWQiOiJHMjE1T0YzIn1dfSx7IklkIjoxMSwiT3B0cyI6W3siSWQiOiJHMkY0RVZEIn1dfSx7IklkIjoxNDYsIk9wdHMiOlt7IklkIjoiR0lEODUwSiJ9XX0seyJJZCI6ODIzLCJPcHRzIjpbeyJJZCI6IkdIQTI5SUsifV19XX0=&configurationId=27ceed05-246f-4741-bd48-472cdbd4a226

https://nanoreview.net/en/gpu-compare/geforce-rtx-3050-mobile-vs-apple-m3-pro-gpu-18-core

The Geekbench score for the 12 core M4 Pro puts it close to a i7/i9 raptor lake, not that Geekbench is the end all be all, but I wanted to use it as a way to compare performance for the pricing.

https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu/apple-m4-pro-12-cores

All in all I would say the Mini isn't too bad on the Apple Tax (at least compared to the MBPs).



That is where Apple gets users for sure. $800 for 2TB is highway robbery ($400 more to upgrade from 1 TB)!
Fair point on the cost of a good Dell system - and not just a very basic business mini computer. The oft named Apple Tax is silly. I really don't understand why it is THAT high. The only cost effective solution it to have an M.2 SSD in an enclosure with a TB/USB-C connector. Annoying, but matching aluminum ones can be had inexpensively enough and the NVME drive is much, much less expensive.
 
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