Alongside the new MacBook Air and iPad Pro, Apple today launched the overhauled Mac mini giving it a substantial boost in performance. It now has up to 6-core processors, up to 64GB of faster memory and fast all-flash storage. The compact Mac delivers an incredible five times faster performance, making it the most powerful Mac mini ever.
Introduced in 2005, the Mac mini was small form factor Mac that was marketed as an entry-level desktop computer. The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the time described the Mac mini as “the cheapest, most affordable Mac ever.” It was the first ever desktop Mac sold without a keyboard and mouse. Apple also introduced a server version at the end of 2009 sans an optical drive.
June 2010 marked the Mac mini’s departure from polycarbonate body to a thinner unibody aluminium case designed with easy access to RAM. Apple later dropped the internal drive and introduced the Thunderbolt port, Intel Core i5 processor with integrated graphics, with the option of dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics.
Initially an entry-level computer, the Mac mini surprisingly became a hit with the professional market and businesses. It’s been used to power video renderings and compile software code, and the tiny-but-mighty Mac has been stacked and racked in server farms for cluster computing. Apple gradually made the Mac mini more powerful over the years, and it was last refreshed in 2014.
Like the MacBook Air, a refresh was long overdue. Now four years on, the all-new Mac mini is here. And boy, does it pack a punch.
So, here’s the gist of it. Apple has kept the form factor pretty much the same, except it’s now in a gorgeous new Space Grey finish (gotta love Space Grey) and its enclosure, like the new MacBook Air, uses Apple-designed aluminium alloy that’s made of 100 percent recycled aluminium. It also uses more post-consumer recycled plastic, and these new materials reduce the carbon footprint of the new Mac mini by nearly 50 percent.
Under the compact unibody is where the grunt resides. First, there’s the quad- and 6-core 8th Generation Intel Core processor with Turbo Boost of up to 4.6GHz and Intel UHD graphics. Apple claims the new little Mac delivers up to five times faster performance than the previous generation.
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It now packs up to 64GB of 2666MHz memory and all-flash storage with capacities of up to 2TB. The new SSDs are four times faster.
Apple is also raving about its new T2 Security Chip that was introduced in the new MacBook Air. The chip features an SSD control with on-the-fly data encryption for everything stored on the SSD. A Secure Enclave ensures the system software loaded at boot is untampered with. The T2 also boasts onboard HVEC video transcoding that’s up to 30 times faster, great for creative pros who do high resolution video.
The Mac mini now has double the Thunderbolt 3 ports as the previous generation. The four ports can connect to high speed storage, drive 4K and 5K Thunderbolt displays and output video in three formats. Other ports include HDMI 2.0, two USB-A ports, audio jack and Gigabit Ethernet. For those who need even faster networking can opt for a 10GB Ethernet add-on.
The new Mac Mini runs macOS Mojave, the latest, most advanced macOS release to date. Learn more about what makes macOS Mojave great here.
Pricing and availability
The Mac Mini starts at USD799 (MYR3,449) and is available to order today at store.apple.com. It will hit Apple retail stores and Apple Authorised Resellers starting Wednesday, 7 November 2018.
For more info, visit apple.com/my/mac.
