I think Apple will Neo-ify the Mac mini and come in at US$299 or $349 while jumping the regular mini to $699.
Heck they might even Neo-ify the iMac, too.
Heck they might even Neo-ify the iMac, too.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Still Has More New Macs Planned for 2026
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Mac Fly (film)
macrumors 68040
Wasn't the MacBook you're referring to priced higher than MacBook Air? I know, weird, but I believe it was. I miss that MBA had SD Card. I didn't like the MacBook keyboard. Neo is probably a better product, sans backlighting.
MacBook Neo
MacBook Air
MacBook Pro
The naming is fine. My issue is display sizes are all over the place making buying a Mac laptop overly confusing (13, 13.6, 14.2, 15.3, 16.2). It doesn't to me feel like "so many options, nice". It's more like Apple has no clue what to size laptops as.
Neo at 13.0 inches is fine. MBA should be both 13.0 inches and 14.5 inches, providing a small more premium alternative to Neo, and a nice mid-range size. MBP should be 14.5 inches and 16.5 and thick as they come. Having MBA and MBP overlap on display size matters because then the person can more readily focus their questions to decide which is better for them without display differences complicating the choice.
MBA is the thin model, keep it that way, and improve it.
Apple should give MBA SD Card, HDMI and improve it as a product and improve the Pro line, not with added complexity by creating a new additional thinner pro model with probably yet another screen size, but by making the current model even more pro. Two thunderbolt 5 ports on each side, the best display out there, as big a battery as possible, and power and cooling and RAM and SSD and proc and graphics up the Wazoo.
Last edited:
I think they’re dead. I’m sure there is a sliver of a community that need Pro’s instead of top-end Studio’s, but it’s clearly not enough for Apple to want to serve it. This will be the third dead end Mac Pro in a row over more than a decade’s time.
I believe and hope they will come well before, like in April.
FatLouie
macrumors 6502a
Which customer base, or market segment would this be for? A substantially underpowered Mini Neo might be great for kiosk and POS systems, but for home use?
FatLouie
macrumors 6502a
I got an M4 when they came out, so I gotta wait. If it were not for only a 900 USD trade in value, and OS 26 I might would jump on the M5, but frankly, the M4 / Sequoia is plenty fast enough for me at the moment.
ItsASpider
macrumors 6502
Kinda wished they'd not refresh the Mac mini until the M6 can be put into it at the end of the year...
ItsASpider
macrumors 6502
It's clearly a "writing on the wall" product at this point, though I wouldn't be surprised to see them do one more generation for "legacy use cases".
turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
ThisIsMike
macrumors 6502
I don’t think Apple would offer the mini in two versions like that. If they keep it with the M series chip, you can bet the price is going up. But if they switch to the A18, they can maintain the $600 price, or maybe drop it to $500 to really sell it. (Apple isn’t offering a mac mini to ANYONE for $300, sorry. Not in their wheelhouse.)
The additional benefit of a switch is that makes the separation between the mini and the Mac Studio much more clear, and it would actually push a lot of folks who might have gone for the mini, to purchase the Mac Studio, which of course Apple would love, because the studio is a much more expensive machine.
A Mac (mini) Neo would basically be an Apple TV with more storage and an added internal USB hub to get enough ports.
I think if they decide to do it, then it will be its own thing slotted into the range below the Mac Mini. My guess would be they could do this for $299 and it would give space to add $100 the base price of the Mac Mini.
I think if they decide to do it, then it will be its own thing slotted into the range below the Mac Mini. My guess would be they could do this for $299 and it would give space to add $100 the base price of the Mac Mini.
M4 doesn't have fusion connectors to make an Ultra chip. M5 Pro/Max however, are already built on fusion architecture from the beginning. So seems probable/likely they'll skip M4 Ultra (which they already confirmed not all chips will get an Ultra during the M4 lifecycle), and release an M5 Ultra later this year.
Happy_John
macrumors 68020
I’ve changed my opinion on the 2014 Mac mini over the years. When it was released I hated it fir exactly the reasons you’ve mentioned - no quad core option, less upgradability ( soldered-on RAM) My thinking at the time was that they nerfed it because of the Mac Pro 6,1 being released in 2013, it’s base model originally having only a quad core. Yes, the 2012 Mac mini was less powerful than a base level MP 6,1 and so would a quad core mini 2914 with upgradable RAM and storage, but it might have been just powerful enough to damage MP 6,1 sales, hence the nerfing.
But I’ve ended up buying a few Mac mini 2014s in the last 24 months or so, and now love it, fir a couple if sieci fix reasons: 1) you can now fit them with a 2.5” drive in the lower bay AND a NVMe (via a cheap adapter) in the upper bay, and 2) more importantly, they have the lowest power consumption, especially at idle, of any intel Mac mini. This makes them brilliant for 24/7 small servers / Time Capsules. I own a quad 2012, which I love, but I’ve retired it for the reasons above.
The 2018 Mac mini is an interesting machine as a small server with upgradable RAM and fast enough USB / thunderbolt to make external storage fast enough to be a viable option, but its problem is its power consumption and it’s second-hand price - too close to an M1 Mac mini, which is a better prospect.
On the subject of mac minis and Apple’s nerfing, I currently use a Mac mini M2 pro as the heart of a workstation setup, and, while I love the look of the new, smaller form factor of the newMac Minis, the reduction of I/O and ports means I’d have to go for a studio, not a mini with pro chip, if I wanted to upgrade and just swop in a new machine without recabling. Grrrr. :-(
I doubt they’d put an A chip in a existing Mac mini, it’d be a new SKU if they did, but I do think we’ll see the same price increase + base storage increase we saw with the MB air and MBP with pro chip.
Last edited:
Veinticinco
macrumors 68020
You couldn’t seriously describe the MBA as “the thin model” since the retirement of the M1, when Apple homogenised the form factor design across the entire range.
The Neo was a perfect opportunity to offer something else to combat the hardware concessions, but they somehow made it slightly bigger and heavier than it needed to be.
turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
progx
macrumors 65816
I think we’d likely the Magic Keyboard Mac (think of the Raspberry Pi keyboard) for around the $399 price. While I think the mini will start at $699 this time due to the storage bump, Apple isn’t going to make an A-series version of it.
The iPad mini isn’t an entry level device for the iPad line, that would be the regular iPad. Neo for desktop could find its way into another form factor. It could be an original iPod Shuffle on steroids that you just plug into a screen; or the rumored Mac built into a keyboard.
Try an external dock. I have one for my M4 Mini which adds 5 USB-A slots, SD card, and an SSD slot. Also makes the power switch less problematic.
What "home" use requires the might of an M5? What do you do that thrashes the machine to within an inch of its life that also qualifies as Home use?
It's certainly not doing taxes or email. Editing the occasional picture? Editing a cat video? Most people are not professional film editors nor are they training LLMs in their spare time. The biggest spreadsheet I've used at home was a project with 105,000 rows and 30 columns. The Ryzen 4600G (which is roughly comparable to an M1) had no trouble with it.
No word processor puts any load on a CPU. The only thing that loads down even a five year old CPU are the browsers, and an A13 can handle that load. For that matter, the 2012 Mac mini in the shop has no trouble running the current Firefox on the current Linux Mint.
I don't see the use case for an M5 (or 4) at home. I do see a case for 16/512 which is what is on the Linux box. I see a case for at least a half dozen USB ports, 4K video output and even the optical digital sound out. But the M5 would need like one core at half speed to keep up with nearly everything.
I could see that as a possible option. The main issue with using an A series chip is USB support for multiple ports.
I'll be curious to see an IFitIt tear down of the Neo to see how Apple got the USB 2 port working along side the USB 3 port since the A18 Pro only supports 1 USB port.
CWallace
macrumors G5
While the entry-level model is a decent value, the Mac mini fills a lot of small niches in the mac economy, hence why it offers multiple SoC, memory and storage options that can push the machine well into four figures.
Apple does not need to de-content the mini - the customers for this model know that the prices of memory and storage are rising sharply so they will absorb the extra cost.
Apple does not need to de-content the mini - the customers for this model know that the prices of memory and storage are rising sharply so they will absorb the extra cost.