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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

deconstruct60 said:
ASD as in Apple Studio Display? There is no Ethernet port.
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Looks like I may have confused it with the Ethernet port on the Thunderbolt monitor...

I tend to agree with your comments on Apple's Ethernet support - I ordered my M4 Pro Mini with the 10G option, thinking that the 2.5G port on the GPON might mean getting my internet connection speed boosted from 1G. About two months after ordering the Mini, got an email saying my fiber service will be bumped to 2G (measuring 2.2down, 2.1up). Took me 8 months to get around to replacing my 1G router with a 2.5G router.
 
deconstruct60 said:
It is probably a combination of both a M4->M5 transition and the RAM hoarding that is making the transition harder than usual. If RAM wasn't 'crazy' they could have tweaks orders months ago to ease into a 'smooth' landing. The RAM problem is making this a bumpy 'landing' of how to transition over the SoCs to a new phase and products.
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Apple is probably also selling devices with more ram than forecasted.

2025 was an infection point at which apple silicon and local llms became so good that local inference is now economically productive. As a result you have businesses ordering multiple mac minis with 36-256GB RAM. This would not have been the case 12-18 months ago.

As a result apple might be running low on RAM against forecast. Hence they might be holding back some of their allocation for the M5 mac mini. Samsung and micron don't exactly have a surplus of supply theta unaccounted for ther apple can ask to buy!

I have ordered a mac mini 48gb ram 20 core gpu which is scheduled for delivery between 16-23rd June. I expect it to be an M5.

Even if it's not I will be perfectly happy with an M4 which is only 10% slower for inference. This doesn't matter as much of the crunching will be done Passively and throughout the day.
 
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Macalicious2011 said:
Apple is probably also selling devices with more ram than forecasted.
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that is usually OK because if it is a relatively narrow overage and tweak orders to draw down on inventories at suppliers. If the inventory everywhere is essentially zero then it becomes a show stopper.

Macalicious2011 said:
As a result apple might be running low on RAM against forecast. Hence they might be holding back some of their allocation for the M5 mac mini. Samsung and micron don't exactly have a surplus of supply theta unaccounted for ther apple can ask to buy!
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Pretty low chance that the M4 and M5 use the same spec RAM.

a quick search says M4
  • Base M4 Chip: Uses 7500 MT/s LPDDR5X memory.
  • M4 Pro & Max Chips: Use faster 8533 MT/s LPDDR5X memor
m5

Memory Type: While the M5 uses LPDDR5X-9600,

part of the M5 speed increase is an improved memory subsystem. M5 pushes deep into edge of LPDDR5 specs so M6 may dip into LPDDR6. (Apple could do something of a more major shift in larger cache and stick with LPDDR5 longer. ), but going to have trouble pushing the GPU ahead at the same increase rate if they cap the memory speed.

The problem with the memory crisis is that OpenAI went in and bought EVERYTHING that didn't have someone's name on it. They just bought whole wafers of anything that wasn't nailed down. So the disruptions is in all the SKUs that Samsung and SK Hynix had. (not datacenter specific.)
'

Macalicious2011 said:
I have ordered a mac mini 48gb ram 20 core gpu which is scheduled for delivery between 16-23rd June. I expect it to be an M5.
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Probably not an M5. Decent chance you will just get a M4 earlier. Apple is using hyper pessimistic delivery times to discourage a narrow subset of folks from buying short term.

That will collapse as a strategy as more of the other options completely sell out and more folks are herded into a narrower niche. But there really isn't much of another tool left.

Being completely sold out if several configuration is only going to make the initial demand wave once they shift to M5 be even higher. As long as folks wait in line for stuff (and don't bolt to a Windows options) it is mainly lower inventory costs for Apple.
 
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I think the new ordering system is partly to ‘blame’ here too - and the fact that Apple won’t adjust prices during the lifetime of a specific product. They’ve got to balance availability with being on the hook for a spike in demand for product and we’re all speculating on stock levels correlating with imminent launch of m5 updates.

I’d like to think that Apple want to update their m4 hardware to m5 sooner rather than later, but they still have their usual schedule and shortages and long shipping times might be down to supply chain issues rather than imminent update.

What I have noticed is third party retailer stocks of Mac mini and Mac studio running dry at big retailers in the uk while iMacs have started disappearing too (although iMacs are not showing as many delays if at all
At Apple uk). I can pick up a base model iMac any time.

Historically there might be a hardware launch anytime between just before WWDC and the usual hardware launches in October - shipping costs might have been affected by the current events in the Middle East.

And at the moment I think it’s probably better for Apple to stick with shortages of existing m4 product rather than launch an m5 refresh ‘early’ and then have to pay for the ram for that if indeed the refresh was imminent if they thought shipping was going to be a bigger factor than usual.
 
I heard a speculation (rumor) about an upcomming Mac Neo in the case of the base Mac mini (or similar), that will use "defect" iPhone chips the same internal components as the Macbook Neo - minus the keyboard, trackpad and screen.
 
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opeter said:
I heard a speculation (rumor) about an upcomming Mac Neo in the case of the base Mac mini (or similar), that will use "defect" iPhone chips the same internal components as the Macbook Neo - minus the keyboard, trackpad and screen.
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This isn’t a real rumor or leak or anything. It’s a misinformation that was spreaded by some people who wish a Mac mini with the iPhone chip. Yeah, a Mac mini that throttles at 5W, slow SSD, and 8GB of RAM. Nonsense.

Let’s hope Apple doesn’t listen to this shenanigans because we could lose the best value Mac we’ve had to this day, the Mac mini.
 
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Populus said:
This isn’t a real rumor or leak or anything. It’s a misinformation that was spreaded by some people who wish a Mac mini with the iPhone chip. Yeah, a Mac mini that throttles at 5W, slow SSD, and 8GB of RAM. Nonsense.

Let’s hope Apple doesn’t listen to this shenanigans because we could lose the best value Mac we’ve had to this day, the Mac mini.
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I've run across an article on another website stating that a Mac Neo could do for the desktop market as what the MacBook Neo is doing for the laptop market.

The rumored next generation Neo configuration with 12GB of RAM and a properly heatsinked processor selling for $300 would be competitive with the small form factor low cost PC's. I suspect that the thermal throttling on the MacBook Neo was to limit max power draw and thus extend battery life. A desktop would not have the same limitation, so there would be a good reason to make sure the CPU could run flat out.

The base Mac Mini would still be an upgrade of the Mac Neo, with faster ports and more memory.
 
Populus said:
That’s a complete exercise of tech onanism, where the author indulges himself in his dreams of a desktop equivalent to the MacBook Neo.
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He makes a decent case that there would be a market for a Mac Neo, but it would likely be considerably smaller than the MacBook Neo. A selling price of $300 would mean that a desktop system could be put together for less than the price of a MacBook Neo as long as the user was comfortable with a mouse rather than a trackpad. Getting into the Maker market would require than somebody step up to port a lot of the Linux Maker utilities to MacOS - much easier said than done.

BSDnostalgia said:
Not a bad concept, but, I have to wonder about the size of the market. Wintel was pushing this inexpensive supercompact PC thing about 10-12 years ago, but, it didn't seem to catch on in the Windows world for some reason.
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These seem to be more common in the Linux world, but there are a few NUC's at work running Windows.

Market size for a Mac Neo is definitely iffy.
 
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IvyKing said:
He makes a decent case that there would be a market for a Mac Neo, but it would likely be considerably smaller than the MacBook Neo. A selling price of $300 would mean that a desktop system could be put together for less than the price of a MacBook Neo as long as the user was comfortable with a mouse rather than a trackpad. Getting into the Maker market would require than somebody step up to port a lot of the Linux Maker utilities to MacOS - much easier said than done.


These seem to be more common in the Linux world, but there are a few NUC's at work running Windows.

Market size for a Mac Neo is definitely iffy.
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I think there’s a market. I have an M4 mini and it’s way more power than most people need. A Mac Neo would serve the younger generation better for less cost and get them into the macOS ecosystem.
 
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QuarterSwede said:
I think there’s a market. I have an M4 mini and it’s way more power than most people need. A Mac Neo would serve the younger generation better for less cost and get them into the macOS ecosystem.
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I agree that there is a market for a Mac Neo, the iffy part is the size of the market. My guess is that it would be a niche perhaps large enough to justify the engineering costs.
 
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QuarterSwede said:
I think there’s a market. I have an M4 mini and it’s way more power than most people need. A Mac Neo would serve the younger generation better for less cost and get them into the macOS ecosystem.
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I've never been good at marketing, so, I'm not someone to ask about it. But, it did seem to me when Wintel was pushing it that the only time I saw these items used en masse was attached to the back of monitors in institutional settings. I think that a lot of people who need a system that inexpensive don't have a keyboard and monitor lying around to use it with, and, don't have an open desk space to put it on. So, the Neo as it is packaged today solves all those problems.

In the institutional case, maybe a small iMac to reduce cost and space? (The iMac as it is configured today is a higher-end system, with a fancier display and higher-end CPU at the bottom end.) If there was a market for it, you could repackage the Neo as an iMac.
 
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BSDnostalgia said:
I've never been good at marketing, so, I'm not someone to ask about it. But, it did seem to me when Wintel was pushing it that the only time I saw these items used en masse was attached to the back of monitors in institutional settings. I think that a lot of people who need a system that inexpensive don't have a keyboard and monitor lying around to use it with, and, don't have an open desk space to put it on. So, the Neo as it is packaged today solves all those problems.

In the institutional case, maybe a small iMac to reduce cost and space? (The iMac as it is configured today is a higher-end system, with a fancier display and higher-end CPU at the bottom end.) If there was a market for it, you could repackage the Neo as an iMac.
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Fair points.
 
BSDnostalgia said:
I've never been good at marketing, so, I'm not someone to ask about it. But, it did seem to me when Wintel was pushing it that the only time I saw these items used en masse was attached to the back of monitors in institutional settings. I think that a lot of people who need a system that inexpensive don't have a keyboard and monitor lying around to use it with, and, don't have an open desk space to put it on. So, the Neo as it is packaged today solves all those problems.

In the institutional case, maybe a small iMac to reduce cost and space? (The iMac as it is configured today is a higher-end system, with a fancier display and higher-end CPU at the bottom end.) If there was a market for it, you could repackage the Neo as an iMac.
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I think (but don’t claim to know) the desktop computers of any kind have become quite niche

Most people that want more than a phone or a tablet will just buy a laptop.
 
Charlie Bonesx said:
I think (but don’t claim to know) the desktop computers of any kind have become quite niche
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I don't think desktop computers are "niche" - it is a ~$100B industry, and, a significant part of Apple's sales as well. Sometimes people use the "focus" idea to say that companies should only sell one or a few things. The old HP was deprecated because it had too many different types of products, for example. I don't think that was necessarily a problem, even with HP.

But, it really doesn't apply to these Apple products because they are all running variants of the same operating system, and, overused though the word "synergy" is, it is a fact (sometimes bitterly complained about) that Apple is able to provide additional quality services that are integrated across these products, which is convenient for users. For example, the use of the iCloud photo library, which is a very efficient way to display and share family photos. Having a desktop system to manage and process photos is much more convenient than trying to do it through your phone. Having an integrated desktop system helps sell higher-end phones with fancier cameras, so having something like a Mini makes an enormous amount of sense. And, having something like the Studio keeps some photo professionals in the mix.

AFAIK, the only product area that is really problematic this way is the tower Mac Pro. Endless threads about that.
 
Charlie Bonesx said:
I think (but don’t claim to know) the desktop computers of any kind have become quite niche

Most people that want more than a phone or a tablet will just buy a laptop.
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The thing is, a lot more people use computers today than two or three decades ago. It's just that the majority of them are using phones, tablets and laptops.

The actual number of desktop computers users has probably doubled, tripled or even more since those two or three decades. It's all relative.
 
opeter said:
On a Hungarian website for daily news, tech and lifestyle. Source is here: https://index.hu/techtud/2026/04/23/apple-macbook-neo-mac-mini-mac-neo-olcso-asztali-pc/

Translation of the title: The MacBook Neo was just the beginning; an even cheaper alternative may already be in the works

I also found similar informations on other Hungarian sites.
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there's no rumour or speculation in article that this is actually happening. it's just saying, like the apple insider article that they referenced, that this is something that could or should happen
 
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Yvan256 said:
The thing is, a lot more people use computers today than two or three decades ago. It's just that the majority of them are using phones, tablets and laptops.

The actual number of desktop computers users has probably doubled, tripled or even more since those two or three decades. It's all relative.
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that was really more my point

that desktop computers make up a less smaller proportion of the "computers" people are using
 
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