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I'll be curious if they reconfigure the Mini for better heat control...maybe copper inside.
I've got an M4 Pro mini, which is an excellent machine, but yes, it does run hot at times. I've got it raised up on a block of wood so the base vents are exposed to help with the airflow.
 
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One decision I've questioned with this redesign is why they didn't go with USB-C power. They could have made the casing height 30-50% less (saving costs) and also make this a "BYOP" (Bring your own power, since you already BYOK and BYOM)... and also lower BOM costs. Would seem like a win for users, Apple designers and Tim and his gang of bean counters.
 
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First off, what any other manufacturer does shouldn't be an excuse for bad pricing. Second, that's a thin client, not a desktop computer. 2 completely different use cases.
pricing doesnt exist in a vacuum and if its beneficial to apple then it is ipso facto not bad pricing.
 
My M4 Pro Mini is a great device, so I won’t be surprised if a chip upgrade is the only change. I would like to see the power button moved to somewhere more accessible though.
I don't think it's much of a concern for me other than it's nice to be able to quick press the power button in order to manually sleep the computer. I have a keyboard command set for ”sleep”, but that doesn't work from the lock screen. :(
 
can we get an option to power it up by usbc?
As long as it's an option and the internal PSU stays. For my money, that's one of the nice features of the Mini. Plus, a lot of USB-C power supplies wouldn't cope with the peak demand of a Mini (and it's attached peripherals - it needs 75W just to provide 15W to each TB port.

I've never seen the point of making something so small that you need a bunch of external boxes...

it could even have one of those ports where the usbc port is set back inside by a centimeter, and the official usbc cable to power it could fill the space there exactly so that it kind of locks into place.
That's horrible as it makes the port difficult to use for anything else - needing a special cable partly defeats the point of using a USB-C port for power. A better example would be the old Intel iMac power cable which had a fairly shallow decorative flange that made it look "seamless" without making it hard to use a standard not-a-kettle plug.
 
Well, of course the M5 is coming soon because I just bought an M4 mini on sale on Amazon last month for about $460. I just needed to replace my aging Mac mini server and this little thing is terrific.
 
Really? Dell sells an intel based system for $579 with only 8GB of RAM (for $80 less one can get it with 64GB). Apple’s Mac mini is $20 more and comes with a much faster CPU, much better GPU and 8GB more RAM.
Congratulations on the negative bargain hunting (I'm sure you can find an even worse deal if you look) - that's a thin client aimed at the corporate market which is always a recipe for sky-high ticket price. Send your business card and ask for a quote to kit out an office with 30 or these plus a support contract and you'll probably see a realistic price. Or you could get a Minisforum AI X1 for $503 with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. - or take it up to 64GB for $70. Again, probably not a patch on the M4 CPU/GPU-wise, but the M4 Mini is unbalanced - if you really need the power of a M4 then you probably need the extra RAM and storage (because, ultimately, what a faster processor does is process more data which has to be stored somewhere... )

Still, the M4 Mini is quite a good deal for $600 if you just look at what a M4 can do - the problem is the lousy RAM and SSD capacity for that price combined with the ridiculous cost of upgrading to something more 2025, like 32GB/1TB.

The Mini range has this huge perception problem in that the $600/$800/$1000 options are now only distinguished by RAM and SSD size, and all you physically get for the $400 difference is about $150 worth of commodity flash & lpddr chips.

Can we get a Mac mini with A19 Pro chip and 128GB storage for like $299-349?

I doubt Apple would go that low.

Given that, I'd rather have a Mac Mini with A19 Pro, 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD for $600, with the more expensive "better $800" and "best $1000" models featuring better M4 and M4 Pro processors, rather than just $50 worth of commodity RAM/flash chips.
 
One decision I've questioned with this redesign is why they didn't go with USB-C power. They could have made the casing height 30-50% less (saving costs) and also make this a "BYOP" (Bring your own power, since you already BYOK and BYOM)... and also lower BOM costs. Would seem like a win for users, Apple designers and Tim and his gang of bean counters.

I can imagine the Tim Cook outrage here if the new M5 Mini didn't have a built-in power supply. Guaranteed... and lasting for years.

For myself... I wouldn't consider a desktop computer that doesn't have a built-in AC power supply.
 
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I want it to support 4 monitors.
MacOS (or at least on my mini and MacBook Air) multi monitor support is horrible and they really need to figure that **** out.

In connecting to a thunderbolt dock with two DisplayPort and one HDMI it will randomly choose which is the main monitor and then mirror it on one of the other monitors, and of course the MacBook Air scrambles things upon opening or shutting the lid.
 
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...and also make this a "BYOP" (Bring your own power, since you already BYOK and BYOM)... and also lower BOM costs. Would seem like a win for users, Apple designers and Tim and his gang of bean counters.
Fixed that for you.

Anyway, the maximum power consumption of the M4 Pro mini is listed as 140W, or 155W, depending where you look (I guess there's various ways of measuring it). Interesting debate as to why that's so much more than a MacBook (I'm assuming that a MacBook has the battery smoothing out periods of high demand - a Mini would just crash) - but the aforementioned bean counters wouldn't have specified a 150W PSU if a 100W one would do!

So, fine, the current USB-C Power Delivery standard goes up to 240W - but few current power supplies would deliver that: the Studio Display offers 96W. The Caldigit TS5 dock might work at 140W but that;s borderline on a $$$ dock, the Caldigit Element Hub only has 60W... same for a lot of USB-C displays. So, at best, "BYOP" is likely to mean Buy your own power rather than using something you already have to hand. If USB-C power doesn't let you power it from a display or hub/dock and, instead, requires a dedicated power brick then the feature seems pointless.
 
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So, at best, "BYOP" is likely to mean Buy your own power rather than using something you already have to hand. If USB-C power doesn't let you power it from a display or hub/dock and, instead, requires a dedicated power brick then the feature seems pointless.
Your comments bring up another downside, given the unreliable state of...erm, what's a nice way to phrase this...end user technical sophistication, if the Mac Mini were USB-C powered, I imagine Apple would get lots of service calls from people complaining it wouldn't come on or randomly quit, when the issue was inadequate power supply from underpowered units. It would also create the impression the ASD and some other devices were underpowered, since they couldn't consistently support it.
 
MacOS (or at least on my mini and MacBook Air) multi monitor support is horrible and they really need to figure that **** out.

In connecting to a thunderbolt dock with two DisplayPort and one HDMI it will randomly choose which is the main monitor and then mirror it on one of the other monitors, and of course the MacBook Air scrambles things upon opening or shutting the lid.

Yea, exactly. I am wondering if thick dock will make any difference:
 
Fixed that for you.

Anyway, the maximum power consumption of the M4 Pro mini is listed as 140W, or 155W, depending where you look (I guess there's various ways of measuring it). Interesting debate as to why that's so much more than a MacBook (I'm assuming that a MacBook has the battery smoothing out periods of high demand - a Mini would just crash) - but the aforementioned bean counters wouldn't have specified a 150W PSU if a 100W one would do!

So, fine, the current USB-C Power Delivery standard goes up to 240W - but few current power supplies would deliver that: the Studio Display offers 96W. The Caldigit TS5 dock might work at 140W but that;s borderline on a $$$ dock, the Caldigit Element Hub only has 60W... same for a lot of USB-C displays. So, at best, "BYOP" is likely to mean Buy your own power rather than using something you already have to hand. If USB-C power doesn't let you power it from a display or hub/dock and, instead, requires a dedicated power brick then the feature seems pointless.
Indeed very good point... the m4 has a max draw of 65w, but yeah the pro is way up there so this wouldn't work (and as an SW/HW engineer should have realized this)... unless they only did it for the m4, but then that becomes a mess... so yup it is the way it is (though I've got a spare 140w Apple Power Charger... there is some hacky case to be made that I could buy minis year on year and save that power supply cost... but you know Tim isn't going to pass savings on to us... unless us means shareholders)
 
Yea, exactly. I am wondering if thick dock will make any difference:
Requires a "max" level apple silicon chip to do 3 monitors. Also not compatible at all with Windows.
 
Can we get a Mac mini with A19 Pro chip and 128GB storage for like $299-349? In the next year or two I'm planning to get a Mac mini to setup for my kids in the family room so they can have proper internet access and a space for working on school projects on a real computer. I'm sure an A19 Pro with 12GB memory and 128GB storage would be fine for this basic purpose. It would basically be a souped-up Apple TV. They could even cut back on some features, like no Thunderbolt, no Ethernet, etc. Maybe even make it USB-C powered so it doesn't need a special plug on the back, and could probably make it shorter to save on aluminum, maybe even remove one of the front USB-C ports if they have to retool it anyway just to get the price as low as possible.

Only reason I'm even entertaining such an idea is the rumored A-series powered MacBook for $599. But $299-349 might be too low, although right now you can get an M4 Mac mini on Amazon with 16GB memory and 256GB storage for $499, so who knows. But my daughter has expressed wanting me to add my second seat license for Adobe Creative Cloud onto such a machine, so a refurb M-series probably makes more sense when the time comes.
Just buy an older used one
 
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