Why are you comparing the Apple M4 to a six-year-old processor?
It’s Apple Mac product launch week, which means it’s time for my annual Airing of Grievances over Apple’s Mac marketing; and specifically, this time around, its boast that the latest Mac mini is substantially faster than the 2018 Mac mini, the last with an Intel Core processor.
The new Apple M4 chip is a state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip, built using TSMC’s 3nm process node, and it will likely be able to run circles around a lot of the best desktop PCs on the market when it goes on sale next week.
And so it goes without saying that Apple’s M4-powered Mac mini is going to absolutely wallop the heckin‘ daylights out of a mini PC from six years ago. How is that even a question?
But Apple’s insistence on comparing its latest chips and Mac products to a several-year-old ancestor isn’t just silly, it’s borderline malpractice.The 2018 Mac mini and the latest version aren’t even close to being in the same league
For starters, let’s compare the processor specs of the 2018 Mac mini vs 2024 Mac mini:
As you can see, the 2018 Mac mini just isn’t comparable to the latest 2024 Mac mini in terms of specs. It’s just not.
And saying that you can get 13.3x better performance on an M4 Mac mini compared to one with a processor six generations out of date that isn’t even being produced anymore is like a fully grown adult boasting that they’re taller than a toddler.
The advancements that have been made over the intervening six years between these two devices are totally valid to discuss as an academic matter, but as a marketing matter it’s just disingenuous at this point.
