Apple’s little desktop PC is no longer just a punchline. Today the company took the wraps off a revamped Mac Mini, replacing its underpowered parts with new, 8th generation Intel quad- and 6-core processors options, up to 64GB of memory, up to a 2TB SSD, a T2 security chip, 10GB ethernet, and four Thunderbolt 3 ports. With the upgrades, Apple is bumping its longstanding $500 starting price up to
Apple’s little desktop PC is no longer just a punchline. Today the company took the wraps off a revamped Mac Mini, replacing its underpowered parts with new, 8th generation Intel quad- and 6-core processors options, up to 64GB of memory, up to a 2TB SSD, a T2 security chip, 10GB ethernet, and four Thunderbolt 3 ports. With the upgrades, Apple is bumping its longstanding $500 starting price up to $800—but you won’t find face-melting specs without paying even more.
Yes, you’ll still need to bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse. And yes you can, uh, get it in space gray now. At $800, the base model will come with 8GB of memory, a 3.6GHz quad-core i3 processor, and 128GB of SSD storage.
The Mini was originally designed to win over new converts to OS X (now macOS) with the first sub-$500 Mac. Last revamped eons ago, in October 2014, it became a husk for outdated guts that no one, absolutely no one in their right mind had any business recommending to a loved one. By the end of its run, the latest incarnation seemed designed to push buyers in this price range away from Apple, towards better deals from companies like Dell and HP.
Apple is billing the new Mini as “five times faster” overall with “60 percent faster graphics.” It’ll be available on November 7.
