Last year, Apple launched its M3 line of chips in the last quarter with their latest MacBooks. However, they have not yet released refreshed Mac Mini and Mac Studio versions.
The latest Mac minis are the M2 and M2 Pro variants. The latest Mac Studio has the M2 Max and M2 Ultra variants.
The last time we heard about an M3 Mac Mini was back in August last year, and it was supposed to launch this year. However, things have seemingly changed since then.
M4 and M4 Pro Mac Mini May Come Later This Year
In recent news, Apple may have scrapped plans to release a new Mac mini with the M3 chips. Instead, apparently, Apple may upgrade the Mac mini directly to their M4 chips.
This comes from this week’s Power On newsletter from Mark Gurman on Bloomberg. Mark claims that Apple is going to skip the M3 chips for their Mac mini and that they are going to launch one each with the M4 and M4 Pro chips instead.
As per the same source, we can expect Apple to launch these machines by the end of this year. On a related note, this also means that we will see the new Apple M4 chips by the end of this year if the reports turn out to be true. This aligns with last month’s news about the M4 MacBook Pro having entered the formal development stage.
We do not have much information about the M4 chips. However, we can expect substantial improvements over the M3 lineup, considering they were only the first generation of chips based on 3nm process nodes. It is also rumored that they have a faster neural engine for handling tasks that rely on artificial intelligence.
Apart from the chip, the M4 and M4 Pro Mac minis will likely see upgrades in key areas like ports, connectivity, and thermals. The design of the machine is not clear yet, nor is any other detail. We will start seeing more leaks, details, and reports as we approach the anticipated launch date.
