Mac mini 2026
Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors):
With M6, Mac mini now delivers up to 4x faster AI performance, 2x faster storage and graphics, and 40 percent faster CPU performance. Everything on Mac mini with M6 feels incredibly fast, from everyday productivity tasks to agentic AI workflows. Mac mini with M5 Pro delivers even more pro-level performance to breeze through demanding projects, from video production to game development. And this new level of performance takes on business workflows with ease whether Mac mini is being used as a primary desktop or for always-on, deskside agentic computing. Both Mac mini models include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, as well as upgraded 2.5Gb Ethernet, with a 10Gb option available.
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Mac mini with M6 starts at $899 (U.S.) and $799 (U.S.) for education.
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Mac mini with M5 Pro starts at $1,699 (U.S.) and $1,599 (U.S.) for education.
The M6 tops out at 170GB/s and 32GB of unified memory, whereas the M5 Pro offers 307GB/s and up to 64GB–nearly twice the bandwidth, as well as twice the memory ceiling. That is the number to watch for AI inference, not just CPU and GPU benchmark deltas.
Here’s my attempt to put all of the RAM/SSD configurations into condensed tables, so you can see which storage and memory options are available for each chip, and how much they cost.
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If you configure an M6 Mac Mini with 2 TB of storage, the SSD upgrade ($1,000) costs more than the entire base model computer ($900). So too with the 4 TB SSD upgrade for the M5 Pro Mini ($1,800 upgrade for a $1,700 computer).
Nick:
Almost double (in Canadian dollars) what I paid for my M4 mini 18 months ago.
Previously:
- Apple M6 and M5 Ultra
- Apple Upgrade
- Apple Hardware Price Hikes
- Apple M5 Pro and M5 Max
- Mac mini 2024
2 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
The loss of the $450 Mac Mini (and the $600 Neo) is a tragedy.
Raising the performance and baseline stats is nice, but it's overkill to the guy whose 80% workload is Safari / webapps and Office apps.
The trajectory of Apple's hardware is a huge mis-match with their software and most Mom and Dad users. Apple's Local AI story is non-existent (left to pro users to figure out), yet every hardware release hypes Neural performance or AI. How much "Neutral hardware" goes unused by Mom and Dad users (outside of some minor Photos features or background services)?
My point being: cutting out the mostly untouched silicon and focusing on price would be a better route.
I hear what Hanmer is saying… but for the fact that I ‘sold’ a client a Dell Pro 5 Micro last week with an Intel Core Ultra 5 Series 3, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage with an additional USB Type C port, and the MSRP was an EYE-POPPING $2000! They are a 501c3 non-profit, so I called Dell and got them down to just under $1700 with a 3-year onsite warranty. Sooooo… I don’t like the pricing either, buuuut Apple is cheaper than Dell and HP. And Microsoft STILL doesn’t offer a Surface desktop PC.
We’re back to 2012 again in raw terms of Apple “value” vs the PC competition! I only wish Apple would work with Microsoft to run Win11 on Apple silicon. Bootcamp really worked out for them financially the first time, there’s an opportunity here. Ultimately, this client has older workers, they’re already super-anxious over the MS Publisher depreciation, so couldn’t ‘switcher’ them. But many consumers cycling off ancient Windows 10 PCs are just now getting the hint the need to move to Windows 11, and are SHELL-SHOCKED when they see the current PC prices! The ones who aren’t are shell-shocked when they are informed of (or suffer from) the performance issues on the el cheapo big box store sub-$1000 PCs (mostly with 8GB of RAM) that turn out to be not much faster than their 5–7 year old PCs that won’t run Windows 11.
