Apple announces new Apple silicon Mac Mini, $699

Mac Mini M
Mac Mini M (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple has just announced its brand new Mac Mini.
  • It features Apple's brand new M1 chip.
  • That will deliver 3x faster CPU performance.

Apple has just officially announced its brand new Apple silicon Mac Mini, featuring Apple's new M1 chip.

In a press release the company stated:

Mac mini is Apple's most versatile computer, and now with M1, it packs a staggering amount of performance and incredible new features in such a compact design. M1 brings an 8-core CPU with up to 3x faster performance than the previous generation, dramatically accelerating demanding workloads, from compiling a million lines of code to building enormous multitrack music projects. An 8-core GPU delivers up to a massive 6x increase in graphics performance, allowing Mac mini to tackle performance-intensive tasks like complex 3D rendering with ease. ML workloads also take a quantum leap forward with up to 15x faster performance over the previous generation. And when compared to the best-selling Windows desktop in its price range, the Mac mini is just one-tenth the size, yet delivers up to 5x faster performance.

The new Mac Mini is silver and is based on Apple's brand new M1 chip, the first-ever Apple silicon chip for Mac. Apple says it will deliver 3x CPU performance than the quad-core version of old, and 6x the graphics performance too.

The new Mac Mini starts at $699 and features WiFi 6 as well as full Pro Display XDR support.

Apple says the new Mac Mini offers performances up to 5x faster than a comparable PC by price, and that the new Neural Engine and Machine Learning perform up to 15x faster than previous models. It also has a new thermal design to stop heat from throttling performance. It has Thunderbolt 4, USB 4, and 2 USB C ports, as well as an HDMI port.

As mentioned, the new Mac Mini is $699, $100 cheaper than the previous model.

You can choose between 8 or 16GB of RAM, as well as an SSD of up to 2TB.

The new Mac Mini, as well as the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, will be available to order from today, November 10, and will be released next week. macOS Big Sur will also be released on November 12.

Stephen Warwick
News Editor

Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design. Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9