Apple is planning to refresh its entire Mac lineup with M4-series chips, and the Mac mini could be upgraded by the end of 2024. The company intends to drop the M3 chip and move directly from the M2 to the M4.
Design
Apple has not changed the Mac mini’s design for many years, and there is no evidence that the design will be updated in 2024. When the Mac mini was updated in 2023, the changes made it slightly lighter and thicker, and the 2024 model will likely have the same design. In January, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo stated:
The next new Mac mini will have the same design and form factor.
The new M4 chip
The Mac mini will feature Apple’s M4 and M4 Pro chips, with the company completely dropping the M3 line and moving from the M2 straight to the M4. The M4 chip in the iPad Pro, which Apple has already introduced, is based on second-generation 3-nanometer technology. The M4 offers up to four times the rendering performance and 50% more CPU performance than the M2 chip.
The M4 chip’s CPU and GPU both have 10 cores. Although there is an M4 variant with a 9-core CPU, Apple will likely not use it in the Mac mini, reserving it instead for the upcoming MacBook Air. In addition, there is a more advanced 16-core Neural Engine, and the GPU supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a feature that is not possible with the M2.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro models and the Mac mini will receive an update in late 2024. The Mac mini will be almost two years old when it is updated, as it was last refreshed in January 2023. Since Apple usually releases Mac updates in October or November, we can expect to see the M4 Mac mini around that time.
