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(box clunks)
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(tape tearing)
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(chilled lo-fi music)
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(wrap rustling)
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(upbeat electronic music)
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- So usually, one crazy thing
about a new piece of tech
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is enough to get my attention,
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just something out of
the ordinary about it.
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But this new Mac mini
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has three things about it that are insane.
00:40 - 00:41
So instead of having an event this year,
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Apple decided to do a bunch
of press releases in a row
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for the last week of October
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to update their whole Mac lineup to M4.
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And one of them was for this new Mac mini.
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Now, a lot of us might not give
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too much thought to the Mac mini,
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like, yeah, maybe it
holds an important place
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as the most affordable Mac,
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but if you're not buying one,
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you're not really thinking
about it too much.
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But the number one most insane
thing about this refresh is,
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well, I mean look at it, it's tiny.
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It is absolutely tiny.
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Apple's gone through and redesigned
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basically all of their computers now
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that have gotten the Mac silicon update.
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Well, except this one,
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this is the same design as a while ago,
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but the Mac mini was kind of technically
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overdue for a redesign.
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And the new one, it actually
kinda looks a little bit more
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like a shrunken Mac Studio
than a shrunken old Mac mini.
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But it's now a five inch
by five inch footprint
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and two inches tall.
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I'll say that again, a five by
five by two desktop computer.
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Now I like small desktops,
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and yes, you could get a
tiny desktop computer before,
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there's plenty of amazing
mini ITX build videos
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all over the internet that
I've watched for years.
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They're sick.
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But there's levels to this,
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there's small computers and
then there's tiny computers.
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And this Mac mini is smaller
than my R5 with a lens on it.
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It's smaller than a new roll of duct tape.
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It's smaller than the
footprint of the new iPhone
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and barely bigger than the
absolutely tiny Apple TV.
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Apple's seemingly had this obsession
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with making certain computers
as small as possible,
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even before Apple silicon came along.
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So this has just kind of
unlocked another level for them
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to push it even further than ever before.
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Yeah, there are fans in here,
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but there are also ports on the back.
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Gigabit ethernet by default,
full size HDMI is still here.
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And then three Thunderbolt
ports on the back
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and then there's two
USB-C 3 ports on the front
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plus the headphone jack.
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So still no SD card reader.
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And there's obviously now no more USB-A.
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If you tried to build
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or buy another computer
to match this thing,
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you will either end up building a computer
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that's just as small but
nowhere near as capable,
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or a computer that's just as capable,
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but nowhere near as small.
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It is just a hilariously
unnecessarily tiny computer.
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It's great.
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I would also like to start
a new conspiracy theory.
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I would like to use this video
to start a conspiracy theory.
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I think that there is someone
whose job it is at Apple,
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someone whose sole purpose
(sinister mysterious music)
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is to come up with one obnoxious
thing to complain about
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for every new Apple product redesign.
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Like this is the person that
put the notch on the iPhone.
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This is the person that
put the charge port
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at the bottom of the Magic Mouse.
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And this person's best work is right here
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on this new Mac mini,
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putting the power button
on the bottom of it.
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There are so many better
places to put a power button,
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like at the front or the side,
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or literally anywhere on the back,
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like all the other small Mac desktops.
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Or at the top. That
would've been fine too.
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But no, they chose behind the back corner,
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which is (sighs) just...
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I mean, I don't use
that button very often.
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I don't really turn the Mac on
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and off with a button almost ever.
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I might sleep it and wake it back up,
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and maybe every couple of weeks,
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I'll have to remember that
the button's back there.
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But yeah, it's just dumb
enough to get memed on
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and complained about without
actually being an issue.
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Well played, guy.
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But yeah, you know, the
typical consequences
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of a computer getting smaller
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are battery, speakers, and thermals.
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There's just less room
inside for those things.
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Battery of course doesn't make a huge
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difference on a desktop, who cares?
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Speakers, kind of the
same thing, who cares?
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And thermals have been redesigned in a way
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that seem to be working just fine.
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This thing hardly gets over a peep.
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If you do heavy stuff,
the single fan spins up
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and you can hear it, but
it's always been quiet,
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sitting on the desk,
you can hardly hear it.
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So then the number two insane
thing about the new Mac mini
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is that the base model is kind
of an incredible deal now.
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No, like I don't think you understand it.
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I think it's actually one
of the best deals in tech.
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It's certainly the best out of any
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of Apple's new product
offerings right now.
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And I mean, I'm kind of
not used to saying it,
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but it is a really good deal.
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So this base M4 Mac mini costs 599, right?
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So for that, you get the base
computer with the M4 chip,
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which has quietly doubled
to 16 gigs of unified memory
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instead of eight from before.
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So the 10 core CPU and the 10 core GPU.
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Now we're four generations
into Apple silicon
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and the gains are
actually kind of starting
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to stack up versus M1.
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We already know it was a huge difference
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from the Intel chips, but I
actually wanna get a little bit
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more into that in the MacBook Pro review
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because I've been using
an M1 Max MacBook Pro
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for three years since it came out.
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And the M4 Max is the first one
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that's actually tempted me to upgrade
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between generations of Apple silicon.
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It's really interesting.
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So get subscribed and
stay tuned for that video
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when it comes out.
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But the main thing you need to know is
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this base M4 chip is great,
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it's super solid and power efficient
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at everyday normal
activities like web browsing
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and music streaming and
multitasking like crazy.
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And it can handle what
I think I would call
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medium-grade activities very easily.
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Not heavy stuff like
graphically-intensive gaming
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or a heavy video editing,
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but pretty much anything short of that.
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This could be a coding
and developing machine,
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this could be a photo editing machine.
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Pixelmator runs like a dream.
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And fun fact, Apple just bought
Pixelmator, interestingly.
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But yeah, just having
a ton of Arc tabs open,
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stuff like that, like just
running around, multitasking,
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it runs like a dream, it's great.
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It's as good as you'd expect
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the world's fastest single
core performer to do.
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So yeah, Mac mini, you know,
four years, like I said,
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it has been the most affordable Mac,
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the sort of entry point for
anyone to get into Mac OS.
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But this year with the
doubling of the base memory,
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it just feels like a
particularly good deal.
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Think of it this way,
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the M4 iMac that also just got refreshed
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is basically the exact same computer,
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but just in an upright desktop
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with a non replaceable display.
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That starts at $1,299.
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So you can use that $700 difference
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to kind of get whatever screen you want.
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Now, you can obviously also
upgrade from the base Mac mini,
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but I don't think you
should, and I'll explain why.
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See, Apple is known for building
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what I've called a price ladder,
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and they're just trying to get you
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to climb as high as possible.
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They do this across all their products,
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but there's basically always
a really tempting upgrade
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sitting right above the base model.
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And then when you spend that money,
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you're kind of right underneath
another tempting upgrade,
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and then they kind of walk you up,
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trying to get you to spend
as much money as possible.
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It's really smart, they do it with iPhones
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and with iPads and with everything else.
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This base Mac mini, I'm
telling you is a good deal,
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but it only has 256 gigs of storage.
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And many people are fine with that
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and they can live with that, that's great.
07:46 - 07:48
But if you know you're gonna
be working with a lot of media,
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a lot of video,
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then you start looking at
upgrades to the storage,
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and that's where you'll
find that walking it up
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to a terabyte costs 400 more dollars.
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Or if you plan to do
some wired networking,
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bumping it up to 10 gig ethernet costs
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100 more dollars on top of that.
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for the price of just those upgrades,
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you could almost get an
entire nother MAC mini.
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It's crazy.
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Like basically, across the board,
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Apple's upgrade pricing is
pretty crazy with this computer,
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which is why I'm specifically saying
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the base model is such a good deal.
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And actually if you're lucky enough
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to have a .edu email address right now,
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the student discount drops it
down to 499, which is sick.
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But once you know you're
gonna be doing upgrades
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to the pre-purchase spec,
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which you have to know before buying it,
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'cause you can't upgrade
it after the fact,
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all the memory, everything is built in,
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then it becomes more of a normal deal.
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I do wanna say this though.
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So the third and final crazy
thing about this Mac Mini
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is that the maxed out version has a case
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for the best portable workstation Mac.
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Now this doesn't apply to everybody.
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This is coming from me,
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someone who used to drag an
iMac Pro in a Pelican case
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through the airport to events
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because it was the fastest editing machine
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that I could reasonably travel with,
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and it actually made sense for me.
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So coming from that perspective,
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this new Mac mini is sick.
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So looking at the Mac Studios,
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those aren't upgraded to M4 yet,
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they've all got the M2 generation.
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And it's also not gonna be the Mac Pro,
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which is also still on the M2 generation
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and obviously not portable.
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The iMac is on M4,
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but there's no Pro chips, so
it's just the base M4 chip.
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So this Mac mini is the easiest way
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to pack an M4 Pro chip with you
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and just throw it in a
travel bag super easily.
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An equivalent spec'd
MacBook Pro with M4 Pro
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starts at $2,000,
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which is actually another
decently good deal
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as far as performance.
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But if you don't need a laptop
or if you just wanna plug
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and play into monitors wherever you go,
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1399 gets you the M4 Pro Mac mini.
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And that upgrade also gets
you the back Thunderbolt ports
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being Thunderbolt 5
instead of Thunderbolt 4.
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So it can support three 6K
displays instead of two.
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So I've had and been
testing the M4 Pro here
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with 48 gigs of memory,
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and fun fact, if you run through
some synthetic benchmarks,
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this runs up the highest CPU
score of any desktop Mac ever.
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That includes the Mac Pro
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and the Mac Studios and all of them.
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This is by far the most
powerful single core
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we've ever seen by a lot.
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And then Multi-Core just barely
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tops Geekbench's all time Mac list,
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though as we know, CPU doesn't
really bump up all that much
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when you go from base
to Pro to Max to Ultra,
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it's way more GPU stuff.
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And so when you look at GPU benchmarks,
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the most powerful Mac
mini here with the M4 Pro,
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it was putting up M1 Max numbers,
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which again, shows how much
these generations over time
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have been improving and
stacking on top of each other.
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I've been editing videos
on an M1 Max laptop
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for three years now on the MacBook Pro.
10:47 - 10:49
So this Mac mini feels like
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one of those impossibly small computers
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Apple's like always
kind of wanted to make,
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even before Apple silicon.
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Like you probably remember
some of their earlier attempts,
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like the "Trashcan" MAC Pro,
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no doubt, they wanted do something crazy.
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They wanted to put a
workstation-class computer on the desk
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cooled by a single fan.
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We saw how that went with
the Intel chip inside,
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or even some of those
razor thin i9 MacBook Pros
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that started having overheating issues.
11:12 - 11:15
But now that Apple silicon
has gotten this good
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and this efficient over time,
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they're actually able to
make tiny, powerful computers
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like the Mac Studio
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and now like this little
Mac mini over here.
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Nobody was asking for the
Mac mini to be even smaller,
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except for those people
in the Spaceship Campus
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somewhere in California.
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Well played.
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Well played.
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Thanks for watching.
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Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
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(chilled electronic music)
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