The Mac mini is no longer priced like a “starter” computer.
Sometimes it's good to remind yourself what a staggering achievement the new M6 Mac mini is. Not only is it affordable, but it packs an enormous amount of power into a tiny package, especially with Apple Silicon's ability to run AI models locally. If there's a wrinkle, it's that the Mac mini now starts at $899, pushing its price much higher than what we're used to. It got me thinking that Apple could really do with making a new, low-cost desktop Mac that could fill the space vacated by the mini's ever-increasing price. It should make a Mac Neo.
The Mac mini is one of the smartest products in Apple's lineup, and one of its most enduring. Born in 2005, it was the cheapest and easiest way to dip a toe into the Mac world for a mainstream that was just warming up to Apple. The iPod was just three years old, Windows was king and Apple was still recovering from its '90s slump. The "Get A Mac" ads wouldn't start for another year, and the $499 Mac mini was a small, well-made (if underpowered) machine you could hook up to your existing keyboard, mouse and display. In the intervening years, the price has fluctuated, but always tied to that notion of a machine well under $1,000 you could buy guilt-free.
It served a purpose for hobbyists, kids and switchers; as a second machine, home server and as a media center. They were still underpowered, but often their use cases focused on reliability over raw brawn. Plus, they were stocked with ports for expandability and, even as recently as the M4 mini, you could upgrade the SSD for a bigger one if you were handy. I know plenty of non-tech people who still have Mac minis, hooked up to external USB hard drives, as their media center PC. $499 was expensive for a set-top box, but given you had a whole computer in there as well, it was an easy price to pay.
Sadly, the AI bubble and RAMpocalypse meant that the Mac mini became desirable to a whole different class of user. Apple Silicon's ability to run models locally made it a good alternative to racks of PC servers with GPUs. Its relatively low cost meant AI developers began buying them by the truckful, spiking demand and forcing Apple to kill off the cheapest model of the machine. Suddenly, the Mac mini was no longer for the rest of us, it was for them, and they bought 'em all. I think that's a tragedy, because there's still a market for a lightweight machine in a desktop form that can be squeezed into the corners of people's lives. As a media center, as a server, as a tool you can hand to your kids and let them experiment with knowing the cost won't kill you.
Which is why I'd love to see a Mac Neo, built upon the same general principles as the MacBook Neo. After all, Apple's already proven it's possible to run macOS on a mobile chip with just 8GB RAM that works well enough for light work. MacOS is good at memory management and it's not as if a desktop would somehow fail where the MacBook Neo already succeeds. If Apple could get it out of the door for $500, I have little doubt it would sell deliriously well. Given the Apple TV 4K uses an A15 Bionic Chip, it's not as if Apple doesn't already know how to make this form factor work. All it really needs is some USB-C ports front and back for connectivity and expansion and you'd have the makings of an excellent toy PC.
If you're wondering why I wouldn't just opt for the Apple TV 4K as a media center, it has just never appealed to me. Even before the price increase, it was simply too expensive for what it is and what it does. Sure, it's a premium streaming box, but that premium was far too much given the tolerable streaming experiences I get from my smart TV or satellite set-top box. Not to mention, $249 for a streaming puck is preposterous when you used to be able to get a whole-ass computer for just twice that figure.
Not to mention, of course, that if there are still people wary about dipping a toe into macOS, it would be an ideal first step. In fact, pretty much all of the reasons people bought a Mac mini until the AI bods ruined it could easily apply to the Neo. Best of all, it would be sufficiently underpowered that it won't run any AI model well enough for the cultists to want them. I'm not motivated by spite, but it would be nice if there was something that was insulated from the AI bubble.
