The most impressive thing about the new Mini is its selection of ports. Despite this, the 2018 Mini has a few flaws that will probably keep it from being the best choice for most people. Still, I was impressed with the Mini's performance, and it's the cheapest way to get a macOS machine. In the past four years, micro PCs have vastly improved, and most of the major manufacturers now offer a tiny Windows machine. (It's also now made entirely from recycled aluminum, as is the new MacBook Air.) With vastly improved components, the Mini is now a viable competitor in the compact-desktop market.Īnd it does have competition. This new model retains the unibody design that we loved on the 2014 edition but sports a sleek space-gray color - a first for the Mini line. The lack of updates over the past four years left a lot of us wondering if we'd ever see a new model.įortunately, Apple has rectified the situation with the 2018 Mini. Amazingly, until last month the 2014 Mini was still available on Apple's web store for $500. Add in the fact that aside from storage it was not upgradable, and you had a computer that left a lot of users unhappy. This meant it was actually slower at some tasks than the computer it was supposed to replace. After offering quad-core CPUs on the 20 editions, the 2014 model was stuck with a dual-core CPU. Its last update, in 2014, was disappointing.
