Tag Archives: Mac Mini

The Mac mini Form Factor is So Perfect, Literally Everyone is Copying It

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Apple Mac mini at center surrounded by six lookalike mini PCs from ASUS, Slimbook, Lenovo, MSI, Geekom and AceMagic.

Apple’s Mac mini is a 127 by 127 by 50mm aluminum square, and the PC industry has spent 2026 rebuilding that square with different logos on top. ASUS’s ExpertCenter PN55 measures 130 by 130 by 34mm. Geekom’s A9 Max sits at 135 by 132 by 46mm. Japan’s Links LC3501 shrinks it to 100 by 100 by 34mm. Dell skipped the mini entirely and went for the Mac Studio, giving the XPS RTX Spark Desktop a dark gray boxy body with a removable lid underneath for the SSD. At this point nobody is even pretending.

The convergence gets funnier at the expensive end. Every RTX Spark mini PC shown at Computex 2026, from Dell, Lenovo, ASUS and MSI, turned up with four USB-C ports, one HDMI and 10Gb Ethernet in a near-identical gray box. ServeTheHome, which photographed all four on the show floor, reckoned Nvidia is keeping a heavy hand on the steering wheel and enforcing design requirements on its partners. Apple arrived at this shape through integration, drawing an enclosure around a chip it designed itself. Everyone else arrived by consensus, or possibly by memo. Same silhouette, wildly different reason for existing.

1. Geekom A9 Max

Geekom A9 Max Mini PC on a table

Geekom’s A9 Max lands at 135 by 132 by 46mm, which puts it within 8mm of the Mac mini on every axis, close enough that the tape measure tells its own story. The chassis is full metal with softly radiused corners and a flat top plate, carrying the visual weight along with the footprint, that sense of a machined block rather than a molded shell. Inside is AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with Radeon 890M graphics, up to 128GB of DDR5 across two SODIMM slots and a pair of PCIe Gen 4 NVMe slots, for around $1,000. Geekom has spent years positioning itself as the answer to Intel’s NUC line, which died in 2023 and left the reference shape unclaimed. Somebody was always going to pick it up.

The limits show up under load rather than on the spec sheet. Testers found the 890M and the memory ceiling holding back heavier creative work, and the fans announcing themselves during video editing, which is the cost of working inside Apple’s volume without Apple’s thermal budget. One review measured an NPU benchmark score less than half what the identical processor managed in a rival machine, a gap Geekom later traced to a UEFI bug and patched. Apple ships one firmware for one board while Geekom ships many, and that difference surfaces in software long before it surfaces in the aluminum. The metalwork is excellent, and the chassis is the part of this machine that needed no revision at all.

2. Minisforum AI X1 Pro

Minisforum AI X1 Pro Mini PC on a table

Minisforum built the AI X1 Pro around everything Apple leaves out, and the case swelled accordingly. You get three M.2 slots, dual 2.5GbE, two USB4 ports, Wi-Fi 7, an internal 135W power supply instead of a laptop brick, and an OCuLink connector for hanging a desktop GPU off the side. Configurations run from a Ryzen 7 H 255 up to the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470, with sale pricing landing between $899 and $1,369 depending on memory and storage. The workmanship sits clearly above the class average, with properly machined surfaces rather than the painted-over castings this price bracket usually delivers. It is the most capable machine in this roundup and the least contained.

Reviewers logged what that ambition costs, noting that the swollen footprint makes it a harder sell against the M4 Mac mini, that it runs loud, and that the Wi-Fi needed attention out of the box. Every port is volume, every volume is airflow, and airflow is noise, which is the chain of consequences Apple sidestepped by declining to offer any of this in the first place. The AI X1 Pro is the honest version of the trade, and it tells you in cubic centimeters exactly what expandability costs. Anyone who has priced an external GPU enclosure knows OCuLink is the cheapest route to real graphics performance in a small box. You simply cannot have it inside a 127mm square.

3. ASUS ExpertCenter PN55

ASUS ExpertCenter PN55 Mini PC

ASUS measures the ExpertCenter PN55 at 130 by 130 by 34mm and 0.6kg, which is three millimeters off the Mac mini’s footprint in both directions and a full 16mm slimmer. The aluminum chassis carries finely etched lines across the top that run off the edge and resolve into the rear cooling vents, a detail doing real work by turning a functional grille into a graphic element. Inside is a Ryzen AI 400 Series processor with an NPU rated up to 55 TOPS, up to 96GB of DDR5, six USB ports and dual LAN, enough to drive four 4K displays. ASUS validated the whole thing to MIL-STD-810H for round-the-clock operation, which matters for the signage and kiosk deployments this line actually sells into. It was announced at CES 2026 and started shipping in Q2.

ASUS inherited the entire NUC program from Intel in 2023, which gives it more historical claim to the small desktop than anyone except Apple, and the PN55 still reads like a Mac mini that got a job in IT. Its own idea is the chassis mechanism, a hinged lever that pops the machine open for RAM and storage swaps without a single tool. That is a direct answer to Apple, whose 2024 redesign sealed the enclosure and turned memory into a decision you make once and live with for five years. An IT manager buying two hundred of these cares more about that lever than about anything else on the spec sheet. The footprint is borrowed; the service model is entirely its own.

4. Acer Veriton RI110

Acer Veriton RI110 Mini PC

Acer announced the Veriton RI110 at IFA in Berlin on September 2, making it the newest arrival in this convergence by a matter of days. The chassis measures 138.5 by 131.3 by 52.1mm and weighs 630 grams, so it sits 11mm wider than a Mac mini, 2mm taller, and marginally lighter at 1.39 pounds against Apple’s 1.5. Acer calls it a mini workstation, which is a lot of syllables for a box the size of a sandwich. Inside is Intel’s Core Ultra X7 358H with Arc B390 graphics, up to 96GB of dual-channel LPDDR5X and up to 4TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage, with 10GbE and 2.5GbE both fitted. Acer claims it will run AI models of up to 120 billion parameters locally.

Soldered LPDDR5X sets the ceiling here, because memory is fixed at the moment of purchase and stays fixed for the life of the machine, the same bargain Apple asks you to make. The OCuLink port is the counterweight, a PCIe 4.0 x4 link rated at 64Gbps that lets you hang a full desktop graphics card off the back, which is the most un-Apple gesture available in this form factor. That 120 billion parameter figure deserves a squint, since fitting a model that size into 96GB requires aggressive quantization Acer has not specified anywhere in its materials. North America gets it in Q4 2026, EMEA in Q1 2027, and no price has been announced. It is a Mac mini with a hole drilled in the back.

5. Links LC3501

Link LC3501 Mini PC

The Links LC3501 is 100 by 100 by 34mm, weighs 260 grams, and runs a four-core Ryzen 5 3501U that AMD shipped on the Zen+ architecture back in 2019. Scaling the square down to a 10cm footprint works visually, because the proportions hold and the thing reads as a deliberate object rather than a shrunken one. Japanese distributor Links sells it for ¥58,800 with 8GB of DDR4 and ¥64,800 with 16GB, roughly $367 and $404, with a 256GB SATA SSD and Windows 11 Pro preinstalled. It shipped in mid-September 2026 and is not coming to the US, so treat this one as evidence rather than as a purchase. The chip inside is seven years old and the case could not care less.

Putting a 2019 processor in a 2026 enclosure reads oddly until you look at where DRAM and NAND prices have gone, at which point the arithmetic makes sense. What the machine exposes is that the silicon has become the variable and the shape has become the constant. A 100mm footprint at 34mm tall is a genuinely lovely object, smaller than the Mac mini in every dimension, and the shape is doing considerably more of the work here than the hardware. Designers have a name for this moment, when a form outlives the constraints that produced it and carries on as pure style. The LC3501 is that moment, on sale now, for $367.

6. AceMagic F2A

AceMagic F2A Mini PC

AceMagic’s F2A measures 148 by 120 by 39mm in an all-plastic case, running a Core Ultra 5 125H or Core Ultra 7 155H with Intel Arc graphics, 32GB of DDR5 and a 1TB SSD for under $600. The proportions are a rectangle rather than a square, which changes the read entirely, because a square sits on a desk as an object and a rectangle sits there as a component. Plastic shifts it further, since much of the visual argument of this form factor rests on appearing to be a solid machined block. Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5Gb Ethernet are both fitted, there is a spare M.2 slot, and the ports are sensibly split across front and back. For the silicon on offer, the price is fair.

The port list is where the budget becomes visible, with no USB4 or Thunderbolt anywhere and every USB-A connector capped at 5Gbit/s. Dual fans get loud under sustained load, with no button or software toggle to bring them down. A plastic shell radiates far less heat than machined aluminum, so the fans work harder to compensate, which is a material decision producing an acoustic outcome. Apple’s aluminum enclosure functions as a heatsink that also happens to be a housing, and that double duty is the expensive part of this form factor. The outline is the cheap thing to reproduce. The substrate is not.

7. Slimbook ONE

Slimbook ONE Mini PC

Spanish builder Slimbook ships the ONE at 158 by 130 by 58mm in silver aluminum and black plastic, which is about as close to Cupertino as a color pairing can get without sharing a supplier. Configurations run to a Ryzen 7 H 255 or the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, with up to 128GB of RAM and up to 16TB of SSD storage, plus OCuLink, dual 2.5GbE, Wi-Fi 7 and USB4. Pricing starts at 649 € for the Hawk Point model, roughly $760, rising to 949 € for the Strix Point version. The order page is the real product here, because Slimbook preloads Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora or Linux Mint for free and charges extra for Windows. There is no US retail presence, so buying one means ordering from Spain.

Putting a silver aluminum square on a desk and booting KDE Plasma on it is a small act of comedy, and Slimbook knows exactly what it is doing. The company built its identity on selling Apple-grade hardware to people who actively prefer Apple’s software stay out of it, which turns the shared shape into an argument rather than an accident. Its own spec sheet at one point listed the machine as 5.5mm tall, a decimal point slip that would have made this the thinnest desktop computer ever built. The real number is 58mm, which is 8mm taller than a Mac mini and precisely what fitting OCuLink inside costs you. Small Linux vendors rarely get the metalwork this right.

8. MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG

MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG Mini PC

MSI has been building this box since 2015. The original Cubi arrived with a Broadwell chip, curved edges and a choice of black or white, nine years before Apple’s square settled into its current proportions. The current model is the Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG, announced at CES 2026 and shipping from May 1, measuring 119.6 by 115.2 by 37.5mm for a total volume of half a liter. That makes it smaller than the Mac mini on every single axis, which is an engineering result rather than a marketing one. Inside is an Intel Panther Lake chip up to the 16-core Core Ultra 9 386H, 32GB of DDR5, dual Thunderbolt 4, dual 2.5G LAN and Wi-Fi 7.

Matte black plastic and a fingerprint sensor set into the power button are the tells that this was drawn for an IT deployment rather than a display shelf, the finish flat and light-absorbing where anodized aluminum would catch an edge highlight. The compactness and the tool-free access to RAM and storage are the wins. The $1,999 price of a loaded configuration and the Xe3 integrated graphics are the limits, with barebones units starting at $569 for anyone supplying their own memory and storage. There is no USB-A connector anywhere on the rear panel, which anybody running a wired keyboard will notice on day one. MSI builds the chassis from post-consumer recycled plastics and ships it in FSC-certified packaging.

9. Lenovo ThinkCentre neo Ultra Gen 2

Lenovo ThinkCentre neo Ultra Gen 2 Mini PC

Lenovo aimed one product further up the Apple lineup here, because the ThinkCentre neo Ultra Gen 2 is chasing the Mac Studio, and the aim is uncomfortably good. It measures 195 by 191 by 108mm against the Mac Studio’s 197 by 197 by 95mm, landing within 6mm of Apple’s footprint on both axes and standing 13mm taller, which is roughly the height of a graphics card getting its own way. Inside that 3.6-liter box sits a full desktop GeForce RTX 5060 with 8GB of GDDR7, an Intel Core Ultra 9 285 vPro, 64GB of DDR5, three PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots and a 350W internal power supply rated at 92% efficiency. Thunderbolt 4 and HDMI 2.1 are both present. It weighs 8.2 pounds, or roughly five Mac minis.

Stuffing a desktop-class graphics card into Mac Studio proportions is the one thing Apple has never attempted, and it is the entire reason this machine exists. The chassis leaves room to swap the graphics card, the storage and the memory, making it the most serviceable object in this roundup by a distance, and the vents running down its flanks are doing considerably more visible work than Apple’s concealed underside intake. The costs are a 12-month warranty, no memory card reader of any kind, and pricing that has turned volatile, with one UK buyer paying £1,510 in late 2025 for a configuration listing above £3,400 by February. Configurations run from $1,919 to $2,409, which is Mac Studio money for Mac Studio dimensions. The square is the marketing; the RTX 5060 is the argument.

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The Mac Mini Belongs on a Desk, This Build Runs It From Your Hands

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Most people who outgrow a Mac Mini just buy a bigger one. One builder went the opposite direction, gutting an M4 Mac Mini down to its bare motherboard and squeezing the entire machine into something you hold in two hands. The result runs full macOS, plays games with real controllers, and never touches a wall outlet, proving Apple’s desktop silicon was never actually tied to a desk in the first place.

The trick starts with restraint rather than miniaturization. Instead of ripping out Apple’s factory heatsink and blower fan to save space, the build keeps that original cooling setup intact, letting the M4 chip run demanding workloads without throttling under heat. The motherboard and its cooling system then slide into a custom 3D-printed shell nicknamed the Mac Nano, treating Apple’s silicon less like a sealed product and more like a component waiting to be rehoused.

Designer: Shing Solutions

That shell doesn’t bolt permanently into the cyberdeck’s body. It slides in and out on rails instead, resembling something closer to a Game Boy cartridge than a soldered motherboard. Pull it free, and the rest of the handheld, its screen, its keyboard, its controllers, stays behind as a shell ready for whatever core gets slotted in next, whether that’s a repair, an upgrade, or an entirely different chip generation down the line.

Up front sits a 7-inch touchscreen running at 120Hz, paired with a shrunken QWERTY keyboard that includes its own built-in touchpad. That keyboard began as a wireless accessory, but its battery got pulled and rewired to draw power straight from USB instead, trimming both weight and one more thing that could run out of charge mid-session.

Gaming input came from an unexpected donor. Circuit boards pulled from genuine Nintendo Joy-Con charging grips now sit on rails built into both sides of the cyberdeck, wired directly rather than paired over Bluetooth. Since macOS has no native support for wired Joy-Cons, Steam’s controller mapping layer bridges that gap, turning what looks like a stripped-down laptop into something that plays games with console-grade tactile controls in hand.

Wiring that many peripherals into one small chassis created its own bottleneck. The fix came from combining two miniature USB splitter boards into a single custom three-port hub, stripped of their bulky original connectors to fit the tight internal layout. A bank of rechargeable cells rounds out the build, feeding a custom power delivery setup that keeps the whole machine running for hours without a cable in sight.

None of these choices were about making the smallest possible Mac Mini. They were about proving a desktop chip could be pulled apart, rehoused, and handed a battery without losing what made it worth owning in the first place. That kind of modular thinking, where the computer becomes a swappable cartridge rather than a sealed box, points toward a version of portable computing that upgrades in pieces instead of getting replaced whole.

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Apple’s $899 Mac mini Skips M5 Entirely, Keeps the 2024 Body

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Twelve days ago I wrote that Apple was testing a Mac mini with a brand new M6 in the cheap model and a carried-over M5 Pro in the expensive one, and that anyone holding out for a clean M5 mini should let that dream go. That machine now exists, with a price and a ship date. Mark Gurman’s reporting was the source and it landed almost exactly. I would be enjoying this more if the shipping version had not arrived with a hundred dollars stapled to both configurations. Being right is fun. Being right about a price hike is considerably less fun.

Here is what Apple actually put on sale on August 25, arriving September 22 across 30 countries. The $899 base mini gets M6, Apple’s first 2nm chip, with 12 CPU cores, 12 GPU cores and a Dual 16-core Neural Engine running at up to 170GB/s. The $1,699 model gets M5 Pro, scaling to 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores, 64GB of memory at 307GB/s, Thunderbolt 5, and the ability to cluster multiple minis to run large models entirely on device. Two chip generations, one product page. The aluminum shell is untouched since 2024.

Designer: Apple

Six hundred dollars bought an M4 Mac mini in October 2024, which felt at the time like Apple briefly forgetting to charge properly. May 2026 killed the 256GB configuration and pushed the effective floor to $799. June raised the M4 Pro from $1,399 to $1,599. Apple told the Wall Street Journal it had never seen component prices climb this much this quickly, pointing at the memory and storage crunch that AI data centres created. So the entry Mac has gained three hundred dollars in under two years, and the desktop best suited to running models locally got expensive precisely because everyone else is running models too.

M6 is Apple’s first 2nm silicon and it lands in the cheapest Mac on the shelf, with a 12-core CPU split into two super cores, four performance cores and six efficiency cores, plus a Neural Accelerator inside every one of its 12 GPU cores. M5 Pro, sitting in the machine that costs eight hundred dollars more, is last year’s architecture scaled wider. On the multi-core and graphics work that Pro-tier buyers actually pay for, M5 Pro wins comfortably. On the number printed on the box, it loses. Apple spent a decade teaching people to read that number as shorthand for how current a machine is, and has now quietly stopped honouring its own shorthand.

The gap traces back to a decision that had nothing to do with the mini. Apple reportedly cancelled the M6 Pro and M6 Max outright, fast-tracking an AI-focused M7 line rather than building a Pro tier that would be stale within months of shipping. The engineering logic is sound and I understand it. The customer position is still rough. Mac Studio pulled the same trick last year with mismatched M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips and nobody blinked, because Studio shoppers expect spec weirdness, while the mini is the Mac people buy specifically because it never asks them to think.

Three Thunderbolt 4 ports sit on the back of the newer-silicon M6 model, while the older M5 Pro gets Thunderbolt 5. That is segmentation, not physics, and it is the clearest sign that Apple is now pricing tiers rather than describing them. Both machines pick up Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard, with a 10Gb option. The two front USB-C ports still run at plain USB 3 speeds. New genlock support over USB-C syncs a display to a camera, including the iPhone 17 Pro, which is a genuinely useful addition nobody will notice.

That unchanged aluminum box remains my favorite part of this whole story. Every vertical cooling case, stacking SSD and retro Macintosh shell built for the M4 still fits, which is accidental sustainability of a kind Apple rarely gets credit for. The power button is still underneath, obviously. What Apple has not published is a single head-to-head AI benchmark between M6 and M5 Pro, which is the one comparison that would tell buyers whether the cheap mini out-thinks the expensive one. Its silence there is doing a lot of work.

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Mac mini M5 May Get Skipped Entirely as Apple Tests M6 and M5 Pro Combo

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Feeling like you’ve heard this before? You sort of have. Last year Apple quietly shipped a Mac Studio with mismatched M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips, and buyers barely blinked, since Studio shoppers expect spec weirdness. Now the same move looks headed for the Mac mini, the one Mac people buy precisely because it is simple, affordable, and predictable. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is testing units that pair a new M6 chip with a carried over M5 Pro.

That is an odd combination to put inside Apple’s most straightforward computer. The Mac mini has never asked buyers to think twice about chip lineage, and now it may become the clearest example yet of how messy Apple’s silicon strategy has gotten.

Design: Apple

The mismatch traces back to a decision Apple made months earlier, and it has nothing to do with the Mac mini specifically. Apple canceled the M6 Pro and M6 Max outright, choosing to fast track the AI focused M7 lineup instead of building a Pro tier that would have been outdated within months of shipping. That leaves a gap in the middle of the chip family, and the Mac mini’s step up configuration is the one stuck filling it with last year’s silicon. I get the engineering logic. I still think it is a rough position to put a customer in.

Here is the part that will annoy anyone who buys on spec sheets alone. An M5 Pro comfortably beats a base M6 on the multi core and graphics work that Pro tier buyers actually care about, so the generation label is closer to marketing noise than a real downgrade. Performance wise, the pricier mini still wins. But nobody wants to spend more money and watch the box on the shelf next to it wear a newer number. Apple has spent a decade training customers to read chip generations as a shorthand for how current a machine is, and this configuration quietly breaks that shorthand.

There is a supply chain story sitting underneath all of this too, and it is worth naming. The global memory shortage that pushed MacBook Pro prices up by three hundred dollars in June is the same pressure shaping this roadmap. Apple already pulled higher RAM configurations from some Mac mini and Mac Studio models earlier this year, and Gurman’s own reporting notes the mismatched mini’s exact chip and memory setup still depends on how memory supply plays out. None of this is locked in yet. Testing configurations shift constantly, and Apple has not committed to a release window.

What makes this genuinely interesting from a design standpoint is the mini’s shell. That aluminum box has not changed since the M4 redesign in 2024, and it may end up carrying three chip generations without a single exterior update. Apple has effectively split the Mac mini’s identity in two, treating the outside as a fixed platform and the inside as a variable it can rearrange however the roadmap demands. That is a different kind of product thinking than the tidy, synchronized launches Apple built its reputation on.

Whether that flexibility reads as smart engineering or a confusing shopping experience will depend entirely on how Apple prices and markets the two configurations when they actually arrive. For now, anyone holding out for a clean M5 Mac mini should probably let that expectation go. The machine that shows up later this year might carry a name nobody predicted, wrapped in a body nobody will notice changed at all.

 

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This classic 1979 LEGO computer brick hides a fully functional Mac mini workstation inside

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Retro designs often carry a sense of nostalgia, but occasionally they evolve into something more functional and imaginative. The M2x2 workstation by Watt IV is a good example with the inventive reinterpretation of a classic LEGO element transformed into a fully working desktop computer. Created by Dutch designer Paul Staal, the device takes inspiration from the iconic sloped LEGO computer brick introduced in 1979 and scales it up into a practical workstation powered by a modern Mac mini.

The DIY centers around the familiar wedge-shaped Slope 45 2×2 LEGO piece, a part historically used in LEGO space-themed sets as a representation of computer terminals inside spacecraft cockpits. Staal enlarged this element to roughly ten times its original size, turning it into a functional housing that blends retro toy aesthetics with contemporary computing power. Inside the oversized brick sits an Apple Mac mini equipped with Apple’s M4 chip, transforming the playful concept into a capable desktop system.

Designer: Paul Staal

Rather than serving as a simple decorative shell, the M2x2 integrates several practical features that enhance its usability as a workstation. A slanted 7-inch IPS touchscreen is embedded in the front face of the structure, echoing the display graphic printed on the original LEGO piece while providing real functionality. The compact screen acts as a secondary interface, often used for quick system information or dashboards. Staal, for instance, uses it primarily to monitor and control his smart home through a Home Assistant interface while working on a larger external display.

The case includes front-facing ports enabled through a USB-C hub, along with an SD card reader for easy access to external storage and accessories. This arrangement ensures the device remains practical for everyday use despite its playful form factor. The system also retains portability elements inspired by early Apple computers, including a built-in handle at the back that makes the unit easy to move around a desk or workspace. While the M2x2 works as a self-contained computer, it is typically paired with a larger external monitor for full productivity. In everyday use, the Mac mini handles the heavy computing tasks while the built-in display functions as a control panel or status screen.

Perhaps the most creative detail lies in the oversized LEGO studs on top of the case. Instead of being purely decorative, these studs are designed to perform useful functions. One of them operates as a rotary control that can adjust volume or media playback, while the other conceals a wireless charging bay capable of powering devices such as AirPods or an Apple Watch. The studs themselves remain compatible with standard LEGO elements, allowing users to attach minifigures or bricks for a playful finishing touch.

The M2x2 is largely built from 3D-printed components, making it accessible to enthusiasts who want to build their own version. Staal modeled the structure in CAD software and designed it as a modular system consisting of multiple printable parts. Aside from the Mac mini itself, the required materials are relatively simple, including PLA filament, a small touchscreen display, screws, and a USB-C hub. Assembly instructions and downloadable files are available, allowing makers to replicate or modify the design to suit their needs.

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Mac Neo Concept Imagines a Cheaper, A18 Pro-powered Apple Desktop Built for the OpenClaw Era

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Apple’s MacBook Neo opened the door to a new kind of Mac, one that trades raw power for accessibility, color, and mass appeal. The A18 Pro chip powering it has already proven capable enough for a full laptop experience, which makes the logical next question an obvious one: what happens when that same formula moves to the desktop? The timing couldn’t be sharper. OpenClaw’s rise as a locally-run AI agent has sent Mac Mini demand into a frenzy, with high-memory units backordered for up to six weeks and stock selling out across multiple markets. People clearly want affordable Apple silicon desktops, and supply simply hasn’t caught up.

That gap is exactly where a Mac Neo would land. Sitting below the Mac Mini in price while carrying the same cheerful color identity as the MacBook Neo, it fills a slot in Apple’s lineup that currently doesn’t exist but arguably should. Students, first-time Mac buyers, and anyone running lightweight local AI workloads would have a natural home in the Mac Neo. Apple already has the MacBook Neo pulling switchers in from the laptop side, and a matching desktop completes the picture. It carries the MacBook Neo’s spirit forward into the living room, the dorm room, and the home office, completing a product family that right now feels one piece short.

Designer: Apple
Images Created Using AI

That Mac Mini silhouette in blush pink or citrus yellow feels like the iMac G3’s spiritual successor. The color makes it feel personal rather than utilitarian, which is exactly what Jobs and Ive were aiming for with the iMacs back in the pre-aluminium days. The color-matched aluminum shell mirrors the same four-finish palette as the MacBook Neo, which means Apple could market these as a set to schools and first-time buyers with minimal effort. What’s visually notable is the slim profile, noticeably thinner than the current Mac Mini, which tracks given the A18 Pro runs completely fanless in laptop form. A desktop chassis with even modest passive cooling could push that chip harder and longer than any laptop allows.

The A18 Pro ships with a 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process. In the MacBook Neo, it runs completely fanless through photo editing, streaming, and light AI inference. Drop it into a desktop with a real power brick and passive cooling, and the chip gains the thermal headroom to sustain performance a laptop chassis simply cannot hold. Apple’s own benchmarks show the A18 Pro outperforming Intel Core Ultra 5 PCs in the same class, and a desktop form factor with better cooling only reinforces that. Configure it with 16GB of unified memory and you have something that runs local model inference comfortably and covers the full Apple Intelligence feature set.

 

Apple’s current Mac lineup has no desktop entry below $599, leaving the budget switcher market completely unaddressed. A Mac Neo at $399 puts macOS in the same price bracket as Chromebooks, which have dominated education for over a decade largely because Apple never showed up at that price with a desktop. The OpenClaw surge sharpens the argument: Mac Mini shortages stretching six weeks on high-memory units confirm massive pent-up demand for affordable Apple silicon desktops. These buyers want local AI on hardware they own, and the Mac Mini’s $599 floor prices many of them out. A Mac Neo with 16GB unified memory, Apple Intelligence support, and a $399 starting price addresses all of that and does it in a package that actually looks like it belongs on a desk.

 

 

 

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This $170 Retro Dock Solves the Mac Mini M4’s Biggest Port + Connectivity Problem With Style

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Apple’s Mac mini M4 is absurdly powerful for its size, but connecting anything to it requires a patience-testing game of dongle Tetris. The Wokyis M5 fixes this the fun way, wrapping your diminutive desktop in a retro Macintosh shell that’s actually packed with ports and storage. Yes, the naming is confusing since there’s no Mac mini M5 yet, but the compatibility story is straightforward: this works with the M4, M2, and M1 Mac minis, plus any Mac with Thunderbolt 3/4/5 ports.

Inside that beige plastic homage to computing history, you’ll find legitimately fast 10Gbps connectivity on both USB-A and USB-C ports, card readers that hit 312MB/s with UHS-II cards, and a tool-free M.2 enclosure with included thermal pads for proper heat management. The 5-inch screen displaying “hello” works as a proper 720p panel for desktop widgets, music lyrics, photo frames, or system stats. Testing shows the SSD enclosure delivers around 900 MB/s with quality NVMe drives, which is respectable for a hub in this price range. The design lets you access the Mac mini’s own ports through a removable bottom panel, so nothing gets sacrificed in the name of aesthetics.

Designer: WOKYIS

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Photographers and video editors know the Mac mini M4’s port limitation intimately. Three Thunderbolt 4 ports and two USB-A ports sound adequate until your monitor claims one, your external SSD takes another, and you’re suddenly rationing connectivity like it’s a finite resource. The front panel of the M5 solves this with two USB-A 10Gbps ports, one USB-C 10Gbps port, and SD plus microSD slots that handle UHS-II speeds at 312MB/s. Offloading a 128GB card from a photo shoot takes minutes instead of the geological timescale you’d experience with slower readers. You do this without unplugging anything or performing cable gymnastics behind your monitor.

The M.2 enclosure accepts NVMe drives from 2230 to 2280 form factors and supports up to 8TB of storage. Pair it with a Samsung 990 EVO Plus and you’ll see read and write speeds hovering around 800 to 900 MB/s, which translates to genuinely usable performance for 4K editing timelines or RAW photo libraries. Wokyis ships two thermal pads in the box: a thicker one for single-sided SSDs and a thinner variant for double-sided drives. The passive cooling approach works because there’s actual thought behind the thermal management rather than hoping convection does all the heavy lifting. No fans means no noise, which matters when you’re recording voiceovers or working in a quiet space.

That 5-inch display hits 1280×720 resolution at roughly 290 PPI, putting it squarely in Retina territory for normal viewing distances. Text renders crisp, colors track accurately for casual use, and brightness handles typical indoor lighting without struggle. You can feed it content through the HDMI-in port or the USB-C host connection depending on your setup preferences. People are running Spotify controls on it, system monitoring dashboards, security camera feeds, even Slack notifications. The dedicated power button on the front means you can kill the screen when you don’t need it running, which beats having a perpetually glowing display burning into your peripheral vision at 2 AM.

Wokyis nailed the proportions by treating the original Macintosh as inspiration rather than a blueprint to slavishly recreate. The beige matches Apple’s classic off-white perfectly, the ventilation grills reference the original’s cooling design, and that rainbow stripe sits exactly where your brain expects it. The dimensions wrap the Mac mini M4 specifically, with a removable base plate that keeps every native port accessible. You’re adding capability on top of what Apple gave you rather than trading functionality for aesthetics. The Mac mini slides in, locks down, and you’ve suddenly got a setup that looks like it time-traveled from 1984 while performing like it’s from 2025.

Generic USB-C hubs from Anker or CalDigit run $80 to $150 and offer similar port counts with zero personality. None of them include an SSD enclosure or a display. The M5 at $169.99 lands in a weird value proposition where you’re paying a modest premium for design that actually makes you happy to look at your desk. The 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 version exists at $389 if you’re pushing enormous video files or running external GPUs, but that’s specialist territory. The 10Gbps model handles what 90% of users throw at it. Ships in two days direct from Wokyis or grab it from Amazon if you’ve got Prime and prefer that refund safety net. Either way, you’re getting a dock that makes the Mac mini M4 better at its job while looking fantastic doing it.

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The post This $170 Retro Dock Solves the Mac Mini M4’s Biggest Port + Connectivity Problem With Style first appeared on Yanko Design.

This transparent Spigen shell turns your Mac mini into a tiny iMac G3 and I kind of love it

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Spigen just launched a plastic shell that turns your Mac mini into a time machine. The Classic C1 wraps Apple’s minimalist aluminum cube in translucent plastic inspired by the iMac G3, complete with Bondi Blue and Tangerine colorways that defined Apple’s most playful era. For $32.99, your desk gets an instant injection of late ’90s nostalgia without sacrificing any of the Mac mini’s modern functionality.

The case feels like Spigen asking “what if Apple never stopped being fun?” The iMac G3 saved the company in 1998 by proving computers could be joyful instead of boring beige boxes. Now that same translucent aesthetic wraps around Apple’s most compact desktop, creating a bridge between two completely different design philosophies. The Mac mini stays minimalist underneath while the C1 shell broadcasts personality loud enough to make your entire workspace smile.

Designer: Spigen

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You’d almost expect a $45 plastic accessory to feel like a cheap gimmick, but peeling back the layers reveals some genuinely clever engineering. The exploded view shows this is a multi-part assembly, not some flimsy snap-on lid. Its base is a precisely molded cradle with ventilation slots that align perfectly with the Mac mini’s own air intake. The whole thing is built from a sturdy blend of PMMA, acrylic, and PVC that gives it the authentic heft and feel of turn-of-the-millennium hardware. This isn’t just a costume; it’s a well-made suit of armor.

It’s the smaller, nerdier details that really sell the execution. The vertical grilles on the sides are a direct homage to the Power Mac G4 Cube, yet they also provide functional ventilation for a machine that can get surprisingly warm. That clear base also elevates the entire unit just enough to improve airflow from below, and the inclusion of a simple dust filter is a practical touch most companies would skip. This is what separates a thoughtful tribute from a lazy cash-grab, proving someone at Spigen actually did their homework on Apple’s golden age.

Let’s face it, the Mac mini is an incredibly boring-looking box. It’s a marvel of miniaturization, sure, but it has all the personality of a corporate paperweight. The C1 completely upends that sterile aesthetic, swapping the cold, professional feel of aluminum for the warm, inviting glow of colored plastic. It reminds you that technology can be approachable and even a little bit weird. It turns an appliance back into a companion, something with a presence that does more than just sit there and compute.

Ultimately, this little plastic shell is a rebellion against the sea of monotonous silver and gray (we even wrote about an iMac G3-inspired Apple Watch just yesterday!) Given CES is in another week or so, we’re prepared for an onslaught of sleek silver or black boxes that do a lot without having much character. But for thirty-three bucks, you get to reclaim a bit of that lost optimism as an existing (or prospective) Apple Mac mini owner. It’s a small, delightful declaration that our desktops don’t have to be so damn serious (aka boring) all the time.

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Custom Modded iMac G3 Has An M4 Chip And Runs Cyberpunk 2077 At 30 FPS

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Remember the Apple iMac G3? Those translucent, candy-colored bubble machines were everywhere in the late 90s and early 2000s. Steve Jobs and Jony Ive turned computing into something you’d actually want on your desk, and suddenly schools, offices, and homes were full of these things. For a lot of people, this was their first real computer.

But try using one today and you’ll understand why they’re mostly decorative now. The CRT screen hurts to look at, the processor moves like molasses, and those integrated speakers that seemed so premium back then sound absolutely terrible. That’s what makes Zac Builds’ recent project worth paying attention to. He took an iMac G3 shell and rebuilt it with current hardware, keeping everything that made the original iconic while fixing everything that makes it painful to actually use.

Designer: Zac Builds

The teardown shows just how strange these computers were. Apple used pressed-form RF shielding that looked genuinely sculptural, completely functional but designed to look cool even though nobody would ever see it. Then there’s the CRT, which can store lethal amounts of energy months after you unplug it. After carefully discharging the tube and pulling out all the original components, Zac had that famous shell and a whole lot of empty space to work with.

Removing everything created a structural problem. The case was basically held together with clips, so Zac 3D-scanned all the remaining parts to create precise digital models. He designed custom posts to properly connect the top and bottom halves, plus replacement clips where the old plastic had crumbled. He even tracked down the right 3D printing filament to match Apple’s original translucent plastic, testing physical color swatches until he found Bambu’s transparent PETG.

The core of the build is an M4 Mac Mini. Apple’s M-series chips have turned out to be legitimately good. They’re efficient, compact, and powerful enough for serious work without turning into space heaters. The base $599 model delivers solid performance, though Apple still charges obscene amounts for storage upgrades.

Zac addressed storage with three different solutions. First, he upgraded the internal NVMe drive. The Mac Mini’s storage isn’t soldered, which is unusual for Apple, though it uses a proprietary format and requires another Mac to restore the system via DFU mode. Apple’s documentation even gets it wrong, saying not to use a Thunderbolt cable when that’s actually what makes it work. Second, he added a UGREEN hub that plugs into the Mac Mini and has its own NVMe slot underneath, adding 2TB in about 15 seconds. Third, he connected a UGREEN NAS for bulk storage, supporting up to 60TB without subscription fees.

The display replacement required some creative problem-solving. Finding a modern screen that fits the G3’s curved opening while maintaining that retro 4:3 aspect ratio is basically impossible. Zac went with a 14-inch 4K OLED at 16:10, then designed a custom interposer frame to bridge the gap between the flat screen and the curved case. Getting that transparent frame to look right meant using CA glue without accelerator spray, which takes 8+ hours to cure but avoids the foamy expansion you’d see through clear plastic.

The audio system got a proper upgrade too. Zac installed Dayton Audio 1.5-inch full-range drivers in custom 3D-printed enclosures designed for optimal acoustic volume. A 200-watt digital amp boosts the signal from the Mac Mini’s headphone jack, and after some tweaking, the whole setup works like it’s factory-integrated and responds to software volume controls.

The power system is genuinely clever. Zac rewired the original power cord to feed automotive-grade junction terminals that distribute 120V AC to everything inside: the Mac Mini, the screen’s power supply, the amp’s transformer, and anything else that needs power. It’s live electricity, so there’s real risk if you’re careless, but the modular approach means one cord powers everything.

The IO panel mirrors the original’s placement while offering Thunderbolt, USB-C, dual USB-A, and Ethernet, all connected back to the Mac Mini through short cable extensions. Even the original power button works, thanks to some microscope-assisted soldering that extended the Mac Mini’s switch contacts to reach the front of the case.

The rebuilt machine runs Cyberpunk 2077 and handles 6K video editing smoothly. The upgraded internal drive shows 50% speed improvements, while the external NVMe delivers nearly 1GB/s transfers. Both options cost significantly less than Apple’s storage pricing.

Could you just buy a MacBook instead? Sure, and you’d get more portability. But you’d also pay nearly three times as much for comparable storage, and you’d miss the entire point. This project isn’t about building the most practical computer – it’s about preserving a design icon while making it genuinely usable. Like restoring a classic car, you’re trading pure practicality for the joy of bringing something meaningful back to life. Zac’s rebuilt iMac G3 delivers that early-2000s nostalgia without the painful slowness, eye-straining display, or terrible speakers, proving that sometimes the best way forward is to bring the past along with you.

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Mac mini M4 dock offers a stylish way to expand your ports and storage

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The popularity of the Mac mini has made small desktop computers quite the fad. Especially with small components getting more powerful, it’s now possible to have a decent desktop experience in a small box. What isn’t possible, however, is enjoying the same range and variety of ports available on towers, at least not without some outside help.

Docks for mini PCs aren’t new, but the Mac mini does present some very particular design challenges. How do you make a dock that isn’t just functional but also just as aesthetic as the Mac mini itself? That’s the puzzle that this new dock for the latest Apple mini computer tries to solve using a large number of ports, a hidden SSD enclosure, and a rather peculiar appearance.

Designer: RayCue

The Mac mini has always been designed to be discreet and subtle so it could be hidden from view while it does its job. Lately, however, the trend has been to actually show off the beautiful minimalism of these small boxes, though that also meant exposing hubs and docks that extend the modest port selection of the mini computer. Rather than those conventional long bars, hubs made specifically for the Mac mini are designed to sit beneath the computer, blending in as if part of Apple’s design itself.

RayCue’s hub and stand for the newest Mac mini M4 and M4 Pro follow that trend, adopting the same silver colorway as the Mac mini itself as well as its length and width. It sits below the Mac mini, leaving a slight gap in between for better airflow. A rather interesting design choice, however, is the raised fins radiating from the center of the dock, perhaps acting as passive cooling for the small yet powerful computer.

The RayCue Mac mini M4 dock expands the port selection with 10 different connectivity options, including an additional HDMI port for a dual display setup that doesn’t sacrifice a Thunderbolt port. Just like the Mac mini itself, it’s designed to have the most often accessed ports in the front, leaving the more “stationary” ones on the back.

Another trend in this product category is using the spacious dock for additional storage. The RayCue dock and stand supports a variety of M.2 NVMe SSD sizes up to 4TB in capacity, almost double the maximum Mac mini configuration available. Stylish and functional, it’s a perfect complement to the elegant Mac mini M4, one that will, however, cost you $99 without a $20 pre-order discount.

The post Mac mini M4 dock offers a stylish way to expand your ports and storage first appeared on Yanko Design.