The first M1-powered Mac mini by Apple is the company’s perfect migration to the Apple Silicon processors embedded on it. Apple earlier announced three Macs with Apple Silicon: the MacBook Air, the 13-in MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini, that uses an M1 chip and run on an optimized operating system named the Big Sur. They have features like unified memory.
Apple Silicon M1 Mac Mini
The Apple Silicon M1 Mac mini is powered by the macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 and has an 8-core Apple chip, 256GB SSD with 8GB of memory. The device can run a Pro Display XDR and run two displays from a single, entry-level Mac. The M1 Mac mini device is a sophisticated system on chip (SoC) tool. The SoC is the world’s first personal computer chip crafted with a 5-nanometer (nm) process technology and combines the CPU, GPU, security, I/O, memory on the chip, and 16 billion transistors.
According to Apple, the new M1 Mac mini features include excellent processor performance three times that of its predecessor, six times faster graphics, and a machine learning performance 15x efficient.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word tool hasn’t been optimized as an M1-native application, even though it is working on it. The device has an updated version of Word that runs in Rosetta 2 emulation on the new Mac device. However, users will have to wait longer than usual when launching the Word app for the first time.
Gaming Experience
The gaming experience is efficient and compatible with M1 Mac mini specifications as they don’t crash but play out quickly and fluidly.
Music Listening
The M1 Mac mini features gives a high-end music listening experience without skipping any music beat. One can mix and play different tracks without losing out on the excellent music listening value.
Apple’s Applications
In terms of Apple applications on the Mac mini, Apple stated that it had optimized the entire application pool to run natively on the Apple Silicon. And this holds! However, the only significant difference is that the applications seem to load more quickly on the M1 Mac mini than Intel Macs. Another difference is that the Rosetta translation app takes time to load on the M1 Mac mini.
iPhone and iPad Apps
Not all the applications of the iPad or iPhone are compatibly available for the M1 Mac mini. Apple developers are still in the process of deciding on the availability of apps for the mini. The available applications have been modified a lot many times to make them look Mac-like. M1 Mac mini can handle all the available applications efficiently.
Technical Specifications
The M1 Mac Mini price is $699 consisting 8GB memory and 256GB SSD. It has two Thunderbolt ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, Gigabit Ethernet, and a headphone jack for connectivity. There’s also an in-built mono speaker, and the device weighs 2.6 pounds. The dimensions of the device are 1.4×7.7×7.7 inches.
