Episode 101 - Return of the Mac (Mini)

Listen… we’re not going to beat around the bush here… when Apple’s fall Mac-centric event / infomercial / whatever they are these days turned into an outright string of glorified Press Releases I was… less than optimistic…

Apple loves their “big moment on stage”… at least historically. So if their collective decision was not not even bother just mere weeks after giving minutes of stage time to a new color treatment on a year old watch, this sure seemed to be shaping up into an iPad mini level of spec-bump fueled recycled yawns…

Well, dear friends... we… were… wrong…

Do the iMac and MacBook Pro look effectively identical to their predecessors save a few new color options? Sure do.

Did we get the larger (correctly) screened iMac option I’ve been holding space for on my desk for several years at this point? Not a chance. 

Was this potentially one of the most meaningful round of updates to the Mac lineup since the introduction of Apple Silicon? One hundred percent. 

MacBooks Pros? Fastest, most capable lineup from the baseline to the top with more battery life than ever before. 

iMacs start at enough RAM to actually recommend, get the same end-to-end performance bump, and are easier to recommend as an all-purpose hub computer than ever before. 

And then, finally, the most easily forgotten Mac got the biggest upgrade of them all…

We’ve said here countless times how the MacBook Air is the “laptop for everyone” (and with 16GB of secretly starting RAM mores than every, by the way), and we’re here to tell you the Mac mini is now firmly, without a doubt, with zero direct competition, the do-all desktop for nearly everyone…

Tiny footprint, incredible horsepower, ports front-and-back (finally), and a starting price of $599?

What can I say, we’ll take two…