Apple has just unveiled the new Mac mini with M6 processor, and for me the biggest news is the price hike to $899 for the cheapest model.
This is a jump from $799 for the previous Mac mini M4 model — but that had also received a de facto price rise only back in May, when Apple discontinued the $599 entry-level option (with 256GB of storage) and made the $799 version (with 512GB of storage) the new lowest-price option.
It means that between April 2026 and August 2026, the minimum price you can pay for a Mac mini has jumped by 50%. That's not an ideal situation at a time when it feels like our income is being squeezed harder and harder every week.
Yes, you get more storage and the new $899 version has more powerful chip than in the older $599 version — but, frankly, there will be plenty of people for whom price is the key factor, not the ability to run LLM requests faster.
Apple knows this; these people are exactly who the MacBook Neo is aimed at. So now that the Mac mini is no longer a budget buy, we need Apple to bring the Neo principle to the desktop.
No revolution necessary
As I said in the headline, I don't think a 'Mac Neo' PC even needs to be a complicated proposition to develop: we already know the A18 Pro chip runs macOS really well, because we've seen it do it in the MacBook Neo. And Apple already has a small body that can take the thermal requirements of iPhone-level chip, in the form of the latest Apple TV 4K.
The existing Apple TV 4K body already has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennae built in, and Ethernet and HDMI output ports — and while it no longer has USB-C, it used to, so it wouldn't be too hard to add back in.
Surely, in a plastic body, using an iPhone chip, we can get the price down below $600 again. The MacBook Neo is $699, and that includes a screen, keyboard and battery, after all.
If Apple is working on this, I expect we might have a bit of a wait — supposedly, the MacBook Neo will get a refresh in 2027 with an upgrade to the Apple A19 Pro processor (which brings a boost from 8GB of RAM to 12GB with it), which makes sense in terms of Apple saying that the new AI Siri's most powerful features require 12GB of RAM.
It would probably make sense to launch my new 'Mac Neo' or 'Mac Nano' or whatever you want to call it alongside the next MacBook Neo, if it were to happen.
The idea of putting a cheap Mac in the Apple TV's body is something I've been talking about ever since the M1 chip was unveiled back in 2020. When the Mac mini M4 redesign appeared, with its excellent $599 price, I basically felt like I got what I wanted from the start.
But at these prices, I'm returning on my crusade — all the pieces are there to bring the Mac back to a truly budget price, and now more than ever people need a reliable, privacy-friendly computing option that's easy on the wallet.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.
