MacStadium now offers Mac mini with M4 chip. Image credit: MacStadium.
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MacStadium now offers multiple configurations of Apple's latest Mac mini with M4 and M4 Pro chips. Here's what that means and why it matters.
MacStadium is a company that offers on-demand cloud infrastructure using Mac computers and macOS virtual machines for developers and engineers. The company previously unveiled the M2 Mac Mini and how it unveiled the machines with support for the latest Apple Silicon chips.
Shortly after announcing the updated Mac mini in October 2024, MacStadium announced that it would make the new machine available via the cloud and that users would have multiple configurations to choose from.
The company is offering four different configurations for the new Mac mini, ranging from the base M4 model with 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM to the M4 Pro with 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD.
MacStadium outlined the available Mac mini configurations as follows:
- M4.S — M4 chip with 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, 1 GB Ethernet
- M4.M — M4 chip with 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 24 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, 10 GB Ethernet
- M4.L — M4 Pro chip with 12-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 48 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 10 GB Ethernet
- M4.XL …0-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 48 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 10 GB Ethernet
M4 Pro chip with 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 64 GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 10GB Ethernet
According to the company's website, MacStadium will have the new Mac mini with M4 and M4 Pro available in its data centers for easy access to cloud development. The company's new data centers were shown in Apple's video highlighting the updated Mac mini.
While MacStadium called the Mac mini with the M4 chip “the biggest upgrade to the Mac mini ever,” its initial rack designs will retain the same density as previous versions. However, there is hope for improvements moving forward as the company previews a new form factor for the redesigned Mac mini.
The new Mac mini offers significant performance improvements over older models with the M2 chip
MacStadium sees the new Mac mini as a great machine for hosted computing at scale, and says the new form factor unlocks more potential. Compared to the previous model, the new and improved Mac mini offers a significant performance boost that will be noticeable even when using the machine in the cloud.
MacStadium racks of the Mac mini with the M4 chip were shown in Apple’s product announcement video.
Overall, the base M4 chip delivers a 30-50% performance boost over the standard M2 chip, though the percentage will vary depending on the task at hand. Xcode build times on the M4 are significantly slower than the M2 chip, while overall compute performance is close to that of the high-end M2 Pro chip.
The 12-core M4 Pro chip also delivers better performance than its predecessor, with scores comparable to the M1 Ultra in most situations. It even approaches the M2 Ultra in other cases, according to tests and benchmarks conducted by MacStadium.
AppleInsider highlighted many of the design and performance improvements in our dedicated review of the Mac mini with the M4 chip. We also have a review of the variant with the more powerful M4 Pro chip.
Overall, the updated Mac mini packs serious power into a surprisingly small form factor. That makes it a viable option in the cloud computing space, and MacStadium makes it accessible to engineers and developers around the world.
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