A brief history of the Mac mini
Twenty years ago today, on 11 January 2005, Apple introduced its first Mac mini at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, and eleven days later the first were delivered to eager customers. This article celebrates Apple’s only highly successful low-cost compact Mac.
From the first 128K Macintosh 41 years ago, Apple’s Macs have been premium products. That first Mac cost $2,495, despite being claimed to be affordable, and subsequent models did little to attract those buying cheaper PCs. The Macintosh II of 1987 was the first model with a separate display, but that was even more expensive, starting at $3,898.
Apple’s next idea of low cost came in the Macintosh LC starting at $2,400, and its LC successors, but none captured the market they were aimed at. The iMac from 1998 was far more successful, but kept to the original Mac’s concept of an integral display.
On 11 January 2005, Steve Jobs was reported as saying: “Starting at just $499, Mac mini is the most affordable way to enjoy Mac OS X and iLife. Just plug in your display, keyboard and mouse and you’ve got an incredibly compact Mac for a price that almost anyone can afford.” They started shipping in the US on 22 January, and a week later across the rest of the world.
That was the heyday of the Power Mac, and that first Mac mini came with a choice between 1.25 and 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processors, starting at $499 and $599 respectively. Build-to-order options could expand it to a total of 1 GB memory, with an optical SuperDrive, AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi card, internal Bluetooth, keyboard and mouse.
There were two revisions of that model in 2005, before it was replaced in February 2006 with the first Intel Mac mini. Here Apple made a small but historical slip in offering a base model with a single-core Yonah processor, making it the only single-core Intel Mac ever sold. That was soon rectified when all Mac minis came with Intel Core 2 Duo processors.
Because of their low cost, size and lack of display, Mac minis became popular as servers that could be tucked away out of sight. In October 2009, Apple released the first Mac mini Server, complete with a copy of Mac OS X Server. These early models also had the benefit of using socketed CPUs, so could be upgraded with more recent and faster processors.
–2009
This Mac mini from late 2009 is the last of the original design, and shows how well-equipped it came in terms of ports. In the top row, from left to right, are the power button, ventilation holes, Kensington lock slot, audio in, and audio out. Along the bottom row are DC power input for its external power supply, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800, Mini DVI, Mini DisplayPort, and its five USB 2.0 ports.
The Mac mini’s first redesign followed, and the new, thinner and more compact aluminium Unibody mini was released in June 2010.
–2010
This Unibody model from mid 2010 shows the new generation of ports, including RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800, HDMI and Mini DisplayPort, four USB 480 Mb/s, SD card slot, analogue/optical audio input, and analogue/optical audio output. Significantly, its power supply was now internal.
The following year, this was revised to bring support for Thunderbolt 1, but the internal optical drive was removed.
Since then, the Mac mini has remained highly popular, and has thrived with faster and more capable Intel processors. It has been packed into special rack and other mounts for mini server suites and Internet hosting, and taken far beyond the original concept of an affordable compact Mac. In 2018, the range included 4- or 6-core Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 processors that continued to be sold until two years ago, making the Mac mini one of the last Intel Macs.
The first Apple silicon Mac mini was released in late 2020, and came with the base M1 chip and no option for anything more powerful. That was rectified in January 2023, when the next Mac mini offered a choice between the base M2 and M2 Pro chips. However, Apple didn’t offer a Mac mini with an M3 chip, instead skipping straight on to the M4 and M4 Pro on 29 October 2024 in a surprise new design that shrinks its size even further.
Despite the popularity of Mac minis over those years, critics seldom gave it the praise it deserved, until the first Apple silicon model. The mini has served in almost every environment, and for most purposes. Those include home servers, home theatre and media libraries, and in sectors such s small business and education. It’s also being used by several cloud and colocation services, including MacStadium. Only with the latest higher-powered M4 variants has the Mac mini finally come of age in delivering the performance desired by many previous purchasers.
We look forward to the next twenty years of the Mac mini, Apple’s highly successful low-cost compact Mac.
References
Original press release, at the Internet Archive
Wikipedia
