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Apple tree tends to cycle at least some of its laptops through periodic updates, merely it'southward not uncommon for desktop products to go longer in between product cycles. The current Mac mini is a late-2014 model with a Haswell-based Core i5-4260U, Cadre i5-4278U, or a Core i5-4308U. An optional Core i7-4578U is likewise bachelor, though Many Mac mini fans yet complaining the day Apple canned the quad-core Core i7 version (terminal seen in a 2022 model).

According to Tim Cook, Apple tree'southward CEO, the Mac mini isn't dead, it's simply resting an important product in Apple's desktop lineup. In an email to a MacRumors reader, Tim Melt wrote:

I'm glad you lot love Mac mini. We love it besides. Our customers have found then many creative and interesting uses for Mac mini. While information technology is not time to share whatsoever details, we do plan for Mac mini to be an important part of our product line going forward.

We've put together a nautical chart comparing the CPUs available in the current Mac mini to Intel's current offerings. The new chips we've included are:

Cadre i7-8650U: A new quad-core mobile fleck with a 15W TDP.
Cadre i7-7660U: Intel'due south fastest dual-core with a 15W TDP.

The other CPUs are the Haswell-era parts offered with the current Mac mini. About are 28W parts.

Intel-CPU-Comp

Early benchmarks advise the quad-cadre 15W CPUs are still markedly faster than their dual-core cousins with higher base of operations clocks. While the prices are high, keep in mind these are official prices — OEMs regularly receive bulk order discounts that make these chips much less expensive. The newer cores also do good from the small-scale performance improvements Skylake delivered and the college frequencies Kaby Lake (14nm+) and 8th generation mobile cores (14nm++) deliver.

Since graphics have changed significantly since Haswell, it's worth including those numbers, too.

Intel-Comparison-Graph2

The Intel integrated solutions on eighth-generation and sixth-generation chips are much faster than the older Haswell graphics solutions, and particularly the 7th-gen chip, which includes a 64MB EDRAM enshroud. DigitalTrends published a 2022 guide to Intel integrated performance, and while it doesn't include the very latest solutions, it definitely establishes a trend. We've linked the full article, but this graph is representative of functioning trends:

BF4-Perf

DT compared desktop cores, so the scaling won't be identical, but Intel's later graphics cores are clearly intrinsically faster than their Haswell counterparts. These new chips also back up 4K displays, higher base of operations clocks, and OpenGL 4.four.

In short, there'south a lot of performance being left on the tabular array at lower TDPs, and better, modernized features. Apple may non desire to divulge future product details, only when information technology does update the Mac mini it'southward going to deliver significantly improved performance.