The Mac mini’s price has jumped 50% in 5 months — come on Apple, put an A18 Pro chip in an Apple TV-sized box and give us a $599 'Mac Neo' PC to bring the cost back down | Tech Radar
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The Mac mini’s price has jumped 50% in 5 months — come on Apple, put an A18 Pro chip in an Apple TV-sized box and give us a $599 'Mac Neo' PC to bring the cost back down
If it's good enough for the Mac Book Neo, it's good enough for a budget desktop
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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
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
Apple knows this; these people are exactly who the Mac Book 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.
Apple’s new Mac mini looks the same, but the M6 inside brings a major performance boost
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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 mac OS really well, because we've seen it do it in the Mac Book Neo. And Apple already has a small body that can take the thermal requirements of i Phone-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 i Phone chip, we can get the price down below
The Mac Book Neo is a genuinely great laptop for a low price — so let's drop the bits we don't need… (Image credit: Future)
If Apple is working on this, I expect we might have a bit of a wait — supposedly, the Mac Book 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 Mac Book 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.
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Matt is Tech Radar's Managing Editor for Home Tech, covering everything from TVs and home theater upgrades, to turntables and headphones, to air fryers and plug-in solar. Matt has over a decade of experience in tech publishing, and previously ran the TV & audio coverage for our colleagues at T3.com, and before that he edited T3 magazine. During his career, he's also contributed to places as varied as Creative Bloq, PC Gamer, Pets Radar, Mac Life, and Edge. TV and movie nerdism is his speciality, and he goes to the cinema three times a week. He's always happy to explain the virtues of Dolby Vision over a drink, but he might need to use props, like he's explaining the offside rule.
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