In a trendy corner of Los Angeles, I was able to try out Apple’s new Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro machines. These machines are powered by the company’s new M4 chip with Apple Intelligence AI.
These latest desktops and laptops feature a variety of improvements, some of which are minimal, such as the addition of Thunderbolt ports on the MacBook Pro and the smaller size of the Mac Mini. But the biggest advancement is the introduction of the Apple-designed M4 chip across all models, which enables more AI features, abilities, and gaming performance. I saw some of these demos on display at Apple’s Los Angeles showcase, including audio creation, video editing, and gaming demos, and was impressed.
Look at this: A close look at Apple’s new M4 Mac: Details on the 2024 MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and iMac
A few caveats: I wasn’t able to run any benchmark tests or try anything other than what’s available as part of Apple’s demo. Stay tuned for a full review coming soon. In this review, we’ll show you exactly how Apple’s M4 Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro model lineup compares to previous models and the growing competition from Microsoft’s AI-powered Copilot Plus PC.
M4 iMac colors are nice but not too bright
Despite a surprisingly simple list of colors (Apple usually names its hues with some sort of hyperbole), the M4 iMac’s rainbow was too visually arresting to ignore. The M4 iMac comes in blue, purple, pink, orange, yellow, green, and silver, all in a subtle two-tone color scheme. The back of the computer is a bolder shade, while the metal stand and front panel below the display are a slightly more muted version of the same color.
This makes it more attractive than ever and is as thin as last year’s iMac M3 model. New are Thunderbolt 4 ports (two on cheaper configurations with two USB-C ports, four on more expensive configurations), a sharper 12-megapixel camera that lets you take center stage, and glare. Optional nano-texture display to reduce. Useful for office workers whose lighting is at an unfortunate angle.
We also saw the camera’s new desk view feature. This captures video of what’s on your actual desk underneath your iMac’s display. This felt like a gimmick, but it could be useful for, say, a streamer working on hands-on crafts or an instructor writing equations by hand over Zoom.
Comparison of the old Mac Mini (left) and the new M4-powered Mac Mini (right).
Small but powerful Mac Mini
I’m a big fan of small gadgets, so I found the new Mac Mini to be both powerful and fun to look at. As with clamshell flip phones, increasing thickness is a worthwhile tradeoff if it means reducing the overall footprint of the device. Apple placed the old Mac Mini side by side with the new Mac Mini. While the former is still an impressive size, the new Mini can be held in one hand. This is an M4-powered computer that you can keep in your bag.
Bottom view of the old Mac Mini on the left and the new 2024 Mac Mini on the right. Notice the power button in the top right corner of the updated version’s all-black bottom.
Yes, Apple made another quickly infamous design choice by putting the power button on the bottom, but it’s easier to turn on the new Mini by tilting it upwards (for those who want to turn off the computer). If it increases). The front USB-C port is perfect for accessories that don’t require the 40 Gbit/s bandwidth of the three Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the front, an HDMI output and an Ethernet port on the back, and all the basics are covered.
Bottom view of the new Mac Mini 2024. The location of the power button is shown. When you place your computer on a desktop with the ports facing forward, the button is located just below the rear left corner.
One of the Mac Mini demos showed how to run Logic audio editing software, with AI Music Maker allowing you to add AI-created music tracks to your videos. These can be built step by step, adding drums, bass, keyboards, and other musical elements layer by layer, each fine-tuned with a wide range of controls. No knowledge of music theory required.
A logic computer program that runs AI Music Maker. The drums are yellow and on top, and the guitar and keyboard are on the bottom but not selected.
For example, our demonstrator added a kick drum and hi-hat cymbal with just a tap of a few icons, adding complexity to the track (in this case, more frequent and varied drums between major beats) . Melody instruments can move up or down the octave scale, while piano keyboards can select one or both “hands” to add the treble, bass, or both ranges of the chord scale to the audio. All of these are created on the fly by AI and are available royalty-free.
Play the 2019 Remedy Entertainment game Control on a MacBook Pro 2024 with an M4 Max chip and 128 GB of RAM.
MacBook Pro is Siri, ChatGPT, and a gaming console
The new MacBook Pro models didn’t add anything to their layout or design from last year’s M3 model, but the lower-end M4 14-inch MacBook Pro now has three USB-C ports instead of two. In fact, all of this year’s models feature three Thunderbolt 4 ports (upgrading to the M4 Pro or M4 Max offers Thunderbolt 5 with data transfer speeds of up to 120 Gbps).
On a max-spec MacBook Pro 16-inch model with an M4 Max chip and 128 GB of RAM, a demonstrator asks Siri AI to perform several tasks, including advice on how to combine PDFs. I saw it. Through Apple’s partnership with ChatGPT, we’ve seen AI chatbots answer more complex search queries asking about activities in Malibu. In both cases it took several seconds for the system to respond. This was about the same amount of time it took my iMac to move several tables away to perform the same task. The laptop can also turn photos into AI-generated cartoons, which take about the same amount of time and are somewhat similar to the image generation feature shown off in Microsoft Copilot Plus PC released earlier this year.
The most impressive feat of performance I saw from the M4 chip was pushing the pixels to play Remedy Entertainment’s 2019 game Control. To show off the M4’s ray-tracing capabilities, Apple chose a section of the third-person shooter game set in a dark, dimly lit cavern lit by bright flashes. As you stomped through puddles and shot at enemies, you could see accurate reflections of your surroundings. Granted, this was running on a full-spec MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip and 128GB of RAM, so I was curious to see how such a graphical workload would be handled on a more modest configuration. There is.
All in all, the Los Angeles demo session was a short, subdued, but fascinating glimpse into Apple’s new line of computers. Some are visually appealing, others with modest upgrades, but all promise performance upgrades that enable AI capabilities. However, it’s worth noting that we won’t know how essential these tools will become until Apple Intelligence is rolled out and software companies integrate next-generation technologies.
