Ep.194 - NEW M6 Mac mini + iPhone Duo

Emanuel-C (0:04)

Hello, everyone in Podcastland. Welcome to this week's episode.

SPEAKER_2 (0:09)

On this week's episode of the podcast, we talk about the brand new Mac Mini and Mac Studio.

Emanuel-C (0:14)

We talk about the Gta VI extended look that came out on Netflix, and is now live on YouTube, and all the information we got from that. We talk about the upcoming Apple event this week where we're going to get new iPhones, watches, new AirPods, and possibly the first folding iPhone ever. And we talk quickly about the Zelda Direct coming up this week. Welcome to We Need to Talk About Tech. Where we talk about the past, present, and future of technology.

On to topic number one. So a couple weeks ago, now I think, right on August 25th, Apple updated a couple of devices. Now this wasn't a big event or anything. This was just through a press release and a couple of YouTube videos. They updated the Mac Mini by giving it M6 and M5 Pro. And they updated the Mac Studio by giving it an M5 Max chip and an M5 Ultra chip. Now, what a lot of people are talking about is the M6, Apple's brand new chip, debuted for the first time in a Mac Mini. And it's their first two nanometer chip also. So kind of like a new milestone for Apple in terms of the process. Apple claims this is the fastest single-thread performance in the world for any chip. This M6 features a 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU and dual 16-core neural engines. The M5 Ultra is Apple's first quad die architecture. So M6, first two nanometer, M5 Ultra, first quad die architecture, which really just means this chip is made of two M5 Maxes. Fused together and the M5 Max is made of, I believe two M5 Pros fused together. So they just essentially made an M5 Pro and just keep on multiplying it until they get an M5 Ultra. Now the M5 Ultra has a 30-core CPU, 64-core GPU and 32-core neural engine. Now, the big headline with these devices is the price. The Mac Studio starts at $24.99 for the M5 Max version. And starts at $54.99 USD for the M5 Ultra version. The M6 Mac Mini starts at $899 for the base M6 version. Base, entry level. And the reason why that is making news or why people are talking about it isn't because it's so affordable, it's so cheap, like we're all excited. It's because compared to what the M4 version launched at, this is a 50% price increase. Now, the M4 Mac Mini came out at $599 USD. And if you got student pricing, if you were able to get student pricing, it was $499 USD. So when that thing came out, and I'm one of the people included in this, everyone was saying how good of a deal it was, how highly they recommended to everyone. And if you're going to get into Macs, if you're going to get a Mac, this is the one that you should get. And to go from that to $899, like this used to be the budget device, the best value device for Apple. And now it's just like it still is, I guess, especially when you compare it to the Mac Studio, it still is a very affordable Mac desktop. But it isn't nearly as much of a value device. It isn't as much of a recommend as it was before. Still going to perform very well, definitely. I got the M4 Mac Mini when it came out. It still performs very well. I don't need anything more than that. If someone were to get an M6 Mac Mini, it would perform very well.

You wouldn't complain about that. And even like in the grand scheme of things, $900 for a desktop that's as good as this. Yeah, not that bad. I think just what stings so much is how well it was priced and how friendly it was priced to what it is now.

And when it comes to the M6 chip, there's some mixed news about it. People are saying, okay, now the M6 is in the Mac Mini. We're probably gonna get it in an iPad Pro soon, and then eventually we'll get in an iPad Air, and then it's gonna come to MacBooks.

But some people are saying that when it does come to laptops, when it comes to MacBooks, that there isn't going to be an M6 Pro and an M6 Max chip.

What some outlets are saying, and more specifically like Mark Gurman, who's the Apple leaker of all Apple leakers is saying, is that there's just gonna be an M6 chip. There won't be a Pro or a Max. And then next year, they're gonna come out with M7, and then we're gonna get the M7 Pro and M7 Max. So there's, it would be strange for them to do, for them to just kind of like skip, fully release in this generation. But I'm glad they came out with the M6.