Apple appears to be testing an M3 version of its Mac mini, due to the specifications that have begun appearing in third-party developer logs, as reported by Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter.
Gurman said a Mac under model identifier “Mac 15,12” that includes eight CPU cores (consisting of four efficiency cores and four performance cores), 10 graphics processor cores, and 24GB of RAM is showing up in developer logs.
The machine is reportedly running macOS Sonoma 14.1, which would be the first full-point update of Apple’s upcoming macOS operating system. As the machine in the log has similar specifications to the base M2 Mac mini, Gurman thinks it means Apple is working on a next-generation Mac mini.
Gurman also repeated previous comments, when he said that he expects the first M3-powered Macs to debut as early as October. However, he does not apparently expect the Mac mini to be one of the first models with the M3 chip.
The M3 chip is expected to use TSMC’s 3nm fabrication process for significant performance and power efficiency improvements when compared to the current 5nm-based M2 chip in existing devices.
