It keeps rolling along: This is the week of Macs, and here comes a brand-new Mac Mini. The rumors were true: The M4 edition finds the company scaling the little desktop down to not much larger than an Apple TV. The Mini enclosure measures 5 x 5 inches, versus the Apple TV 4K's 3.66 x 3.66.

Also, the size is smaller due to efficient in-house silicon. Although smaller, still a fan is onboard with thermal vents on the bottom. Presumably due to the introduction of the base M4 or the newly announced M4 Pro with the latter possibly requiring cooling depending on how hard you put your foot on the pedal.

Apple has chosen to measure performance against the M1 model from launch, now versus 2023's M2 Pro; as such, the base M4 is said to constitute a 1.8x CPU increase and 2.2x for the GPU.

The M4 Pro is coming to the new Mini, with a sizeable price bump. Apple is touting the new chip as the "world's fastest" — take that for what you will. Meanwhile, the new GPU array improves ray tracing by 2x, which of course speaks to Apple's deepening interest in bringing gaming to the Mac.

The M4 Pro is also the first Apple Silicon chip to support Thunderbolt 5 (the M4 model is still rocking Thunderbolt 4). Apple has also moved a pair of ports to the front of the desktop, bringing it more in line with the Mac Studio. Around back you'll find three more Thunderbolt/USB-C ports, HDMI, and Ethernet.

Also worth a mention is that the new Mini is Apple's first carbon-neutral Mac, another step toward the company's plans to be fully carbon neutral by 2030.

The M4 Mini ships with 16GB of memory and starts at $599. The upgrade to M4 Pro is a big one: That model starts at $1,399. That is, notably, $100 more than the new M4 iMacs introduced on Monday.

Preorders for the Mini open today, and the device starts shipping November 8.