Apple is giving away free M5 Pro upgrades because even they realized the M4 is a dinosaur
It is not every day Apple decides to play Santa Claus with their hardware. While usually, the only thing they give away for free is a sense of crushing debt, they are actually swapping out pre-ordered Mac mini units for faster chips at no extra cost.
When Apple dropped the latest Mac mini lineup featuring the M6 and M5 Pro chips, one customer realized his pending order for an M4 model had been automatically upgraded to the M5 Pro for free. The logic seems to be that since the device hadn't left the warehouse, there was no point in shipping a machine that belongs in a museum.
The user was ready to jump through the usual Apple support hoops to pay the difference, but the system simply beat him to it. This $900 savings is essentially a quiet admission that the previous generation's hardware is now considered shelf-filler. Deliveries for these new units start on September 22, 2026, putting an end to the brief reign of the now-obsolete base model.
The M5 Pro packs 18 CPU cores, 20 GPU cores, and enough memory bandwidth to make local AI models actually functional instead of just decorative. It is a rare moment where a corporate giant accidentally acts like a human, proving that sometimes, even the most cold-blooded tech monoliths accidentally stumble into being generous when their supply chain logistics force them to.
Source: X
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