Pick up the Apple TV remote and you can see the original iPod Shuffle. Not all the design homages are so easy to make out. This week, Apple updated Macs and this made me think about how the company likes to recycle not just materials from its products but the way they look.

The M4 Pro Mac mini is possibly the best deal in computing in late 2024, boasting an impressive amount of power for pros that rivals the Mac Studio and Mac Pro in a tiny package.

Such is the classic simplicity of Apple design, if you’d been abducted by aliens two decades ago and taken to the peaceful planet Zog to hang out with and learn from an enlightened species, you’d still recognize this as a Mac mini when you returned. (Though you’d probably be disappointed at the state of enlightenment here on Terra Ferma.)

The latest MacBook Pro models equipped with the new M4 and M4 Pro chips have just hit the market, and they are available at huge discounts this Black Friday. Amazon is offering great deals on several configurations of the new MacBook Pro M4 models.