2020 Mac mini says its a 2018 Mac mini

The year is for the time that the current model was introduced, it is not the year of your purchase.

2018 is the year the current model was introduced. There has

been no other updates with the exception of adding larger

SSD in the base models. That has been the ONLY thing that

has changed since its introduction in 2018.

What people are "seeing" is the "new" when selecting Mac on the home page:

and on the purchase page:

and because of it people posting are calling it and assuming

it is a 2020 model even though the only thing that changes

was the base SSD installed.

I have the same problem! I just got mine in today and called apple and they said it was their mistake, they started a return n exchange, now its going to take over a week to exchange it.

There no 2020 models.

Where is everyone seeing this “Early 2020” text? The official Apple Support document says 2018: https://support.apple.com/HT201894

The date is for the model's introduction, not the date of manufacture or the date of purchase. Changing the default minimum size of the SSD most likely wouldn't be considered a new model.

Take this issue up with Apple. As fellow users, we cannot do anything about your sense of being ripped off, or what Apple marks as new. If within 14 days of purchase, you can return the Mac mini for a refund.

jsdrexel wrote:

same thing for me -- returning mine as well. Pain in the *** --

Why? What do you anticipate to replace it with, as there is no such beast as a 2020 model?

The internals are exactly the same, not "pretty much the same." The only difference is the availability of larger SSDs.

Also see: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251238204?page=2

Yea they should say they're just offering better pricing on larger drives - instead of stating it's the "early 2020" model. It confuses people including the actual techs that work at Apple. The Apple tech even stated that this "new" one has the 6-core processor and on the older models, that was a "special order"? I had to inform him I didn't believe that was the case. wtf?

Oh well -- getting a discounted one coming thanks to Apple and them I guess not knowing what's going on?

jsdrexel wrote:

Yea they should say they're just offering better pricing on larger drives - instead of stating it's the "early 2020" model.

But that doesn't attract the eyes of perspective buyers as much as having

the word "NEW" put on the web page. Typical marketing ploy of many companies.

woodmeister50 wrote:

What people are "seeing" is the "new" when selecting Mac on the home page:

I don’t know. I have to double-check. The “About This Mac” display can use the machine’s serial number to query an internal Apple database. It could very well return “Early 2020”. The only people who can tell are those with that specific machine.

The data isn’t in the firmware. It is in an Apple database, tied to serial number. It is easy enough to check if one had a (partial) serial number or a screenshot of About This Mac.

But I’m guessing these are just new users who never bought a MacPro 2013 in 2019.