[tweetmeme]Apple dropped an unexpected bomb today. As the Store went down earlier this day, everyone assumed it was to facilitate iPhone 4 pre-orders. Apple landed a huge bomb, in the form of a brand new Mac mini.
This is practically the Mac mini you’ve been waiting for (if you have been waiting for one).
First of all, a redesigned enclosure brings it on par with the latest silver and black looks of the rest of Apple’s product lineup. It’s built from the same unibody manufacturing process, allowing for a seamless body, all amounting to 1.4 inches in height. The bottom of the Mac comes off, allowing free access to RAM and other components, so you can upgrade easy. And it includes a host of ports at the back, including an HDMI port for a direct connection to your HDTV. The new body also comes with a built in power adapter, so “goodbye power brick”, as Apple says.
On the hardware front, the Mac now sports up to 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo—No i5 love for the smallest Mac, it seems—with 2.4Ghz for the $699 base model. It’s also got the better Nvidia 320M graphics, the same chip that powers the lower end MacBook and MacBook Pro models. And while it comes with 2GB of memory standard, you can bump it up to 8GB, which will come in real handy for those using this as a dedicated server. Which reminds me, if you get the $999 Server edition, they give you dual 500GB hard drives and forgo the SuperDrive. That is one hell of a deal.
Unless Apple has blinded us with product shots, I can’t think of one thing they’ve done wrong with the new Mac mini.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
The design is hot! As is the HDMI output.
But the price is RIDICULOUS. It starts at 809 euros here in Europe! WTF!?
I have to agree, at €799,- for the base model here in the Netherlands it’s really hard to want a Mini instead of going for a ‘proper’ iMac.
They kind of missed the whole point of the Mini as entry level Mac.
But yay for the upgraded specs.
€800? Wow! That is a bit much.
But maybe they aren’t positioning this as the ‘entry level mac’ anymore (though the page title says so). That belongs to the iPad (if I may go that far). Moreover, their pricing strategy seems to want to create a product differentiation between the mini and the rumoured upcoming AppleTV ($99). Whatever it may be, the mini is definitely the computer you want to hook up to your HDTV.
The server edition seems to be a much better deal for those who don’t need the optical drive (who does?).
Looks amazing, but priced out of range with comparable PCs. This was just the update I was waiting for to convert my office’s PC machines to Macs… but the price is going to be a hard sell.
And unfortunately they seem to have left out the security port. Such an easily accessible computer would never fly in an office environment that’s already had a break-in.
I just bought second-hand Late 2009 lower model but with 4GB of RAM, for half of that EU price. Apart from HDMI port which would have saved me a bunch of hassle to get AC3 pass-through to work, that mini is perfect for HTPC as well – it’s its main purpose in my home.
Look for bunch of those on eBay and other places.