Already a popular home theatre rig with many Mac fans, the made-over Mac Mini now sports HDMI output and enhanced Nvidia graphics plus a sleeker unibody aluminium case.
Apple has continued its rolling refresh of recent months, with the pint-sized Mac Mini the latest to get a makeover.
The slim unibody aluminium case shares the same design DNA as the MacBook Pro, iMac and iPad (and to a certain extent the forthcoming iPhone 4), and now sprouts HDMI and Mini DisplayPort sockets and an SD card reader.
The core specs mirror those of the 13 inch MacBook: Intel’s 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, Nvidia’s GeForce 320M graphics and 2GB of RAM. The hard disk in the entry-level model is doubled from 160GB to 320GB.
Apple has also shifted the power supply to live inside the chassis, as is the case with the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme.
Those tweaks come at a cost, however, and the flailing Aussie dollar certainly hasn’t helped: the base model Mac Mini now costs $999, up $150 from the just-outdated rig.
Options include a fatter 500GB platter for an extra $140 and the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo powerplant for another $210.
So that’s one more bit of kit crossed off the to-do list. Now we’re waiting to see what Apple does with the MacBook Air and especially the Apple TV set-top box, often considered the company’s forgotten child but
potentially a challenger to
Google TV.