December 16th, 2008
Mac mini revision rumored for Macworld Expo
An Apple corporate employee reportedly contacted Wired.com to tell them that Apple will release an upgraded Mac mini, at January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco which starts 5 January 2009.
The Mac mini is Apple’s oldest piece of hardware and was last updated in 07 August 2007 – a whopping 498 days (1 year, 4 months, 10 days) from today. In the past, Apple has updated the Mac mini every 188 days on average.
Details are somewhat scarce but Wired.com believes the next Mac mini will follow the trends set by Apple’s other recent products:
- Similar to the MacBooks, the Mac Mini will sport a silver enclosure composed of a block of aluminum.
- Some internal parts will be PVC-free, and combined with its size and low power requirements, Apple will tout this as the “greenest Mac ever.”
- For video output, the Mac Mini will use the DRM-crippled DisplayPort for connectivity, which Apple is offering to manufacturers for a no-fee license.
- It’ll have a CD-DVD slot loader (i.e. Super Drive). There will be no Blu-ray player, because Steve Jobs believes the format is a “bag of hurt.”
- It’ll ship with 2 GB of RAM, expandable to 4 GB — up from the current 1 GB, expandable to 2 GB. (The aluminum case should make expanding RAM easier than in the original Mini.)
- It’ll ship with at least a 160-GB hard drive.
- The Mac Mini will come in two options with different processor speeds: a 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo and a 2.3-GHz Core 2 Duo (up from 1.83 GHz and 2.0 GHz).
- Like the higher-end MacBook and MacBook Pro, the 2.3-GHz Mac Mini will ship with an Nvidia video card, making this higher-end model a decent gaming device.
- The 2.0-GHz Mac Mini will ship with an Intel video card, perhaps the GMA X3100 graphics card found in the low-end, white MacBook.
- The slower model will cost $500, and the faster model will cost $700 ($100 less than the current Mac Minis), in light of the recession.
Are you a Mac mini owner? Looking to buy one?
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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