Next-gen Mac Mini Shown on Video

By Tuan An Nguyen
published

Earlier today, a forum poster on Macrumors attached what appeared to be a photo of the next generation Mac Mini, which we reported on several weeks ago to be based on Nvidia's Ion platform--as told to us by a source close to Nvidia.

The product shot of the Mac Mini was shown to have a FireWire 800 port, which Apple has even left out of its line of MacBooks. The new Mac Mini also has significantly more USB ports and was shown to have both a mini-DVI port as well as a small DisplayPort connector. Technically speaking, DisplayPort supports a DVI displays by way of an adapter, so there's no need to really include both. The single DisplayPort connector on recent MacBook and MacBook Pros are evidence of this thinking by Apple.

Then, skeptics declared the photo as being faked and photoshoped and even going as far as to analyzing the image in detail.

Now however, a video of the Mac Mini in question has popped up, and shows the same Mac Mini unit in full view.

Are you looking forward to Apple's small computer? Or do you think that at $600 to $700, the new Mac Mini would still be too expensive? What do you think of Apple's recent prices for recent economic times?

Tuan An Nguyen
22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tipoo
    Meh...unless it competes with similarly priced desktops performance wise (which it wont), i'll still skip on the mini.
    Reply
  • Tekkamanraiden
    Apple should really make a headless iMac.
    Reply
  • waffle911
    tipoo, the Mac Mini should be compared to the Dell Hybrid Studio Desktop, which was introduced less than a year ago. The Dell vastly outperforms the Mac Mini for the price, but the Mac Mini has been sitting neglected since its last update in 2007—at which point in time its performance matched its only competitor, the ultra-slim desktop offered by Shuttle at the time, and at a similar price point. An updated Mac Mini should be able to compete with the Dell if its going to be priced similarly, but if it goes to the Ion platform then its price should definitely drop.
    Reply
  • anon11112
    both the mini DVI and display port adapter.. Two monitor support? One can only hope. Also hoping Processor will be simmilar to MacBook and not be using the atom processor.
    Reply
  • mrubermonkey
    This new Mac Mini will have less computing power in terms of CPU then its old brother since it will be mobile Core 2 vs. Atom. Granted, the new Mac Mini will far supersede the GPU capability of the older Mac Mini with its new chipset. Stupid of Apple not to wait for the mobile Nehalem to come out. That is assuming the rumors are even true though. If Apple keeps the same price structure for this new Ion based Mac Mini, they will be able to reap huge profit margins considering how cheap it is to build on an Ion platform and knowing them that would sound like something they would do.
    Reply
  • Tindytim
    do you think that at $600 to $700, the new Mac Mini would still be too expensive?
    After a quick look at Newegg, I can get an Atom processors with a motherboard for $70-$120. I'm not sure what ION will cost, but I doubt it will cost $400 just for the mobo.

    Regardless of the economic times, I'm not going to pay $400 to $500 dollars more than the parts are worth just so they come in a shiny plastic case.
    Reply
  • According to posts on this very site, the Ion platform should cost about 50$ more than the Intel chipset. So according to Tindytim's figures, the hardware cost should be in the 120-170$ range. Of course, you could argue that they use some other "premium" components so you could say that it may cost up to 250$ in parts (and that's pushing it).

    600$-700$ range will probably the price you'd expect to pay for a similarly top-of-the-line netbook, not a desktop version. It will be very interesting to compare this computer to the non-Apple desktops when they come out in the summer (again according to rumours on this very site).

    Its still quite a leap of fate to spend this amount of money to experiment with Mac OS if find. The religious followers of the Apple cult will probably find the price acceptable, however.
    Reply
  • Nik_I
    if it costs more than $300, i won't even consider it. if it's ion/atom based, they can't seriously think about selling it for the same price the current mac mini's go for. but i don't think apple would be dumb enough to make that much profit off of it. anyone at all familiar with what the atom cpu is, and who knows how much a netbook costs wouldn't pay much for this thing. after all, how could it cost more than a netbook if it doesn't even have a screen, keyboard or trackpad along with it?
    Reply
  • JimmiG
    No nettop based on the Atom is worth more than $400 absolute maximum IMO, no matter who made it. The CPU just isn't fast enough to justify a higher price. We're talking performance similar to a 1 GHz Pentium-M chip here.
    Reply
  • christop
    Sweet a power strip pc....
    Reply