It may not have the glamor of the iPad, but the Mac mini has had a little makeover. It’s got that little bit closer to size zero, for a start, and is now just an inch and a half thick.
The new model features up to twice the graphics performance of its predecessor, along with a new HDMI port and SD card slot.
“The sleek, aluminum Mac mini packs great features, versatility and value into an elegant, amazingly compact design,” says Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.
“With twice the graphics performance, HDMI support and industry-leading energy efficiency, customers are going to love the new Mac mini.”
The body, made from a single piece of aluminum, measures 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches thick. There’s a new integrated power supply, eliminating the need for an external power adapter. Wireless connectivity includes Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and 802.11n.
It uses half the power of competing machines, says Apple, at less than 10W.
The Mac mini comes with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and iLife, Apple’s application suite for managing photos, making movies and creating and learning to play music.
Graphics are handled by an NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics chip, and the machine comes standard with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 320GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM for $699.
It’s also available with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server, with 4GB RAM, two 500GB hard drives and a 2.66GHz processor for $999.
