The Apple online store was down this afternoon, which often means a new product is being added. And voila, just after 6 pm tonight, Apple announced a new Mac mini.
Pricewise, it has come down a bit. The model out a year ago had an RRP of $1,399, the new model is down to $999. The price has come down, and so has the physical size of the box. At 19.7 centimetres square and 3.6 centimetres thin, it is around a 20% smaller footprint than its predecessor.
So price and size down, but the features have gone up. Apple claims the new Mac mini has almost twice the graphics processing speed of the 2009 model, a new HDMI out and SD card slot has been added, as has a removable panel for easy access to upgrade the memory.
Apple also claim a 25% power consumption drop from the previous model, only pulling 10 Watts at idle.
Price, availability and specs
The new Mac mini is available now. Keep in mind when you look at the pricing, this is the box only, it does not include monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.
The Mac mini has an RRP of $999, including GST, with the following specifications:
- 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB of shared L2 cache
- 2GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM, expandable up to 8GB
- a slot-load 8X SuperDrive® (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive
- 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm
- NVIDIA GeForce 320M integrated graphics
- AirPort Extreme® 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
- Gigabit Ethernet
- 1 x USB 2.0 ports
- SD card slot
- 1 x FireWire® 800 port
- 1 x HDMI port and one Mini DisplayPort
- HDMI to DVI video adapter
- combined optical digital audio input/audio line in (minijack)
- combined optical digital audio output/headphone out (minijack)
You can also pick up the Mac mini with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server, for $1,399 RRP, including GST. The specs on this option are:
- 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB of shared L2 cache
- 4GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM, expandable up to 8GB
- 2 x 500GB Serial ATA hard drives running at 7200 rpm
- NVIDIA GeForce 320M integrated graphics
- AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
- Gigabit Ethernet
- 4 x USB 2.0 ports
- SD card slot
- 1 x FireWire 800 port
- 1 x HDMI port and one Mini DisplayPort
- HDMI to DVI video adapter
- combined optical digital audio input/audio line in (minijack)
- combined optical digital audio output/headphone out (minijack)
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