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Leaked photo shows Apple’s new Mac mini?

Monday, December 22, 2008 · 9:29 am · 53 Comments

“It’s widely rumored that Apple will be refreshing its Mac mini soon — perhaps during marketing exec Phil Schiller’s keynote at next month’s Macworld conference,” Dan Frommer writes for Silicon Alley Insider. “(They sure need to — Apple’s desktop Mac sales plummeted last month.) So is this picture obtained by Macenstein an ad for it?”

“We highly doubt it,” Frommer writes.

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Carl H." for the heads up.]

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Comment Feed

53 Comments

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TheConfuzed1

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 10:32 am · Reply

I hope it’s true. The Mini is long overdue for an update.
CourtJester

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 10:42 am · Reply

Lets hope its not a MacBook style update: Lots more aluminium plus a £200 price increase but Firewire abandoned.

An Apple computer without Firewire is like a Christmas tree without glitter.
Rumor Monger

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 10:45 am · Reply

I have inside intelligence that the new Mac Mini will have quad core Xeon processors, 16 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, and dual, top-of-the-line, Nvida GPUs. The retail price is $299.
DLMeyer

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 10:48 am · Reply

The look has a lot of MBA in it. All external, of course. You can’t do a lot of shrinking if you want to keep your prices down, and that’s pretty much what the mini is all about – the lowest price for a non-crap computer.
Still … a new mini IS long over-due. I did a price-check of the current model vs the 20″ iMac and … well … the iMac won. Maybe it was just the price of the 20″ cinema screen, but for about the same price the iMac offered more speed, more storage, more memory, better graphics and I FORGET what all.
John

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 10:49 am · Reply

I’ve never seen glitter on a Christmas Tree?
Grrrilla

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 10:51 am · Reply

PHOTOSHOP!!! They didn’t even try with this one. It’s just a picture of the Macbook/Macbook Pro. They didn’t even bother to take the lid off (and somehow I doubt that the new mini is going to have a pop-top, cool or interesting as that might be).

Geez.
Randian

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 10:54 am · Reply

Oh, please, Gawd, let it have Firewire and a matte screen (!) so the great unwashed masses will STFU.
MacintoshSoftwareList.com

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 10:54 am · Reply

Of course it’s true, Why wouldn’t it be?
Raymond in DC

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:00 am · Reply

DLMeyer writes, “I did a prie-check of the current model vs the 20″ iMac and … the iMac won.” I couldn’t agree more. Before finally selling my dual G4 desktop to a former colleague, I was looking to my next Mac desktop. I *really* wanted the mythical pro-sumer “Missing Mac”, but could wait no longer.

The iMac has everything over the Mini you note, but includes as well keyboard and mouse, supports dual displays, and dispenses with the power brick. The choice for me was a no brainer. I went with the least costly iMac 20″ 2.4 shortly after its last upgrade, then added a 2 GB RAM upgrade from Crucial. (Such an upgrade, I might add, is easier to accomplish on the iMac.)
JRA

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:00 am · Reply

Apple doesn’t need a $500 laptop, but it does need a $400 to $500 introduction Mac. They need to keep the mini. A low cost alternative for a family that already has a USB mouse and keyboard, and monitor.

The Mini also needs to be able to run bootcamp.

Then they need to market the heck out of it as a transition machine.
MacRaven

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:05 am · Reply

@ Randian

I’ll definitely shut up it Firewire and matte screen is included!

Are you an IT that has dozens of rebuilds to do now and then? Or troubleshoot? Or needs a Firewire emergency external rescue/diagnostic device like Tech Tool Protege? Booting in Firewire might not be an issue for you, but for an IT it is an extremely useful, time saving option.
Jimithy

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:07 am · Reply

That is one of the most fake images I’ve ever seen. It’s obvious that’s made from a MacBook image. Then used a digital camera to take a picture of the image on a CRT display.
ron

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:08 am · Reply

Raymond in DC. You should have opted for the 24”.

Is that DC or AC?
almux

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:10 am · Reply

Many servers use the actual Mac Mini as private storage elements rented to 1 DNS each. They need to be piled up easely. Rounded tops woudn’t fit so well for users who wish to distribute their stuff over severall seperate mini servers.
sankar

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:13 am · Reply

Blu ray player should be a must for this new revision
ml

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:16 am · Reply

stock is down again and i have no more money to buy more shares of aapl! this sucks.
Skabeetle

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:26 am · Reply

The Matte screen is not an issue for the MacMini … obviously
Predrag

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:27 am · Reply

Almux:

I can’t think of anyone in IT industry who would every consider a Mini as a server, especially for storage. It would be like using laptops for servers. Mini has a 2.5″ hard drive, which is a laptop drive. Of all the different categories of hard disks, these are the most fragile, least reliable and fastest to break down. Since you can’t put more than one in a Mini, you can’t array them into RAID 5, drive mirroring or something similarly redundant. That means any hard drive failure is a catastrophic failure with permanent loss of data. Could you explain the reasoning and justification for such use?
spliceguys

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:37 am · Reply

I don’t care if the lid comes off or not. I’ll only buy it if it’s SNAPPY!
Ralph M

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:42 am · Reply

@Predrag @ Almux

As strange as it sounds, I’ve seen ads and web sites for companies that offer to physically host a Mac Mini in their data center. You send them a Mini preloaded with your OS and web server of choice, and they plug it in. I guess people do it. My personal experience is that the Mac Mini is a very reliable computer, but I sure wouldn’t entrust a mission-critical web site to it.
jas67

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:44 am · Reply

DLMeyer: before you compare a 20″ iMac to a Mini with a 20″ Cinema, be aware that the 20″ iMac has a 18-bit display (can only display (262,144 colors), and the Cinema is a full-color display.

I have two Minis, and a 20″ iMac, which just replaced my 3rd Mini, because I wanted dual monitor support. I have a 4 year-old 20″ Cinema connected as 2nd monitor, and I can tell you that many hi-color icons look “washed out” on the iMac’s display due to the reduced color depth. I use the Cinema as the primary monitor, and the iMac’s built-in display as a secondary. Then there is the whole glossy problem too. IMHO, the Cinema wins too. All that said, a glossy 2nd monitor is better than none at all.

MDN Magic Word: Went — When the computer industry WENT “glossy”, they WENT the wrong way.
artificial yule memories

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:44 am · Reply

@CourtJester

A Christmas tree with Glitter.. thanks for the memories. I remember from the late ’60′s the artificial aluminum tree with color wheel light. Rock on.
ChrisM

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:45 am · Reply

@CourtJester
“An Apple computer without Firewire is like a Christmas tree without glitter.”

…and an MDN comments section without Firewire complainers is like a dream come true.
Macintosher

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:45 am · Reply

Here are my, somewhat infamous, thoughts, directed towards this matter:

a. The Mac mini needs updating. It hasn’t had a refresh in years, and sometime it will, because everyone bar a few absolutely love it. Including me.

b. It’s worthwhile to refresh it because of its versatility and price, and what you can do with it.

c. Thus, Apple will update it, and in fact from sources mentioned on MDN it seems pretty clear that it will have nVIDIA, so they’re planning to release one, if this information is reliable and shows that it’s gonna happen.

d. This photo is fake, a Photoshopped MacBook, but it may be a website placeholder on an Apple website under construction. The website also may be Photoshopped, but given the likelihood of a product refresh, I think that’s unlikely.

e. The photo is different from what we’re expecting, or at least, we can’t see the telltale black glass, but again, we can be hopeful.
drcaddy

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 11:57 am · Reply

I love how it has a laptop lid.