Finally the new Mac Mini, but what is new?

The new Mac mini is finally here. After months, almost years of speculation Apple have upgraded their popular small, but perfectly formed Mac. The question is...what is new?

The Mac mini was partly a drive from Apple to give PC users an easy switch option. Keep your monitor, keyboard and mouse and move to a Mac by just changing the 'PC' tower to a Apple Mac alternative.

A lot of people bought the Mac Mini as a home theatre/media computer. It was easy to connect it to your TV or large monitor and then, by using the Apple Mac Remote and Front Row, you could watch all your digital movies/music and get new ones from iTunes right from the comfort of your couch.

Alot of people had written the Mac mini off, expecting that Apple would not bother with an upgrade. I personally am pleased to see they have chosen to push ahead with an upgrade. Shame it didn't quite come with the features we hoped for.

One of the biggest additions we were hoping for was a HDMI plug. This would allow you to plug it straight into your HDTV and you'd be laughing. Obviously they have not done this as it would mean a conflict with the Apple TV. Sad, as if they had it would mean Apple fans would finally have a kick but media centre that just worked. Apple TV is OK, but it is over priced and 'dumb', that is, it can't do much more than play movies, music and access iTunes.

So what does the new Mac Mini come with.

- 5 USB and one firewire port. Good to see they have at least continued to support 800 Firewire.
- Better graphics card - this includes a much higher resolution output - up to 1920x1200 on a single output.
- Faster processor
- Bigger front side bus
- Support for up to 4GB RAM (the only hope is that it will be easier to fit on this model than the last ones although I doubt it)
- Bluetooth as standard but that's not new (Although the Bluetooth standard has changed - (2.1 with EDR)
- Bigger HDD

Some of the most significant changes are in the eco build features. It now comes BFR and PVC free etc etc etc.

As you can see, unless I have missed something, the biggest changes are expected from any update. Faster machine with a bigger Hard Drive and a greener approach, and smaller.

I think I will continue to wait for Apple to sort their shizzit out with a decent media solution which in my opinion would be a splicing of the Apple TV and Mac Mini products.

You can see more on the Apple Mac Mini here.