back to article Next-gen Mac mini 'photo' surfaces

A fuzzy photo of a purported new Mac mini appeared in a MacRumors forum post, and the resulting rumor instantly made the rounds of the MacRumors news page, Ars Technica, AppleInsider, Cnet, Gizmodo, 123Macmini, SlashGear, VentureBeat, and Electronista For all we know, Al Jazeera's tech desk is about to post it any moment now …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Alternatively?

    In this "credit folly now thrust upon us" environment look to make small and influential devices because eventually this "credit folly now thrust upon us" will turn into that "credit folly that was thrust upon us"?

  2. David Kairns

    Cool

    More cute white plastic from the cute white plastic masters.

    Looks flat on top -- great higher-drink-height coaster.

  3. David Kairns

    Good friend of mine...

    ...was admiring the nice contour of his worm-home power supply.

    I asked him from what height could he drop it.

    I asked him how likely it would be to burst into flames and raze the planet.

    It all went right on by him in his glassy eyed gaze.

  4. J
    Thumb Down

    Why?

    Why is it that so many people taking pics of hardware are so utterly incompetent at it? The table is in focus, the subject isn't. It's not hard, really.

  5. Kanhef

    @J

    They either 1. don't know how to control the focus manually, 2. don't know how to make the autofocus target the right spot, or 3. are using a crappy cellphone camera.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    I call Photoshop on that.

    Meh... non news item...

    feeding frenzy? While I picked up an original back when 499 clams got me one I for one have moved on to a MBP, so I guess the original intent worked, got me using along with windows, then found myself using it more than windows, the found I only turned my windows box on to play games.. then found I didn't like my windows pc anymore :-) same old story really... since I only turned on windows to play games, I got a dedicated games console so no more windows headaches or time wasted maintaining windows and keeping it malware and virus free so I could just play a game...

    I wonder if I can find my original old-school web camera from creative labs.. I bet it can make a super fuzzy photo I can Photoshop up in no time. I think I'll make a mid-size tower! now that will start a feeding frenzy compared to a product that served its purpose when it was released but in todays market does not have the same bang for buck.

  7. Richard Cartledge
    Thumb Down

    Nah

    I doubt it will have Firewire, or an optical drive.

    I think it will be priced a lot lower than the current one too.

  8. Ian
    Thumb Up

    eventually a G4 cube replacement!

    another mb of cache or so and I'd consider replacing my 10 year old poor old modified G4 Cube running 10.5 server........

    Although I'm still waiting to see Vista or Win7 run AT ALL on a 450mhz cpu.

    From recent reports its supposedly a fake with the USB ports not lining up *shrugs* Remove a few USB add another gigabit ethernet and tv tuner and I'd be a happy camper.

    (typed on a very VERY over powered Linux box because I refuse to pay the current apple tax on mac pros)

  9. Chris Cooke
    Thumb Down

    if not now, when?

    If this isn't the time for the new Mac Mini - or the new iMac for that matter - then when is? The current ones are spectacularly bad value. If the new Macs don't appear soon I'm going to replace my ancient Mac with a Linux PC.

  10. Ron Eve

    @Why?

    Actually it is hard. Well, it is with an auto focus camera phone in low light - which is what this looks like. Low light = wide aperture = little depth of field, hence if the auto focus focuses on the table the object on it is likely to be out of focus.

    /camera bag

    Apart from that, this 'new' mini looks really unlikely. Why 5 USB ports?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Probably not, but.....

    .....agree it's probably fake but the odds are, when a new mini surfaces it will have 2Gb of RAM, as the new Nvidia GPU's use 256mb of system RAM - same as the new Macbook's upgrade from 1Gb stock.

  12. Stuart Van Onselen
    Joke

    @Why: J

    Probably related to the reason that UFO, Nessie and Bigfoot photographs are also always of such poor quality.

  13. Lionel Baden

    multiple video ports

    well cause apple will try and sell this to the little guy but still trying to push them to use the new port !

    bet it can support a better resolution than the old port

  14. Dan

    firewire?

    I thought Apple were dropping Firewire support from lower end machine?

  15. simon prentagast

    Erm...

    I'm with you on the display connectors - why bother with two? (unless you want to offer people as many monitor options as possible, but that isn't terribly Jobsian, is it?)

    But sounding "fishy" because of having 2GB RAM and a SATA optical drive?!

    2GB became the base amount of RAM in the MacBook range when the White got updated, so why shouldn't we expect the next mini to have 2GB?

    As for SATA... well, thay can't stick with IDE forever can they? And again, the notebooks are all SATA now.

  16. Alexis Vallance
    Thumb Up

    All makes sense to me

    Seems feasable to me (although I'd expect to be seeing black plastic, not white).

    There's a recession therefore companies don't release products is a load of rubbish. Chances are Mini sales have been declining due to its age and need for a refresh. People seem to have no problem buying iPhones, iPods and MacBooks!! Are they going to leave the Mini as it is until 2010 / 2011? I think not.

    2gig sounds reasonable. RAM costs peanuts and it is 2009.

    The display ports sound genuine to me. A lot of people use the Mini as a media device, which is something Apple might not have expected at the start. Serving them with the extra port seems like a good idea to me.

  17. John Macintyre

    @ Ian

    Dunno about the usb ports not being in line but what system would bother with 5? most motherboards handle 4 at most, why so many? Seems a bit suspect on that alone

  18. TeeCee Gold badge

    Super Drive is SATA.

    There's probably more money to be saved these days in deleting the IDE support from the mobo than there is in buying in PATA rather than SATA optical drives in bulk from OEMs. Also I suspect that the SATA ones will continue to fall in price as world + dog heads that way while the PATAs increase as they become more scarce.

    Not to mention that in a box the size of a mac mini, where every cubic centimetre counts, the space saving and ease of assembly of SATA cabling has got to be a tempting factor....

    I reckon this one's got legs.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    It looks a lot like...

    I looks a lot like the SONY "Stupid piece of fucking shit that doesn't do what it's fucking supposed to", but in white.

    (See the Onion News Network videos).

  20. Bad Beaver
    Go

    Not the time?!

    I be to differ! It's high time to refresh that model, in fact the update is long overdue. I like what I see there and I would like it even more if it turns out to be true.

  21. Peter Kay

    @'why would apple up the cost by including two display connectors'

    The incremental cost of including both display connectors is sqrt(fuck all) and is something the mac mini badly needs. With slow graphics, an inaccessible RAM slot (with expensive upgrade options) and a complete lack of multimonitor it's an embarassment.

    If it's a con, it's got a genuine level of believability in it. Any replacement now is certainly likely to have SATA and 5 USB ports is possible (although if they control the motherboard I'd have thought 6 would be more likely). DDR3 SODIMM (it'll still be a laptop chipset..) is possibly an unusual but future proof option at this stage - could probably get more DDR2 for less..

    I might actually buy one if it turns out to be real and Apple don't screw everyone on price.

  22. Rupert Jabelman
    Thumb Down

    Sideways Firewire

    The thing that makes this look fishy to me is the FW800 port. It's on its side compared to all the other FW800 ports I've seen. It also looks like a PCB mounted port, but the side that mounts to the PCB is on the left in the photo (NB the gap between the port & case on the top, right and bottom in the pic). Ok, it could be on some kind of riser, but that seems unlikely....

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Hmmm ...

    I've got one of the current 1.83GHz Mac Minis at work for use and it's a nice enough piece of kit (more so because I didn't buy it :-) ) and I've been considering one for home use as a relatively low-powered web/mail/print server. I've been holding off deliberately to see what the next revision will look like.

    For me, something like Firewire would be a bonus but probably of little use (no Firewire devices, no plans to buy any) and funky display ports don't bother me all that much either. 2Gb of RAM would be good, and I'd like to see the optical drive removed - I guess a lot of people have USB CD/DVD drives kicking around and I've not been a fan of slot-loading drives since the drive on my old iBook decided it was going to try and eat DVDs. Make it expandable to 4Gb too (2x2Gb SODIMMs - job's a good'un)

    In fact, thinking about it, lose Firewire and add a couple of extra USB ports - also, make it possible to get the lid off without having to resort to putty knives and screwdrivers.

    Bring it on - if the price and spec are right, I'm in.

  24. Steve
    Stop

    Not much better

    My Mac mini has 2GB of RAM, a dual core 2GHz CPU, Firewire400, DVI video output.

    So this isn't much of a jump, if they were to update perhaps these would be the features...

    *Allow more than 2GB or RAM

    *Firewire800 or external Sata

    *Larger HDD option

    The Mac mini is cheap, that's why people buy it, Apple no doubt want to keep it that way, so if the optical drive works out cheaper as sata they would so do it!

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Wot! No eSATA?

    It looks as if Cupertino has a thing about eSATA

  26. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    Hmm..

    Five USB ports? Apple have traditionally only included 3 USB ports on the back of the computer. OK, so they include 2 on the keyboard (Apple count this as 5 ports, cleverly omitting the point that you lose one by plugging the keyboard into the back of the Mac).

    Looking at their site, they have done the same on their new generation iMacs (the display port ones) so why on earth would they include an extra two ports on their bottom of the range machine?

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Now IS the time..

    to screw the opposition big time, kick em when there down and do it hard! with a big kick ass product at a cut down price, especially now as parts prices are plummeting. (dont forget MS is the competition! so do it big before W7 up that market share!)

    Customers are looking at value for money, the only products that will sell are the kick ass new products!

    Why have a sata and an ata chip makes sense to use just one and sata uses less board space and solder! so sata superdrive is a reasonable step.. but no esata? if the cheap chip supports only 2 devices then maybe not and why not push fw800?

    5 usb's suggests they have gone for a cheaper keyboard!

  28. jubtastic1

    Is Mandatory

    SATA superdrive makes sense now they are using them in the laptops, extra Mini DVI also, seeing as mini display port won't play nice with a lot of existing monitors/tv's yet they wouldn't want to exclude their own monitors from sales. 2GB Ram is believable, 5 USB ports looks plain wrong though, smoking gun in this photoshop.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Firewire ... I doubt it

    If the new MacBooks don't have firewire, I very much doubt the next gen mini will either.

  30. Toastan Buttar
    Happy

    Re: SONY "Stupid piece of fucking shit"

    First attack of non-ability to breathe in quite some time. How the hell did The Onion get away with that in connection with the Sony name ???

  31. brian korn

    DirecTV

    So, this thing should be able to take 5 of the USB HDPC-20 DirecTV tuners? Me want then...

  32. Nordrick Framelhammer
    Thumb Down

    Meh

    It's probably another rumour "leaked" from Apple to try and get the faniboy's juices bubbling.

    It is the only way they can get sane people interested in their form over function boxes. Let's not forget that this is the same company that thought releasing a "smart phone" without rudimentary features like copy and paste.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Unlikely

    Considering it's a Mac, it's unlikely it would have 5 USB ports and <gasp> a firewire port.

    It could at most have two and zero of those, respectively..

  34. Herby

    Focus? Focus!

    The problem with the picture is that it hasn't been procesed by the CSI folks. They can do miracles with pictures. Re-focus them, zoom in the highlights, and all that. They would have a product definition and everything labeled.

    CSI: Where are you!

  35. Chris - LG

    usb

    5 usb ports? heaven. The old G5 I hooked up last night only has 2. What on earth were they thinking.

  36. Law
    Thumb Up

    SONY "Stupid piece of fucking shit"

    *claps* just awesome.... best "unexpected burst into laughter then pretend I'm sneezing when manager looks over" moment I've had in a long time.... next to the f-my-life feed obviously...

  37. Steve Gibson

    Mac Mini update

    Cynicism is rife in this review by Rik Myslewski but given that the leaked image is in fact the same as the newly released Mac Mini, announced this week, Rik has ended up with egg on his face for his purported denial of legitimacy for the said leaked image. It's a novel idea to believe that someone might actually be telling the truth about a new Apple product. :D

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