Apple tells us the new and old minis are essentially the same size by volume you might think of the new mini as being a flattened-out version of the old. Obviously the major portion of the case is the aluminum unibody, which is thinner than the previous-gen at an inch and a quarter, but slightly bigger around at seven by seven inches square. By the same token, the new design promises to have equal staying power: it's at once both simpler and more deeply considered. That's partially a testament to the minimalist good looks of the previous design, of course - it's managed to blend in with every Apple design trend of the past five years. The new mini represents the first major redesign in the product's history since it was first introduced in 2005. So is the mini worth the premium? Is it the ultimate small PC for the living room - and beyond? Read on to find out.
On the flip side, the base price of the only stock consumer configuration has gone up to $699, and to be blunt, much cheaper PCs have had HDMI ports forever. And now it's gotten even more attractive as a home theater PC, since Apple's given the newest Mac mini a striking unibody makeover, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, and - a first for any Mac - an HDMI port, making it a dead-simple addition to your HDTV.
And, of course, people have longed been connecting Mac minis to HDTVs and using 'em as a media players - it's small, quiet, relatively powerful, and it's a real computer, so it can play virtually any video file you throw at it. But people love this little weirdo, and they love to do weirdly awesome things with it - we've seen Mac minis stuffed into everything from old G4 Cube shells to volleyball-playing robots to pianos to. The Mac mini has long been the oddball child of the Mac family: it's the only consumer-level machine from Apple that isn't a fully-integrated experience, and it's the only Mac to have had a sub-$1,000 sticker price in some time.
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