Apple Quietly Ups Mac Mini to Core 2 Duo Processor
Apple Quietly Ups Mac Mini to Core 2 Duo Processor
by , 4:50 PM EDT, August 7th, 2007
Apple Inc. quietly updated its Mac mini line Tuesday. Though they were not mentioned as part of the "Mac-related" media event held on the Apple campus Tuesday, Apple COO Tim Cook told a reporter in an unprecedented Q&A session after the event that Apple had bumped the processor in the Mac mini, which now features a 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo processor in the entry-level unit and 2 GHz unit in the high end unit.
The company also doubled the amount of RAM in the Mac mini to 1GB out of the box. The industrial design of the consumer Mac remains the same as the previous generation.
Apple is currently offering two configurations, as follows:
1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 1GB memory
- 80GB hard drive1
2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 1GB memory
- 120GB hard drive1
- Ships: Within 24 hours
- Free Shipping
- $799.00
Both units are available online as of this writing, with shipment estimates of 24 hours.
Observer Comments
Still overpriced, still underpowered, still not upgradeable enough. It looks like Apple's keeping it around only to appease those who say its machines are too expensive... or for those crazed "analysts" who'll have the stock dropping double-digits by claiming Apple is abandoning the entry-level market by killing off the Mini...
Wouldn't it be great it if were a plain white box that you could deck out any way you wanted, but at a better price? Couldn't they be selling the base model for $399 and still make good money on it? Call me stupid, but when you build something to fail, it usually does.
This is great news. The Mac Mini is a fantastic system for a great price. It's got plenty of omph for editing photos and video, yet it takes up hardly any desk space and makes next to no noise. I don't want a keyboard, monitor, or mouse with a new computer -- I already own high-end third-party peripherals -- so the Mac Mini seems to be an ideal machine.
For me, the Mac Mini is in the perfect sweet-spot for size, power, noise level and price. It will also have a much longer useful working life, as it's small enough to use an a file/print/video server and back-up desktop machine (I have an older G4 Mini set up to do just that).
When Leopard comes out, I'm going to upgrade from an first generation Core Duo Mini to one of the new Intel 2 GHz models. I'm really looking forward to it. The Mini is the best Mac ever produced.
I originally bought the mini for a server. I am a mini owner since the 1.66 core duo (early days). I have to say it is the best server I have owned. I have it with boot camp to both windows (when I want a game server for nwn or unreal) and to OSX for my development server with subversion / ldap / mysql. It takes up minimal space on my desktop and originally I did a hack to not have a monitor hooked up. I used VNC in both windows and OSX (autobooted) and connected with my game machine. Since then I have recently gotten a HDTV tuner and now have a monitor/keyboard/mouse attached and watch HDTV while I play my games. In short, I have gotten more use out of this gem than any other machine I have bought in the past. I may consider upgrading to a T7500 in the near future and add a gig of ram but I am still happy with it.
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