Redesigned Mac mini: HDMI, SD card reader, unibody aluminum enclosure

Earlier tonight, the Apple Store went down, and we all figured it was just so that they could get the pre-order page for the iPhone 4 up and running—imagine our surprise when we saw a completely redesigned Mac mini waiting for us as well. The new Mac mini looks gorgeous, sporting a redesigned aluminum unibody enclosure. Even better, this is the first Mac that has an HDMI port built right in, which makes this perfect for hooking up to a television to turn into a media centric computer. Other niceties include an SD card reader on the back, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Mini DisplayPort, and the NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics chip, which Apple says provides twice the graphics performance as the previous mini. Rounding things out are a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo chip, 2GB RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. The unibody enclosure was made in such a way that you could remove a panel on the bottom to easily get to the RAM—any owner of the previous Mac mini can attest to the horrific things you had to go through to upgrade the Mac mini RAM, so this is a welcome change.

The Snow Leopard Server model of the Mac mini remains as well, packing in two 500GB drives (and removing the SuperDrive,) alongside 4GB RAM and a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. You can order the new Mac Mini now for $699, while the server version sells for $999.

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