Apple on Tuesday announced an update to the Mac mini line of compact desktop Mac systems, adding faster processors, doubling memory capacity, and introducing a new server configuration that trades an optical drive for more storage.
Both updated Mac minis have the same price as the old models. The new $599 configuration features a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of 1066Mhz RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. The new $799 configuration features a 2.56GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB drive. Both are powered by NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics circuitry.
The new $999 Mac Mini server configuration has no optical drive; in its place is a second internal hard drive. The server configuration is powered by a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo processor, and features 4GB of RAM and two 500 GB drives for a total of one terabyte of storage. It comes with the Snow Leopard edition of Mac OS X Server preinstalled.
Before this update, most recent update to the Mac mini was in March 2009. That model was powered by a 2.0GHz processor and came in 120GB and 320GB models at $599 and $799, respectively. The original Mac mini model was introduced in 2005.