An inside look at the Mac mini

The new Mac mini is still small and squarish, but it uses an aluminum unibody enclosure inspired by Apple’s current MacBook line.

From the front, the new mini looks almost like an AppleTV with an optical drive. (Oh, if only Apple made such a contraption.)

The back of the Mac mini hosts (left to right) a power button, AC-power jack, Gigabit Ethernet port, FireWire 800 port, HDMI port, Mini DisplayPort connector, four USB 2.0 ports, and an SD-card slot. Below the card reader are audio input and output jacks, and across the bottom is a fan-exhaust slot.

The bottom of the new Mac mini sports a black-plastic cover that, when turned ever-so-slightly…

…can be lifted off…

…to reveal the two user-accessible RAM slots, making this the easiest Mac mini—by far—to upgrade. At least for RAM, that is.

Where did the power supply go? It’s been shrunk from 110 Watts to 85 Watts and hidden next to the RAM slots.

The hard drive, on the other hand, is well hidden. It’s the black, rectangular object in the center-top of this image.

Compared to the previous mini (top), the new model is quite a bit thinner, but wider and deeper—7.7 inches square instead of 6.5 inches.

But the biggest difference in overall size is the new mini’s lack of a bulky power brick.

Even the Mac mini’s packaging has been shrunk considerably. There really is a computer in there.

The new mini is much closer in size to the Apple TV, as this mini-mini-TV sandwich shows.