The image above shows the rear of a Mac Mini that has 5 USB ports, FireWire 800, both Mini DisplayPort and mini DVI, Ethernet, along with audio in and out.
The port configuration on this new photo does seem to confirm previous rumors about the upcoming Mac Mini revision.
The image was posted on the MacRumors forums and it seems that they are the originator of the image. The forum member also claims the system will ship with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo with 3MB of L2 cache, 2GB DDR3 RAM, and an ATA Super Drive. The user didn’t comment on the rumors of the new Mac Mini featuring a chipset made by Nvidia, as the new MacBooks have.
I’m considering purchasing a Mac Mini in June to be used as a media server, I plan on connecting a Turbo.264, an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid, and maybe even an external hard drive so all of those USB ports will be greatly appreciated.
There has been some question on the AppleInsider forums as to why Apple would have FireWire 800 in the Mac Mini instead of FireWire 400, claiming that 400 is more consumer level. But, I see Apple attempting to completely remove FireWire from its products over the next few years and one of those steps is to move all of their products that will have FireWire up to the highest standard so that the idea of having an adapter might convince some people that FireWire won’t be around forever. It is a simple mind trick that will probably get people to start buying USB drives just because they don’t want to mess with adapters.
AppleInsider | Photo of next-gen Apple Mac mini in the wild.