At today’s Apple event in Cupertino, the tech giant unveiled an upgraded Mac mini.
The new and improved tiny computer sports 4th-gen Intel core processors and Intel Iris and HD Graphics 5000 for pushing all those pixels. It touts PCIe-based flash storage available in 500GB, 1TB and 1TB Fusion configurations. It also has two Thunderbolt 2 ports which feature dual channel 20-Gbps data transfers and connect to your Wi-Fi via 802.11ac.
The processors in the computer feature Turbo Boost 2.0, which increase the clock speed up to 2.7 GHz on the entry level 1.4 GHz model. The high-end Fusion drive has a built in PCIe flash storage that holds your frequently used apps, documents and other info so they load quicker when needed.
It also has four USB 3 ports, HDMI, SDXC, audio in, a headphone port and gigabit ethernet. It also has an IR receiver and comes with an Apple TV remote if you want to build a media center around the computer.
The Mac mini was introduced in 2005 as a bring-your-own-keyboard-and-monitor device. The idea was to introduce a low cost computer that could use the hardware you already owned. If that hardware happened to be from a Windows machine, well that was all the better to Apple.
The Mac mini starts at $499 for a 1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 and 500GB of storage, $699 for 2.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor and 1TB of storage and $999 for 2.8 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor and a 1TB Fusion drive.