The inclusion of a HDMI port is interesting. Probably useless to most people (who have existing monitors or will buy a normal computer display) but does this suggest this might run the new Apple TV service?
You're absolutely wrong about the "useless to most people bit", but right about the Apple TV thing.
The point about HDMI and the 10w power consumption and the lack of a spare power brick is that this device is being positioned as a living room device, not a desktop machine. Add bluetooth keyboard and mouse, FrontRow, optionally an Apple Remote, and a big TV set and you've got: DVD player, Apple TV substitute for streaming movies/TV via iTunes, household iTunes streaming hub (streaming video to iPads in other rooms, streaming music to Airport Express-driven active speakers in other rooms -- controlled via Remote.app running on your iPhone), and if you enable internet sharing and use Cat5e to your DSL/cable modem you've got a servicable wifi hotspot as well.
This isn't being positioned as a desktop, it's being positioned as a replacement for the Apple TV box.
And for those of us who're into getting stuff done rather than sacking out in front of the telly, there's th slightly more expensive model with no DVD, more hard disk (RAID 0 or RAID 1, anyone: OS/X has software support for RAID), and a server-grade OS.
Im thinking Apple is not repositioning the Mac Mini to be an Apple TV replacement. It's way too complicated to connect a Mac Mini to a LCD TV and use a wireless mouse and keyboard to navigate when compared to the Cable TV experience. Not many in this post seem to be using a Mac Mini for such purpose (I am) and there is no way the avg PC/Internet user would ever think about doing such as it's too complicated over clicking power button on and channel up and down.
I have this exact setup. I bought a cable to connect my previous generation mini to the DVI input of my T. I have a bluetooth keyboard and mouse for the times when I need to do something a little more complicated than use FrontRow. iTunes has all my music and I have a 2GB TimeMachine with all of my video content. It's fast enough to play even 1080p movies over the network.
The new model would be even better for this application.
You can play WoW on your 60" HDTV and stream movies from netflix ect. The old Mini was right at the edge of playability but with 2x the graphics it should work just fine.
PS: You can buy a 60" 1080p TV for 800$ so if you can afford this you can afford an huge TV.
The type of consumer that wants to stream Netflix and play games on their TV is just going to buy an Xbox 360 or a PS3. The demographic you're talking about isn't the type that's going to want or care about having a full fledged computer in the living room.
You can't play most MMO's on a PS3 or Xbox 360 and MMO don't need great graphics so it's really a fairly low handing fruit. Most of them also support digital downloads so lacking a DVD player is not an issue.
Anyway, I have a Mac mini, play WoW, have an HDTV and I would really like it if I could use it to play on my TV.
I'm not actually sure. This reads discs, but Apple's never been much into discs anyway. Also I know a low of underspeced devices have trouble with decoding HD content at acceptable speed, but I;m not sure if that applies to the AppleTV or not.
It's a somewhat odd replacement for Apple TV in that it's three times the price.
I have an Apple TV, because at £200 it was perfect or my needs. I certainly wasn't going to spend £650 for a media centre when I can get a movie streamer for vastly less than that.
I disagree. Its too expensive as a TV only box, and thats a market that is still very new and small. People (well everyone I know who has one) look at this as an entry level Apple desktop machine.
