Bloomberg BusinessWeek Business Exchange

by: Arik Hesseldahl Bloomberg

Apple announced a new version of the Mac Mini today, bringing its design more in line with its siblings, the iMac and the MacBook Pro.

It’s nice to see Apple remaining committed to the Mac Mini. The line has been the subject of recurring rumors that Apple was close to killing it over the last few years, only to have its fans lobby Apple to keep it going. It once went an entire 19 months between updates. While It’s popular not only among consumers for being easy to connect to a TV. It’s also turned out to be a popular small and light server for small businesses. Apple sells a version specifically aimed at use as a server, which sells for a starting price of $999.

The new machine sports a unibody aluminum design similar to that used for the MacBook Pro, and is about 20 percent smaller than the previous Mac Mini. It’s less than an inch-and-a-half thick.

However don’t take its smaller size as any suggestion that it lacks power. Inside is an Intel Core 2 Duo processor clocked at 2.4 GHz and 2.66 GHz, an Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics processor, giving it twice the graphics power of its predecessor. The standard model comes with a 320 gigabyte hard drive and two gigabytes of RAM. Its starting price is $699.

Other big news is on the back. Like the iMac and MacBook Pro before it, the Mini now sports an SD memory card slot, and for those who use it like a digital media center, an HDMI display port for connecting to TV sets. There are also four USB ports.

Apple has also dubbed this new Mac Mini as the world’s most energy-efficient desktop. It bases that claim on how this machine compares to other desktop computers in the Energy Star 5.0 database as of this month. It also meets EPEAT Gold certification status.

A few other interesting notes about the new design. There’s a removable panel underneath the body that gives aces to the memory slots, allowing for easy RAM upgrades. It supports as much as 8 GB of RAM.

Heavy digital media users will find a lot to like. While the Mac Mini is a natural for watching movies from within iTunes and the Front Row, the Mini sports a DVD player, and can just as readily be connected to a nice set of stereo speakers, whether the music is coming from an iTunes playlist or a CD, or is streaming from the Web. Install software like Boxee or the Hulu desktop application for the Mac, and you’ve got a pretty good all-in-one digital media machine