Mac mini (mid 2010) review

The Mac mini has long been the oddball child of the Mac family: it’s the only consumer-level machine from Apple that isn’t a fully-integrated experience, and it’s the only Mac to have had a sub-$1,000 sticker price in some time. But people love this little weirdo, and they love to do weirdly awesome things with it — we’ve seen Mac minis stuffed into everything from old G4 Cube shells to volleyball-playing robots to pianos to… DeLoreans. Yes, DeLoreans. And, of course, people have longed been connecting Mac minis to HDTVs and using ‘em as a media players — it’s small, quiet, relatively powerful, and it’s a real computer, so it can play virtually any video file you throw at it. And now it’s gotten even more attractive as a home theater PC, since Apple’s given the newest Mac mini a striking unibody makeover, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, and — a first for any Mac — an HDMI port, making it a dead-simple addition to your HDTV. On the flip side, the base price of the only stock consumer configuration has gone up to $699, and to be blunt, much cheaper PCs have had HDMI ports forever. So is the mini worth the premium? Is it the ultimate small PC for the living room — and beyond? Read on to find out.

Gallery: Mac mini (unibody) unboxing and hands-on

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Mac mini (mid 2010) review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has another record quarter, posts $3.07b profit

Apple might not be too happy about having a fourth-gen iPhone prototype get stolen, but there’s nothing like cold, hard cash to turn a frown upside-down — and the company certainly made plenty of it in the second quarter of 2010, posting a $3.07b profit on $13.5b in revenue. That’s the Apple’s best non-holiday quarter ever — profits were up 90 percent while revenue was up 49 percent — and yet another record quarter for Steve and the gang. Mac sales were up 33 percent from a year ago with 2.94m units sold, iPhone sales were up 131 percent with 8.75m units sold, and iPod sales were down one point with 10.89m units sold. We’re just about to jump on the analyst conference call, we’ll let you know if we hear anything good — we wonder what people might be asking about?

Update: Oh, why not — let’s liveblog this thing. Follow along after the break at 5PM ET.

Continue reading Apple has another record quarter, posts $3.07b profit

Apple has another record quarter, posts $3.07b profit originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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27-inch Core i5 iMac (with Core i7 option)

27-inch Core i5 iMac (with Core i7 option)