Interesting bit of speculation surrounding the Mac Mini. Tom’s Hardware, one of the oldest, bestest hardware-focused sites out there, says that the upcoming Mac Mini speed bump will feature Nvidia’s new Ion platform. Among other things, that can lead to an even smaller Mac Mini.
The Ion is basically two Intel Atom 330 processors slapped together along with an Nvidia GPU, the same kind used in the new MacBook. That is, the Nvidia 9400M. The processors run at 1.6GHz. A single Atom at that speed isn’t so great, but Tom’s Hardware says that they work much better as part of the Ion.
That horrendously butchered paragraph aside, the Ion, if it indeed makes it into the next gen Mac Mini, would enable Apple to shrink the size of the Mac Mini while keeping the price right around the $500 mark. March is the date currently being bandied about.