Will the next Mac mini include an iPod Dock?

Leo Bodnar, the same intrepid soul who overclocked his Mac mini, continued his sleuthwork and has uncovered an unused FireWire bus in the Ultra ATA-100 riser card that connects the mini’s optical drive to the motherboard. What’s up with this vestigial FireWire connector? Leo thinks the riser was designed to feed an iPod Dock connector built in to the top cover of the mini. Whether the feature was originally built in and then dropped, or whether this foretells the advent of an iPod Dock-enabled Mac mini (or whether this is all pure shinola, for that matter), is unknown. But considering that not a single iPod now ships with a Dock as a standard accessory, it sure would be mighty convenient if the next revision of the Mac mini arrives sporting an iPod Dock.

Next, imagine hooking your video iPod (since Steve keeps adamantly poo-pooing it, it’s bound to happen) in to your Mac mini dock and sucking down the video content you’ve just downloaded from the iMovies store. How cool would that be?