Mac mini, Apple TV to use new Ion platform?

You guys are sorta reaching aren't you. The last Apple-Macworld is over, Steve is gone for 6 months.. The company has gone into a low energy state. No new products until Jobs is back.

Atom? oh no, please...I need quad-core

one *and* the same

ITS A DESSERT TOPPING YOU COW!!!!

That being said maybe will se an ATOM based AppleTV along side a Core 2 mini.

I don't see Apple moving the mini to a slower 1.6 atom but it would be quite a step up for the ATV and still be able to meet the low price point.

And and ATOM based Mini at current pricing would be ridiculous the ATOM is a low power low cost system I would expect similar PCs to retail around $200-$300.

I see what you did Apple.

Instead of finally releasing a netbook to shut everyone up, you thought different and put a netbook CPU in a desktop computer.

Noooo! Apple can do what they want with the Apple TV, but leave the Mini alone! (I mean, upgrade it for God's sake, but let it have two fast Intel cores.) And update Front Row too, please--why does it recognize song playlists but not video playlists?!?!?

The fact is, if Apple *really* cared about bring green, they'd quit pushing all-in-ones so hard. Why can't I get something as fast as an iMac but without a screen built in? (Not counting the $2300+ Mac Pro.) EVERY display I've ever owned has lasted long enough to be used with at LEAST two computers on average. And give them more than one connector--my Dell LCD is connected to two computers AND my cable box.

Ok, having just reviewed some of the reference designs Nvidia built for the Ion, I take it back... I think it's definitely the next Mini:

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3478

I hear all these fears the the Ion platform would be grossly underpowered for a Mac Mini. I don't get this... If the Atom 330 is twice as powerful as the 230 by itself, then it sounds to me like when coupled with the 9400M thanks to Snow Leopard/OpenCL it would provide quite a bit of processing power.

I suspect you couldn't watch 1080P video WHILE recalculating your spreadsheet... but it'd do either task just fine on their own.

Reagardless of all this conjecture I still think Ion is destined for a Mac NetBook. It's the perfect platform for Apple to use for such a device. As it's enough better than all the existing NetBooks to warrant Apple's premium design, performance and cost. The can easily market as "We were waiting until we could put real power in a NetBook, this outclasses everything in the NetBook range, etc... and that's why we're charging an extra $200 for it".

I further don't think it's headed to a MacMini simply because I think rumors coming out of shops using MacMini's as servers (MacCoLo) would have suggested something to the effect. While server farms are "power sensitive" and might be interested in the Atom's lower power usage, the overall package doesn't seem server friendly.

Intel Core 2 Duo gets "upgraded" to an Atom processor!? Seems like one step forward two giant leaps back!

As a dedicated Mac Mini user I hope these rumours are complete unfounded. Thankfully most Mac rumours are!

Yeah, the writing's been on the walls. When I first saw the Ion at ArsTechnica, I knew it was going to end up in a Mini eventually.

Personally, I predict we'll see an Ion loaded with Intel's Atom for the Apple TV, which will let the Apple TV pull off new features such as faster and better decoding in more formats, even as new ones are formed. Software updates and general computing from the CPU and GPU make that possible, but it needs good hardware to last a while.

I think we'll see something like the Ion in the Mac Mini, but with a Core 2 Duo and maybe a Quad Core option, which will start off expensive but face a major price drop 6-9 months later for the equivalent of a speed bump with no extra needed R&D.

There's not really much of a chance of an Atom being in the Mini, as it's a big stylistic change. However, I think Mac/Book Nanos with Ion and Atom are a possibility for the netbook and nettop markets. Expect the Mac Nano to incorporate traits of the MacBook Air but with slower processing. It'd be designed mostly for web browsing, email, and text editing. Music playback and video are likely as well, thanks to the GPU's OpenCL features and existing video decoding hardware. It likely will have a small SSD and no optical drive, reducing heat output and making it smaller. Maybe it will store and play its iTunes library off of a connected iPod instead of the drive to save space.

The MacBook Nano probably would just be a standard netbook, plus the Ion's GPU. The big feature here would be OSX and Apple's build quality. Multitouch is likely as well, since it would remove the need to give space to a touchpad so it can be small and have a fairly nice keyboard instead.