Max out your mini with matching drive and speaker system – Engadget – www.engadget.com
We always thought the whole appeal of the
Mac mini was that, you know, it’s small. Silly us. Almost from the launch of the diminutive desktop, peripheral makers
have been putting out
matching hard drives,
bases, skirts and other add-ons in an effort to build that little box up into a skyscraper. The trend reaches its
apotheosis with this setup from Japan’s Greenhouse, which adds a hard drive enclosure, speaker system with subwoofer,
and, of course, the obligatory USB and Firewire hub. We plan on stacking two of them for quad sound and a few extra
ports, if we can get away with it without hitting our ceiling.
We promise we won’t write about every damn Mac mini
accessory that floats our way (and to be honest, we’re getting a little sick of all the hype), but we may as well admit
that stuff like Plasticsmith’s acrylic mini Tower (pictured above) and mini Skirt (pictured below) are just the tip of
what is going to be a very, very large iceberg.
Plasticsmith’s Mac mini Shack – Engadget – www.engadget.com
Plasticsmith did what everyone (at least everyone who cared) thought they should have done with their Mac
mini Skirt in the first place and added a 7-port USB 2.0
hub (on the back, not the front). The mini Shack, as it’s known, actually comes in three versions:
- The mini Shack: glo, which comes with a base that glows courtest of either a white or a blue LED.
- The mini Shack: clear, which is basically the mini Shack: glo without the LED.
- And the mini Shack: B.Y.O.H., which is simply the housing—you have to/get to include your own damn USB or
Firewire hub.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this one, apparently a lot of you like these Mac mini accessories]
A minipartner for your Mac mini – Engadget – www.engadget.com
Alright, we get it: the Mac mini has a lot of special friends now. There’s already
Micronet’s miniMate,
Tytech’s M9,
Plasticsmith’s Mac mini Shack, and
Belkin’s USB/Firewire hub, and now you can add MacWay’s
minipartner to the growing list of Mac mini hubs. Like the others, the minipartner is designed to fit underneath (or
above) your Mac mini, and has three Firewire ports, four USB 2.0 ports, and up to 400GB of storage.
Iomega’s MiniMax Desktop Hard Drive for the Mac mini – Engadget – www.engadget.com
There are already plenty of special friends vying for a chance to spend a little QT with the Mac mini (we’ve lost
track of how many different Mac mini hubs
and external hard
drives have come out over the past eight months or so), but Iomega figures there’s still room for the MiniMax
Desktop Hard Drive, a new 250GB external hard drive that can connect up to a Mac mini via either Firewire or USB 2.0.
Should be out sometime in Q4 of this year.
LaCie offers USB and FireWire drives for Mac mini – Engadget – www.engadget.com
Given the limited internal upgrade options
for Apple’s Mac mini, it’s not surprising that
vendors have come up with a host of external hard drives, hubs and other “enhancements�? (like the blue-glowing
mini skirt) designed to match the mini’s
form factor. The latest to get small is LaCie, which has introduced the LaCie mini hard drive, with either FireWire or
USB 2.0 interfaces, in sizes from 80GB to 250GB. Like many other external mini drives, LaCie’s is also faster than
Apple’s internal drive: 7200 RPM, vs. Apple’s laptop-spec 5400 RPM drive.
The M9 Mac mini module – Engadget – www.engadget.com
We’re seeing a lot of these Mac mini port
replicator/external drive bays cropping up
(any takers to whip one up with some video-in and media-center features, pretty please?). The latest by Macpower and
Tytech Technology Co., the M9, features a 3-port USB 2.0 hub, 3-port FireWire hub, 3.5-inch hard drive bay, and active
cooling system. It don’t look too shabby (or different from the others), too.
Belkin’s new Mac mini form-factor USB/FireWire hubs – Engadget – www.engadget.com
Here’s the latest in the Mac mini-shaped
hub category: Belkin is putting out a pair in the shape of the little white Apple box. One is USB only and the
other adds two FireWire ports; both sport four USB 2.0 high-speed connectors. A single USB port (also a single FireWire
on the combo model) will be present on the front of the hub for quick connections, with the rest in the back as usual.
Rolling out in mid-July, they’ll go for $40 for the USB-only and a bit shy of $60 for the combination USB/FireWire
model.
