I don’t care what anyone says.  In the past 4 years of Mac mini history, the machine has been almost identical to its iBook- and MacBook-labeled cousins by internal specifications.  The Mac mini is a decent selling machine, and is probably a decent profit generator for Apple.

I don’t think Apple would be dumb enough to discontinue a successful product (well, we’ll ignore FireWire at this point) and leave a previously successful market segment empty.  I’ll bet that we’ll be seeing a Mac mini that is electronically identical to the new Aluminum MacBook within a few months.  Lower cost, fewer ICs than with Intel’s chipsets, and a considerable hardware speed boost are all awesome selling points to what is likely to be a bitchen new Mac mini.

Then again, Apple killed its superior peripheral interface (FireWire) on its consumer level computers at a time when the rest of the industry is starting to embrace the goodness that is IEEE 1394.  Who the fuck knows?