I’ve heard from more than one person (one of them quite reliable) that new Macbooks are coming but I’ve also heard they are likely to be priced lower than we’ve seen them before. With the lack of attention the Mac mini has seen in the last year my tin foil hat is picking up ideas that the mini may be phased out in favor of the cheaper Macbook.

A number of people will want to point out that killing the mini wouldn’t make sense, they make great media center PCs or without the mini Apple won’t have anything to pull in those Windows users. But I’d argue that Apple needs only to improve upon the aTV to replace the mini as a media center. I’d also argue that laptops are where its at and more people are buying laptops than desktop systems these days. If a Windows users is on the fence on which computer to choose, you can bet that the two choices are between a Windows laptop and a Mac laptop.