In a video by Luke Miani, we see a unique Mac mini: it has a dock for an iPod nano on its top section.
This isn’t new: the Mac mini in question has already been shown before. I mentioned it in 2014, again in 2014, and in 2020. But what’s interesting is that we see it in operation, and Luke opened the Mac mini.
The Mac mini and its dock
It’s definitely a prototype
You can see the port on the top case
The connector used
First of all, this is an Intel Mac mini and not a G4. The idea of an integrated dock in the Mac mini isn’t new: the Mac mini G4 already had traces of a dock connector, which was interfaced via FireWire at the time. But what we see in the video is that the connector linking the top case (which includes the dock) to the rest of the Mac is present in commercial Mac minis, at least in traces. It’s the J27 connector on the motherboard… and someone already noticed its presence in 2012. It is clearly visible in iFixit’s teardown (step 8) or, surprisingly, in Apple’s Service Source documents. Indeed, we can clearly see a prototype motherboard with the port (the red motherboard), and in some photos, even the blue motherboard includes the port.
iFixit (J27)
In Apple’s documentation, a prototype motherboard
And a commercial motherboard, but with the connector
It is clear that Apple considered integrating the dock multiple times, whether in the first or second Mac mini. However, the version shown by Luke has a flaw (which he explains well): the port is specific to the first iPod nano. Apple could have included a universal connector (as seen in external docks or the iPod Hi-Fi), but that isn’t the case here. This creates a timeline issue: the iPod nano was released in September 2005, significantly after the Mac mini G4 (January 2005) and well before the Intel Mac mini (February 2006). Rumors suggested that the first Mac mini was supposed to be paired with the iPod mini, which makes sense: it was older, and the iPod nano couldn’t sync via FireWire.
If anyone is motivated to try finding the pinout and soldering a connector, I’d be interested (or better yet, finding the reference for the intermediate PCB). Because I have a question, and the video doesn’t answer it: is the iPod’s audio routed to the Mac mini’s speaker or audio output?
