The Mac mini uses the same USB SuperDrive as the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook models.

This is the first time, the Mac mini has USB 3, which is up to 10x as fast as USB 2.0. Maybe because this is brand new, unproven technology for Apple, there is no Fusion Drive option for the Server version. To revive a phrase Apple has used for a long, long time, it just works.

Best of all, this is totally transparent to the end user. The brilliance of Fusion Drive is that the operating system keeps track of your work patterns and will move files, data, and applications to the SSD or back to the hard drive based on that information. It also reserves 4 GB of space on the SSD for use as a hard drive cache. Fusion Drive treats the hard drive and SSD as a single 1.125 TB volume, storing the operating system and all included software on the SSD and initially putting everything else on the hard drive. If you want way more performance, look to the $300 256 GB SSD or the new $250 1 TB Fusion Drive, which combines a 1 TB hard drive with 128 GB SSD. The 2012 Mac mini uses Intel HD Graphics 4000, which is a step up from the Intel 3000 in last year’s entry-level Mini – but a step down from the AMD Radeon HD 6630M GPU with 256 MB of dedicated video memory in last year’s top-end model. “A bit more power” might be a more realistic claim there. However, at the entry level, the dual-core 2.5 GHz i5 earns a 6638 score, just 5% faster than the 2. 6741 for last year’s 2.7 GHz dual-core i7 model), which is an impressive 58% better. It has the highest Geekbench score yet for a Mini at 10642 (vs. “Way more power” is Apple’s claim for the Late 2012 Mac mini, and that’s certainly true for the top-end quad-core i7-based model.

Mac mini i7 2012 firewire