The Mac mini is making a big noise, predictably enough. Rob from Macosxhints had the good sense to shoot a pic with his mitt on the coffee-warmer for scale. Others immediately saw the unit as the long-rumored Mac media center; of course, one question in that incarnation is “How do you get NTSC out to the tube?”

Apple’s thoughtfully provided a DVI-to-Video adapter as an option, although the store’s product page lacks the image seen on the Mini’s product page. Scroll down to near the bottom; it’s on the lower right, and, confusingly, it links to a page touting the Mini’s graphics which also lacks an image of the dongle. Neither page links to the dongle’s product page.

On the Mac Addict forums, the debate centers, as it has elsewhere, on the extortionate pricing Apple reports for a loaded Mini with a full gigabyte of RAM. Adding the memory to the 80gb model results in a price of $1,024, an astonishing jump of over $400 for RAM which can currently be found independently for less than half that cost.

(Updated) Apple is People think Apple is deploying the dreaded “no user-serviceable parts” clause here to milk folks, which is too bad. The purchase documents clearly indicate that installing the RAM yourself voids the warranty, something which is certainly sufficient to keep most folks grubby paws right outen thar.

Eric Sinclair, in the comments, notes that Macintouch remarks that the RAM is user upgradeable, which is in line with previous Apple product and policy. The technical specs are pretty clear, though: “Memory upgrade must be performed by an Apple Authorized Service provider.” For comparison, here is the tech spec page for a G5 tower. Alas, there is certainly no Apple-certified tech restriction on that page, and I’m forced to conclude that the squawking is justified.

Happily, someone at the MacAddict forum dug up a nekkid pitcher of the Mini (from here):

If this image, posted without original attribution, is accurate, I’d have to say that swapping the RAM outgha be a piece of cake. The single stick is the green object on the left face of the item in the photo. Man, I really can’t wait to see the takeaparts of this thing.