Apple's Mac mini hadn't seen a substantial update for about a year, but with Intel's Sandy Bridge-based second generation Core processor family arriving in 2011, it was only a matter of time before one of those chips found favor with Apple's tiniest desktop.  The Mac mini design really hasn't changed all that much in the year or so it took the folks in Cupertino to swap out the Core 2 Duo for a Core i5. In terms of volume and dimension, it's almost exactly the same as the 2010 edition, but with a major addition—support for Thunderbolt.