Macrumors said:
At this point, this remains pure speculation.
I believe this to be peoples' imaginations running away with them. Let's examine this.
It's hard to tell how many pins there are for the power connector, but based on the pictures on apple's web site there appears to be as many as 10. One other person suggested 8. I'll go ahead and stick with the seemingly maximum number.
At least 1 pin will be used for grounding - connecting the jacket of the power cord to the chassis of the mini. It's possible that there may be a redundant pin for this (just to be safe. Very common in electronics today). So we'll say there are 2 pins used for jacket/chassis grounding. That leaves 8 pins.
Computers require two different voltage levels from the power supply. Most PCs use a +12 voltage rail and a reference ground for the motherboard, and a totally seperate +5 voltage rail and a different reference ground for the hard drive. Or it could be the other way around. Regardless, that would explain away a further 4 pins. I can hear people saying to me now, "but anubis!!!!111 my MAC is only plugged into the wall with 3 prongs!!!11 how can my puter have more than one voltage lol". Take a look inside any standard power supply (G4 for instance) and you'll notice about 20 wires coming out of the thing. Have you ever seen a motherboard power connector for a PC? It's got about 12-14 connectors on it. Power supplies for computers output a variety of voltages to accomodate various components. In this case, the power supply for the Mini is external and provides all of the voltages to the mini externally, requiring at least 4 pins for 2 different voltage levels. Additional voltages may be used, but I'll err on the side of caution.
We're now down to 2-4 extra pins for the power connector. It hadly seems enough to add or anticipate any extra features. Let me offer some less fantastic-but-more-realistic suggestions:
1. The extra pins may serve as a communications channel to the power supply for diagnostic purposes.
2. The mac mini requires more than the absolute minimum 2 voltage levels.
3. Additional grounding may be required.
4. The most likely explaination at this juncture: the extra pins are not used.
Think of it this way. There are many everyday connectors we use that have extra, unused pins. VGA only requires 11 pins, but standard VGA connectors are 15 pins.
I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but before the rumor sites run wild with the possibility of network your iPod over power lines, or something, I'd suggest that the extra pins are a non-story.
