There was an Apple event today where new iPads were introduced (the iPad Air 2 & iPad mini 3) along with a new iMac sporting an amazing 5K retina screen (5120-by-2880 pixels). Holy cow!

That said, I was just as excited about the newly updated Mac Mini. Apple’s diminutive desktop computer hadn’t been updated in two years and has always seemed on the brink of cancellation. Yet here we are, closing in on the Mini’s 10th birthday next year, and Apple gives us an updated Mini starting at just $499. Granted, this will only get you an i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB spinning hard drive, but you can configure this little badass all the way up to a 3.0GHz i7 with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. ($2,199 if that’s your thing.) I’ve owned several Minis over the years and they’re great as workstations, media servers, and even rack-mounted network servers. I’m glad Apple continues to keep the Mac Mini on the roster.