The case should be made of liquid metal if it's cheaper than aluminium ( if not just keep it as is ).The power switch, USB/Firewire, phones and card reader should be on the front ( probably covered up with some kind of panel in order to conserve the aesthetics ). The power connector, HDMI/DisplayPort, RJ45 and air cooling exit could be on the rear side.
A Mini with an internal Bluray drive would be the ideal HTPC for the sitting room ( to watch Matrix, Star Wars and Inception using a BD disc ) . I also need Bluray support to make my backups faster ( because to burn 5 DVDs can be very slow ! ).
It should include USB 3.0 too ( + Lightpeak will be very nice! ). Sata 6Gb will be also welcome.
As CPU/GPU it should use AMD's Fusion Llano APU. Why? Because it's faster and much more power-efficient than the current Core 2. Llano supports OpenGL 4.1 / OpenCL 1.1.
Apple really should offer also a SSD option. As "option" because SSDs can be expensive and problematic ( TRIM, journaling, speed degradation, etc... ). I really prefer a traditional HDD.
Finally, I think the MacMini's price should be lowered. The basic model with 4Gb ram/320Gb HDD/2,8Ghz APU shouldn't cost more than 599$. Let's look in Alternate.de ( considering a basic Fusion Llano == Ahtlon II + Radeon 5450 ) :
AMD Athlon II 220 2,8Ghz ----------> 43€
Sapphire 5450 512Mb ---------------> 30€
Foxconn A78AX 3.0 uATX-----------> 55€ ( Foxconn makes Apple's MBs )
Samsung HM321HI 2,5'' 320Gb-----> 38€
Patriot SO-DIMM 4Gb 1333 --------> 37€
Sony Optiarc BD-5740H-01 Slim----> 123€
Case with power supply -------------> 100€
MacOSX 10.6 -----------------------> 30€
------------------------------------------------
Total: 450€ == 599$
Note a complete E-350 system like this Zacate MB costs only 127€.
Now I want to talk about linux's packaging systems:
Seriously, there is a nice chaos there. I realized that deploying ratGPU for linux. They should really standarize the deployment's mechanisms. We need an unified packaging and library system because it's a pain to deploy a program for all the distros.Windows unified the installation process using the "Microsoft Windows Installer" which uses .MSI/setup.exe files. For Mac, you can pack your program in PKG format using the PackageMaker. For PCBSD you can use PBI packages and create them with PBI Builder.
But, for linux, you'll waste a lot of time packing your app into a zillion of different formats and repositories. The OpenSUSE Build System and Ubuntu PPA are interesting but sadly they don't work with pre-compipled packages, you need to deploy the source code.
I've heard the AppStream team want to unify the linux's packaging system. I hope they could release something soon because the current system is not very productive.
What would I need?
1. A visual tool to create packages. Something like Install Shield for Windows or the PackageMaker of MacOSX. Debreate for linux was interesting.
2. A command line / scripting support in order to perform batch operations.
3. The most popular libraries should included in the packaging system using standarized names ( qt, gnome2, libtbb,libc/stdc, etc... ) for all the distros.
4. Finally, I would need a C/C++ mechanism to install/update/remove programatically libraries ( which could be done using DBus ).
