Henry “Hap” Plain, a collector of rare Mac prototypes, revealed an unreleased prototype Apple Mac mini with a built-in iPod dock in an interview with Cult of Mac. According to Plain, a friend suggested that Apple originally planned on releasing the Mac mini at the same time as the new iPod that would dock on its top, but the iPod project was running behind schedule, so Apple left the feature out.
While Plain says that the iPod in question was the iPod mini, both the Mac mini’s January 2005 release date and an accompanying photo suggest that the delayed iPod was actually the first-generation iPod nano, as Apple had released the iPod mini in 2004. The prototype Mac’s dock doesn’t appear to have enough space for larger iPods.
It’s unclear what exact plans Apple had for that Mac mini model, but reports in 2005 and 2006 noted that Apple was considering an integrated dock for the computer. A user who opened the original PowerPC G4-based Mac mini discovered an unused set of pins on the logic board that would have supported a Dock Connector interface, and rumors suggested that Apple might include the feature in an Intel processor-based followup the next year.
