Sources: 17-inch MacBook Pro, NVIDIA Mac mini due shortly
People familiar with the matter say both products are due to begin shipping this month but stopped short corroborating a Macworld introduction. That said, this week's trade show would seem the most likely forum for Apple to announce the new offerings.
In what's sure to be a controversial move on the part of the Mac maker, those familiar with the new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro confirm that it will not share the same panel-covered battery layout as its 13- and 15-inch cousins. Instead, the notebook's battery will be fixed in place and not easily removable by users, similar to the MacBook Air's.
Additionally, AppleInsider can also confirm that a similarly-timed makeover to the Mac mini will see the diminutive desktop adopt chipsets from NVIDIA's MCP79 platform, as was previously implied by discoveries within the resource files of a Mac OS X build train that shipped on the latest MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
In addition to sporting both a Mini DisplayPort and a Mini DVI connector, it's now also rumored that the new Mac mini will see the addition of a FireWire 800 port and a fifth USB port, with the legacy FireWire 400 port going away. The Mini DVI connector will allow the mini to continue to cater to users who already own a display, while the Mini DisplayPort will offer support for customers of Apple's latest LED-backlit Cinema Display.
AppleInsider reported in October that the 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro was delayed by several months as Apple focused on working out some design kinks.