I notice on the official Apple website for the new Intel Mac mini that there is a sidebar with a list of links to external mini-related sites. These include modding webpages which encourage you to de-and-reconstruct your mini to your own physical liking.

Apple prefaces the links with the text

But some adventurous Mac mini customers have taken it places Apple never imagined (or warrants). These links are purely for inspiration, not instruction.

Apple is notorious for their efforts towards top-down control of their products, including their computers. That makes them a leader rather than a outlier in an industry which is generally moving towards joining their “partner” music and movie industries in reframing ownership of a product as a temporary and revocable license to use it for certain specified tasks in certain specified locations at certain specified times. Playfully hinting that their mini is ripe for reconfiguration, if you don’t mind loosing the warranty, is a small but potent step in the other direction. They’re saying “you bought your mini, you can do what you want to it”. That’s a very different message.

And one of the links is to this sweet Millenium Falcon case-mod.