Yesterday I received a survey from Apple asking what I thought of my Mac Mini. They limited the response to 500 characters. "Time for a blog posting!", I said.
Dear Apple,
Please make a Mac Mini that is not so miniaturized. Look, it's very cute that you can slice up one of your laptops, stack it in four pieces and have it take up less space in my office than a 1985 model "Clock Radio". But it's not so cute when you need to replace a hard drive or optical drive, or add RAM. I have done one of each and it is quite time consuming.
My little office is 10x10x8 feet. I'd have plenty of room for something which is two or three times as big, and would much appreciate having something that was easier to maintain. I understand that the larger case would use more material and cost a little more, but you would more than make up for that in reduced assembly costs, reducing the number of jigsaw-puzzle-shaped custom parts, and simplifying the cooling system by not having everything packed in so tight. And, as Steve says, aluminum is recyclable. You might also consider using a 3.5 instead of a 2.5 inch hard drive if those are still a better value.
Oh, by the way, the main reason why I don't buy a Mac Pro, even more important than its much higher cost, is cooling. We don't have air conditioning in our home here in San José. I can keep the windows shut on hot days, but if I had a Mac Pro sitting there and belching out 250 watts of heat it would not be very comfortable by late afternoon. The ~25 watt consumption of the Mini is great.
Oh, and due to that low power consumption, another nice feature you should consider adding would be a 2-minute battery or super-capacitor backup -- just enough time to save work in the event of a power failure.
Finally, and I know that your Design Elegance Police would never allow this, but I'd much appreciate having the connectors on the same side as the optical drive and power indicator. Life is messy, and I often need access to the connectors, even though they look a little ugly. Actually, since I rarely use the optical drive, I have put my Mini on the shelf backwards -- the connectors face me and the front is toward the wall. I put a mirror back there so I can see the power indicator.