Apple’s senior vice president of marketing Phil Schiller has announced an updated Mac Mini at a 'special event' in San Jose, California.

The device will ship in two variations - a model with a dual-core i5 Ivy Bridge processor clocked at 2.5GHz and 4GB of RAM, packing a 500GB hard drive. There’s also a higher-end server version with a quad-core i7 Ivy Bridge processor, 4GB of RAM, and two 1TB hard drives.

On the connectivity front, both models will boast Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Firewire 800, HDMI out, Thunderbolt I/O, four USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and Bluetooth compatibility.

The update Mac Minis will begin shipping today, for $599 (£375) and $999 (£625), respectively, with details on UK pricing yet to be announced.

Tune into ITProPortal's live blog of the Apple event, where the Cupertino-based tech giant has just announced a 13in MacBook Pro with Retina display and is expected to launch a brand-new 7in iPad.