When Apple announced their smorgasbord of product refreshes last week, the first thing I did was order a Mac Mini. Okay, that’s just a reflex, but after that was taken care of, I started to think; something is different, and I don’t like it. I’m fairly certain the source of my mild dissatisfaction with the recent announcements stemmed from the absence of that Steve Jobs touch.

After the updates Apple released to their desktop lines on Tuesday, it left many people wondering what happened to the Mac Mini. Sure, it’s got a faster processor and better graphics capability, but it still looks the same as it did back in July 2007. It has to be said, a few quiet updates with no notification wasn’t quite what we were expecting.

According to MacRumor’s Buyer’s Guide, it’s been about 450 days since Apple last updated the Mac Mini. That’s over 2.5 times the average of 188 days for a Mac Mini product cycle. I think it’s safe to say Apple needs to do something about the Mac Mini. Dennis Sellers from Macsimum News thinks that Apple will make that decision soon.

Since I’m pretty sure that we’ll see an iMac and Mac mini update on Tuesday, Nov. 10 (if they’re not announced today), I’m going out on a limb and say that we’ll see new Mac Pros introduced at January’s Macworld Conference & Expo.

Now it should be immediately noted that this is pure speculation. There is no leaked information behind this, just a gut feeling. Oh, and to add to the credibility, Nov. 10th is a Monday.

But we all knew he meant Tuesday, Nov. 11, or should I say iTuesday? In any event, we’ve been waiting for some answer from Apple about this Mac Mini business. It’s been rumored to be either dead or upgraded. The only rumor that isn’t going around right now is that it’s going to stay the same; that would just be too boring.

I’m not going to make a prediction on the exact day that Apple will announce an upgrade to the Mac Mini, but I think it will happen…soon. Here’s my reasoning…