The Mac Mini Porn

So many Mac Mini links, so little time.

No surprises, it's just obvious the G4+ at those speeds is choking on the bus so it's of little benefit to move up to the 1.42GHz model, at least in terms of CPU. More interesting is that the speed problems with the iMac G5 are starting to get wider attention, which is a good thing.

Now if only someone large would really lay into Apple on the Firewire and USB 2.0 problems in their current models. When a G4 Powerbook is spanking a G5 Tower on firewire, and there's limited internal storage, you have a problem. It's borderline-insane.

It looks yummy. :( Me want.

Perhaps only from their website? I'm not sure how I feel about it, because these are so bare bones. Anyone just taking one of these home, plugging it in and trying to use it for anything other than very basic email or web browsing is going to be massively disappointed.

With the exception of maybe iTunes, most of using it for iLife just won't happen. Everything will choke with 256 Megs of RAM. And, because it's from Target, how does Joe Consumer get that upgraded if there is no one Apple-authorized nearby, or an Apple Store nearby? Weird. Expect a bunch of normal users to get really pissed off when they're hunting on the web for USB to Line-in adapters. Many people have said "buy a stick somewhere else, then take it to an Apple Store and have them install it for $x", but might not realize Apple Stores will not install RAM purchased elsewhere.

I just don't get the RAM thing. The sheer wrongness of it is causing me mental anguish. It's one of those things where Apple people have to look down and shuffle their feet when asked about it, and then apologize at Apple's stupidity. And unfortunately, lots of things I've heard are conflicting. From what I've heard from others, RAM is not considered to be user-serviceable, and come as a kit to AASP's. Same for the other internal add-ons.

Henry Norr reported that Apple's thing about the RAM was a 'suggestion', which might mean it won't actually void your warranty, but that they're just trying to dance around it as much as possible in order to rake in as much as possible... either way, this is just so incredibly lame. Apple's technote on it is even more vague:

The Mac mini can be configured to order (CTO) with 512 MB or 1 GB of SDRAM. Additional memory should be installed by an Apple Authorized Service Provider.

Erg, at some point someone is going to have to get a from-the-almighty-for-sure quote about this.

  • HTmini.com was launched, a site devoted to using the MiniMac as a home theater.

Wondering if it's not wishful thinking. Is there an adapter to give it decent audio-out like you'd want with a home theater? I can completely understand why you'd want it sitting next to your TV, the size factor is attractive... even if you remember it's power brick has to sit somewhere.

But the internal storage is just so limited, even in its pricier form. Seriously. 80 Gigs sounds like a lot until you take some off the top for the OS, your music, your MP3s, and swap. If it's just movies... many people might be OK. You know what's the killer? Ripping DVDs of TV shows. Baaajezus. So at that point you need to add storage.

First thing that comes to mind is firewire, but you're adding another big box next to the TV and starting to defeat the purpose. An easier, and sexier way might be to have the Mac Mini pull its big storage needs from a larger source over the network, like say another computer or a NAS device. That's fine, but if you're going to be running a blue cable to another room, why not just have the computer in the other room and run A/V cables to your home theatre? Going forward, no way will the Mac Mini be able to handle decoding HD, and will probably have problems on H.264 depending on the sizes, unless there's something magic in there I'm unaware of.

It just seems weird and forced at this point.

  • x180 cracked his Mini Mac and added his own Gig. With a putty knife.

Still, $220 for a Gig of memory still seems very steep, but to each their own. I'm a cheap bastard. He's also posted a video of him deflowering it with his putty knife.

I like Cringley, and think he's smarter than me, I did write Convergence Kills and Deconstructing H.264/AVC. I just think he's wrong here. He sort of had me until he started in on HD, and that's where he lost me completely. I think he's missing some variables.

It's not worth reading. But C-Net does have some pretty photos of people waiting to buy at the Apple Store.

  • AppleInsider has some notes up about the Mini that are worth reading through.

If they're right, it would look that I was right and that this is based on the eMac and not a portable board. *warm fuzzy* Not that that took rocket science.... Apparently, some 22" Cinema Displays won't work with the Mini Mac.

It's a little-known-fact, but Eric can go a little daft if he's gone too long between puttings. While I thought the colors were cool with the iMacs (I was the only man on the planet who liked tangerine) it just created all kinds of headaches with resellers... like say, Best Buy, Sears, CompUSA. Long story short, everyone only wanted to carry the popular colors and not take up valuable display space with the less popular, let alone carrying actual stock.

Apple wanted them to display everything if they wanted to display one, and Apple wanted them to carry stock of everything. The iMac was hot as hell for awhile, so some places gave it a go, then got pissed off at Apple and bailed. This got worse when we were treated to the likes of Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power, showing that it's possible for Apple to round the horn on good taste. Maybe when it reaches $250 or so... who knows, maybe they learned some lessons from the last time around.

I have a feeling that fan is going to be noticeable if you're pushing things.

  • DaringFireball goes into the Mac Mini & iPod Shuffle... but if you're a Mac user chances are you read DF anyways...

I like Daring Fireball, and even agree with him 75% of the time. And he spell checks. :) I just think it's a little strange to try to make the idea that the Mac Mini is some kind of great play where Apple decided to drop the cost externally, with input devices, and the PC makers decided to drop the cost internally, with components:

To achieve such low prices, corners needed to be cut. Most PC manufacturers cut corners inside the box, selling low-end PCs that generally lack such niceties as DVD-playing/CD-burning combo drives, FireWire, and high-speed networking ports. What Apple has done, rather ingeniously, is cut corners outside the box: no display, no keyboard, no mouse.

It just doesn't add up. Not when you compare what's in the Mini versus other machines of the same price, component wise, and kind of goes back to my original argument, which I got some flack on via email... that this wasn't some technical marvel. I'm just not sure how in touch he is with where the PC market is in terms of components. We can start talking quality of the components, but when they're 90% the same that's pushing things.

Apple is kind of caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to innovation -- for a long while it's just been "how can we repackage the same components in a different enclosure?" without really pushing anything. They could have made a board with wireless on it, and bluetooth, among other things, that would cost them the same amount to sell as the Mini Mac, if not less. One idiot buying a one gigabyte RAM upgrade probably doubles or triples the profit on the machine.

The margins are probably tighter than usual, but not that tight, not with the components and for what they're selling them for in any volume... and this is expected to be a volume product.

The difference between making up a new, innovative board is that they'd have to make the research and development back on it, and their Mac business unit has probably already been running in the red for awhile. It's not something that's commented on much, but yes, the iPod makes up the majority if Apple's profit now, and before that an unhealthy amount come off of interest earned on their cash hoard. Perhaps, if the Mini sells in enough numbers, this could change things a bit and give them more cash to reinvest in R&D.

Apple doesn't do all that much 'basic' research anymore, most of that got severely slashed. Most of their R&D is completely product-specific, IE, it goes towards getting a specific product out the door and then that product has to earn it back. If you aren't selling them in enough numbers with enough margin, that product is going to be around for a long, long time.

The chip gap is also a problem. At this point, it's not a lot of fun to drop a bunch of research into a brand new board built around the G4, it's just not what people want. It's a bottoms-up chip that's about topped out and raising the MHz has about becoming worthless. About the only thing that could help is an on-die RAM controller, bypassing the critically slow bus... but that's not available.

Yet the G5 is a supply-constrained, top-down chip (raking off features from its origins as a server chip) that just really isn't made to be thrown into what Apple needs. Apple really needs a 'tween' chip, the equivalent of the Pentium M, to really start building off of... but has no love.

He's also severely missed the mark on why IBM sold its business to Lenevo, which was all geared around the agreements it got to have access to the booming Chinese market for its services division. You don't sell a $10 billion dollar business for >$2 billion just because it's difficult to turn a profit.

Gushes. Then confirms my worst fears about the fan noise:

Most of the time the machine is very quiet, basically silent; I expected more regular fan noise given the cramped quarters inside the box. On the other hand, under the heaviest extended loads—ripping a number of CDs in a row while performing other processor-intenstive tasks, for example—the fan ramps up to a surprising volume.

...then more gushing.

Don't blame me, I stole the line from Zach.

It's not very funny. Kinda disappointed, they crack me up sometimes, and they only have one first mini comic.

They should check out the prices on the Apple Australia store. It does seem like they're charging more than VAT might account for... I don't think most Mac users have any idea of how much Macs costs around the world, in local economies, who are primarily serviced by white boxes shipping over from Asia in some form. Sigh.

  • Tao of Mac gives his 5 things that really suck about the Mac Mini

*noggle*

  • Tom Bihn has a case designed for the Mac Mini

Looks pretty generic, and I'm wondering how they could design a case specifically for the Mac Mini when it's just been announced... unless Apple sent them inside plans earlier. Erm.

What exactly anyone would do with a Mac in the car is not totally clear, but Benzaquen said there are lots of possibilities, from logging in to one's home network to playing music or movies. Equip the car with Wi-Fi, and it might be able to get Internet access from the parking lot of a Starbucks or McDonald's, he said. GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation and voice-activated programs are other options.

Ergh. To each their own.

*sigh* I'd like one, real bad, with proper RAM of course. Unfortunately the EFF got the lion's share of my left over christmas money, which means all I can afford in the near future is an iPod Shuffle. The weird thing is, what keeps popping out at me with the Mac Mini, for reasons unknown, is that I want to put Linux on it. That's probably weird.

Many have said that it'll be the perfect machine for those PC users, with the dough, who might want a Mac to compliment their iPod but don't want to get into it for a lot of money as it'll probably be a second computer. I pretty much do the same, except with Linux, but for most of my usage patterns with Linux, the things that make it unsuitable as a stock machine for OS X just go away when it comes to Linux. Again, it's probably weird, and I own up to that, but I wonder how many Linux guys might snap one of these up for the same reasons.

I think the Mac Mini is going to do well, as it lowers the barrier in some ways, but I think the people who are saying the marketshare wars are on again are going a little overboard. Unfortunately, it'll be somewhat hard to tell for awhile because just about every Mac product is 'supply constrained' when its first introduced.

yummy alcohol posted button Posted by drunkenbatman
    January 24, 2005, at 12:19 AM


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