When it comes to Apple Computer’s new Mac Mini, beauty is in the eye of the person holding the wallet, says C|Net. My Take: I updated my blog with an… unrealistic hope for an even cheaper Mac Mini.
Mac Mini a maxi deal? Depends what you want
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Compare this to Dell’s smallish form factor computer, which is much larger than the Mac mini but also uses notebook parts (see the 24x cdrom) and the mini looks like a good deal.
If you get the 4700c with minimal specs, 2.8ghz PIV (faster than the Mac), 40GB drive, 256MB ram, cdrw/dvd-rom, ethernet, modem, etc. it comes out to over $700. Sure you only save $42 at Dell for omitting the 17″ CRT, but that’s because those monitors are a dime a dozen. Also, you can upgrade to 512MB ram for only $40 more at Dell, whereas at Apple you pay $75.
The message, though, is that people are used to paying a premium for small computers, and are willing to do it. That’s why dell charges a few hundred more for the 4700c as opposed to the 4700. The Mac Mini is a much better deal than the 4700c. Stop comparing it to a computer in a tower case using commodity parts. It’s not competing with those.
First of all, OS X is not Unix. Calling it a Unix is a lie since to be a Unix it must pass certification by the Open Group. Check http://www.opengroup.org/certification/registers.html for all those who have passed certification. Now I do know what I am talking about because I have a Mac running OS X and have delved in to it. I tried to set up a Ventrillo server which was easy but trying to get it to run at startup was not the same as Linux or BSD. I searched on google and read a whole article from a Unix guy trying to work on OS X and he gave a lot of information on how OS X boots. I don’t have the link anymore and I don’t have time to find it as I must leave for work. Sure almost all the userland cli utilities are from BSD but that doesn’t mean that everything on the Mac is the same as BSD or Linux. A lot of it is non standard Apple only stuff.
I have an ibook g4 1.3, 14 inch. Personally, i think this is a great tool for most people who dont want to mess with virus updates, and other security programs. A mac with os x lets you do what the machine was designed for..get your work done. Me my wife and daughter simply love using OS X. The review really overstates the cost of the minimac. I can goto the local computer nerd store and pick up a usable keyboard for $15 and a mouse for $10. Gimme a 15′ monitor(tubed) for @$150 and im pretty much ready to go. Personally i dont have a wifi card in my desktop so who cares???? So for under $650 i have a very usable..malware,spyware and virus free computer. that excells at digitalmedia,surfing and regular joe sixpack stuff.
Now there will be people who say well im a developer.. so install the xcode tools, and the rest of the mac dev stuff, install fink and run your nix programs. i havve the gimp and OOo.org running on my ibook.. and think about it, if my mom had one of these, i wouldnt get that inevitable “my computer is broken!” phonecall. OS X rules…windows drools..just like a dog. (p.s running Ubuntu Hoary on the desktop:))
Yeah i like that but i think you still get a decent computer for a palatable price with the $499 mini mac.
My only complaint are the two usb slots. Most pc users will use both with just their old pc keyboard and mouse.
Regardless, i intend to purchase one for my parents in the coming year.
bought one yesterday, i have already a few Mac’s and could not resist to buy one. I took the low-end model and added wifi and bluetooth. Now I put it with my television / hifi and lets see what I can do on my tv/monitor with it. Maybe I can stream movies to it or take remote desktop on the sofa with the powerbook.
Maybe I can control it with my mobile, let’s find out.
For those who miss more audio interfaces;
buy the imic and you have audio in and out via usb
Can’t wait to see it in real…
1. I don’t really care if it’s equivalent to a P3. OS X and Office 2004 run very smoothly and efficiently on the 1ghz G4 TiBook that I currently have. A 1.4ghz G4 would be significantly faster than that.
2. It looks good enough that I can put it in my living room w/o my fiance throwing a fit. This means that I can plug it into the DVI port on my 50″ DLP HDTV. w00t!
3. I can juice up the base configuration a bit, making it cost about 800$, so then I can afford a nice high end display. I don’t have the spare cash right now to buy two 20″ displays plus a dual 2.5ghz G5, so I can get a display now and a Mac Mini. Later when Apple finally gets PCIe and dual 3ghz processors in a PowerMac, I can just upgrade that one part, retiring the Mac Mini to a little web server, or music server, etc.
4. I consider iLife to be generally useless. I don’t do video editing, I don’t make music, etc. I write scripts and code, write documents, and configure networks. I live in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Firefox, and vi. So I very much disagree with those who say the main benefit is iLife.
– Kelson
One thing I found funny was this constant ‘but the hardware is of better quality’ how do you know?!?
It’s one of the standard Mac Zealot Mantras. Like “the Mhz Myth”.
Like most myths, however, it has some basis in fact. 10 – 15 years ago, when Macs shipped standard with SCSI drives, parity RAM, NuBus and the like, they did have higher quality hardware than the typical PC (naturally such high end features were also available on PCs at the time, and cheaper, but that never seems to come up). Since about the time of the first PCI Macs, however, Apple has been using the same industry standard components as everyone else – IDE, PCI, non-parity/ECC RAM, etc, so it’s no longer true.
Yeah yesterdays thread made me want to puke, Mac Fanboys and Fangirls raving about how cool Apple is for releasing a low end PC. Does anybody realize how behind the curve they are? This is supposed to be progressive? Great job Apple, you really deserve a pat on the back for innovating the low end PC market. Maybe we should give eMachines a bj for being there for the last 5 years.
Anyway, I love my Mac and I love my PC for gaming. Mini-mac? Not really that cool.
“Since about the time of the first PCI Macs, however, Apple has been using the same industry standard components as everyone else – IDE, PCI, non-parity/ECC RAM, etc, so it’s no longer true.”
I suspected as much. I guess the real question is OS X and the integration between the software and hardware in a Mac make it worth the extra money that could have bought more raw computing power in a PC.
I’m not so sure about that. Many are saying even Panther doesn’t run so quick on a G4 1.25ghz
Panther runs acceptably well on a 450MHz G3. Anyone claiming it’s slow on a 1.25GHz G4 is, well, misrepresenting reality…
so won’t upgrading to Tiger slow things down even further?
Each successive release of OS X has not worsened, but rather improved performance.
If a person is buying a low end machine like this, is upgrading to Tiger even worth the money?
If you’re interested in the awesome new features of Tiger, such as Spotlight or iChat AV (with concalls), all of which will run perfectly fine on a “low end machine” like the Mac Mini, then yes, an upgrade to Tiger is very much worth it. That’s not to mention that Apple halts support on new versions of applications for older releases of OS X…
For me, the minmac would represent reasonable value for money
(aside perhaps from the missing ports Eugenia mentions).
However, the crucial issue for me is ram slots. They say the system supports up to 1GB but the cost of 1GB 2700 DDR sticks is outrageous, particularly as DDR2 is on the horizon and such RAM will quickly be obsolete for new machines.
This is due to the fact that most PCs have 2 or 3 slots and 1.5GB = 3 x 512 is fair more than 99% of desktops will ever use over the lifetime of the machine. Hence there is little demand.
I checked the figures and the eMac represents better value for money, having two slots. If you buy a mac with 256MB and decide soon after that you want to upgrade, just pop in a card. Can’t do this with the macmini!
Plus, I suspect that the eMac will quietly be phased out, as the minimac is Apple’s way of no longer supporting CRTs (a low-profit area) yet allowing schools and the like to buy 3rd party ones (who don’t want kiddies wrecking LCDs in labs!)
For Apple apologists that swear that some can get by with 256MB, the idea with extra RAM is optimal performance; that
you should RARELY ever have to swap. If you’re swapping, you need more. Even if performance is okay, you’ll shorten the life of your HD!
Given that most users will keep a machine for ~4 years, I think Apple are doing themselves a disservice by having one RAM slot. If 256MB is ‘adequate’ for today, it won’t be in 2 years time. If they included a second slot, one could then buy a, perhaps 2nd hand, 512MB stick dirt cheap, thus trebling the RAM for next to nothing. However, 1GB stick may still be just as scarce and relatively expensive, due to the cost of supporting superceded RAM.
Me? I’d go out and buy one with two 512 sticks – rev 2?
Or wait for rev 3 – serial ATA!
Or rev 5 Using the dual core freescale G4!
Panther runs acceptably well on a 450MHz G3. Anyone claiming it’s slow on a 1.25GHz G4 is, well, misrepresenting reality…
It’s slow on a 1.25Ghz G4. Things like switching between tasks, between tabs in Safari/Firefox, scrolling, opening photos in iPhoto, etc all have a noticable lagginess.
About the only things that _aren’t_ laggy are the flashy graphical effects like Expose (in fairness Expose also gives substantial usability benefit as well) and dynamically scaling Dock icons.
Each successive release of OS X has not worsened, but rather improved performance.
Well, many would argue that’s performance was so atrocious to start with it didn’t have anywhere else to go except up
.
I’m not sure this is very balenced. I think it’s clear the only people who think the mac mini is too dear are the same people who think they should get given one for nothing just for being open minded enough to try it. I was recently looking at buying a mini-itx system to run linux and the mac mini works out cheaper. It’s not even as low powered as a VIA system. Maybe it should come with a keyboard or a hub, but the price is fair and seems to relate the bottom 10-20% segment of the PCs available, judging by dabs and ebuyer.
And it comes with OsX. Currently I’m trying to get a wireless network to run using FC3, but I think it’s beyond me, (yes prism 54 drivers, patch the kernal, but I dont have either the source code for the kernal or egrep(?) installed – or available off my 4 cds – or the nous to understand the instructions I have). So OsX looks pretty good to me right now.
The other thing is that this is a serious event for apple. If apple wants its platform to be distinguishable from linux or any of the various hobby oses, it needs third party software and hardware drivers. If it wants to further develop OsX it needs to sell more software and spread the development cost, so it needs more users and it should get them, even if only from former mac owners like myself.
Maybe in another year or two audio on Linux will be worth it, but it’s not now.
Keep an eye on http://www.rosegardenmusic.com
Get over it. It’s pretty amusing seeing the apologists say stuff like “but you don’t need that much power’.
A year ago, I was pricing powerbooks. The top of the line powerbook was a thousand dollars more and woefully underpowered to the Sager desktop replacement I ended up getting.
You’ll just have to get it through your heads that a large percentange of people will not buy Macs when they can get more powerful x86 systems for much cheaper.
>>I think they’re going to sucker a lot of people who haven’t owned Macs and bought an iPod and went “Gee whiz, this rules!” into buying a cheap Mac Mini only to discover that two months down the road they’ll need to shell out $130 for a copy of Tiger.
Why would they *need* to shell out $130 for a copy of Tiger? Will Panther and iLife 05 stop working when Tiger is released?
The Mac Mini is a tremendous value. I have never owned a Mac in my life, and the only one I ever bought (eMac) was a gift for my parents to replace a virus-destroyed Win95 box. I always said if Apple would release a machine like this I would buy it, and I put my money where my mouth is. I maxed mine out, 1.42GHz, 80gig drive, 1gig RAM, SuperDrive, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, etc. and after taxes it only came to $1400. That’s $200 less than the 17-inch desklamp iMac I almost bought two years ago, I just didn’t want to be stuck with a 17-inch display forever so I didn’t buy it.
People who are comparing it to a low-end Wal-mart machine or a low-end Dell are missing some points. First of all, no low-end Wintel machine comes with a 32MB ATI Radeon card. None. They all have a crappy integrated video/shared RAM solution that won’t even play a divx file. Second, they don’t come with iLife. Out of the box those budget PCs come with Windows and maybe Word, plus a bunch of junkware from the manufacturer and free trials. iLife gives users so much more value. Another point is that these budget PCs from wal-mart or Dell ship with Windows and IE as the default browser, meaning it’ll be infested with popups and spyware in a matter of days.
Also, the budget PC from wal-mart will be big, loud and ugly and mom will probably need the help of a stockman to get it into her trunk. She can walk out with a Mac mini in one hand.
Just looking at the estimated ship dates on the Apple Store, you can tell these things are selling like hotcakes. When I bought mine the estimated ship time was 1 week. Now it’s up to 3-4 weeks, and if a few days it’ll be more than a month.
ordered 3 today for my kids. I have spent too many hours with windows upgrades and reformats (do give me this is automatic and spyware and software stops this). They need windows to play some of their games, but they also surf and that is where it all goes wrong. I use Mepis linux on my laptop and have a redhat server too, but it is still to difficult for a 10 year old. 1500 for 3 quality pieces of equipment that I dont have to service daily weekly or monthly is something I would pay dearly for.
Snaker
That is my reason to get it if I do (and the 2.9 pounds, I am still in shock). I want to use OS X. And I would like to use Tiger. I have tried windows. I tried Linux. BSD. Got damn it, I even tried some assembly based OS’s. I want to give OS X a try.
Regardless of all the whimpering going on here, this baby is gonna sell like friggin’ hotcakes…most probably to many of those hangin’ out here bad-mouthing it!!!
Ahh, I should have expected to see the dynamic duo of troll-dom, darius and drsmithy! And coming in at a close third, Rayiner!
You want line/mic in? Buy an iMic, or any of a number of USB/Firewire audio interfaces.
By the way, folks. Don’t believe the FUD. Panther runs extremely well on even a 500 MHz G3 system.
>>Yeah yesterdays thread made me want to puke, Mac Fanboys and Fangirls raving about how cool Apple is for releasing a low end PC. Does anybody realize how behind the curve they are? This is supposed to be progressive?
The time is right for a low-end tiny PC *now*. It wasn’t the time for a machine like this before. OSX wasn’t mature, OS9 was pure garbage, iLife wasn’t mature, and the Apple brand didn’t have that whole “young/cool” thing it has going for it now. If Apple had done this two or three years ago it wouldn’t have sold nearly as well as it’s going to now. Apple waited until demand for such a machine reached a fever pitch and then finally released it. BOOM.
Last time Apple released what was then a budget PC was the iMac, and that came with OS9. I’m sure that experience left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. This time they’re getting it right, and when spyware-infested Windows users check it out, it’s going to taste really, really good…and they’re gonna want more.
What’s with this speed nonsense about OSX?? Panther RUNS mighty fine on my iBook, 12″, 1.07 GHz, 256 MBRAM, Ati Radeon 9200 32 MBRAM.
Anyone claiming OSX is slow or unresponsive on a 1.25 GHz G4 is simply talking crap. No other words for it.
What are you doing to that poor G4? Editing 43 2100×1600 images in Photoshop simultaniously?
@drsmithy:
It’s slow on a 1.25Ghz G4. Things like switching between tasks, between tabs in Safari/Firefox, scrolling, opening photos in iPhoto, etc all have a noticable lagginess.
What, you got 128mb in that thing??? In my 256mb G3 250 B&W there is NO lagginess. In fact, when I go back to my P4 3.2 w/1gb, it seems MUCH slower…
Amazing that people who obviously don’t use Macs daily think they can make a statement like this.
And before you reply, I know you couldn’t possibly be a Mac user, because you’d know better than this…
@lumbergh:
Get over it. It’s pretty amusing seeing the apologists say stuff like “but you don’t need that much power’.
Except that it’s true…
In the x86 world, you need more and more power to make up for the fact that Microsoft could care less about performance on older hardware. They spend very little time optimizing their products…
Back in the OS/2 days, IBM recompiled DOS and Windows 3.1 using the Watcom Compiler and got 10% more system speed out of both. Just with a recompile…
Macs are fast and smooth. A G4 1.25/1.42 is plenty fast for most people.
My sister still uses a Celeron 500, every day. And it works fine…
A computer several times as fast, can only be for the better.
Just because the Mac Mini isn’t a top of the line machine doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the price, or that people won’t love it when they use it…
This has NOTHING to do with Mac Zealotry. This just has to do with common sense, and using your intelligence to counter an automatic thought about 1.25GHz being less desireable than 3.6GHz…
What we have here are people who are more concerned with specs, than real-world performance and usage.
Speed isn’t everything.
User experience is.
Maybe in another year or two audio on Linux will be worth it, but it’s not now.
I use Arch Linux, and it works great in the studio. I’m an amateur, though.
I think this Mac Mini will sell incredibly well, though. Building on top of the iPod’s success. The Mac Mini is not the bang for my buck that I want, though…but I’m a DIY’er in the computing world, so I’m not the target audience.
I think the Mac Mini plus the iPod and iLife accompanied soon by an Mac office suite announced recently could really change the landscape of computing.
Still, though, I won’t be buying a Mac until I can run the OS I use to do my web development on Mac hardware without losing functionality.
Come on people, most of us are computer nerds who will never buy a $x.xxx dollars Mac, but for $4.xx even I’m getting one, this will make a really cool mediaplayer on top of my TV!!!
I think Apple is going to sell the mini Mac like hot cakes, eventually they will release versions with a mic, more ram, better GFX chipset, etc.
Right on ucedac, and that is what I’m waiting around for, so Apple can make some decent money, and then design/produce a better version of the Mac-Mini, maybe even a G5 version, with more ram, and better video.
</2cents>
You are absolutely right, I was going to say the same thing, so I’ll just reiterate what you said.
There wasn’t a time before now, to introduce the rest of the world to the Mac. Classic Mac os was garbage, OS X was great in my opinion, even from the beta release…but joe schmo didn’t need to deal with classic and the whole transition and classic software vs. native.
Now is the time to make this push…and people who think it is ‘too late’…what garbage. I remember when GM (the automaker) seemed invincible….actually in their halcyon days they were fairly invisible.
It isn’t ‘too late’ to compete….before it was ‘too early’…now is the time.
It will take decades, but someday, Microsoft will seem only as invincible as AT &T, UPS, or GM once did….(for those outside the U.S., those are large companies that we once thought of as being monopolies like Microsoft)….
this is a perfect time to take some market share, and its exciting to see…that with this vehicle Apple is not only going to build marketshare, but at the same time stay true to sound business economics.
Supports up to 1GB but the cost of 1GB 2700 DDR sticks is outrageous
Since when? 1GB of Micron PC2700 memory is $150, while 512MB of Micron PC2700 is $70. If you’re like me and avoid name-brand memory, you can pick up a stick of generic 1GB for $85.
“Panther runs acceptably well on a 450MHz G3. Anyone claiming it’s slow on a 1.25GHz G4 is, well, misrepresenting reality…
It’s slow on a 1.25Ghz G4. Things like switching between tasks, between tabs in Safari/Firefox, scrolling, opening photos in iPhoto, etc all have a noticable lagginess.”
Oookay, guess I’ll have to find our for myself.
Panther on a 800MHz iMac (with QE) is tolerable, though it does bog down when you’ve got a lot of apps open at the same time. 1.25Ghz would definitely be okay for the word-processing crowd, though I’d stop short of saying it’d be “smooth” or “snappy”. As Bascule said, Tiger will most likely be faster than Panther.
if it looks like a unix and quacks like a unix, it’s a freaking unix. os x is unix enough to call it unix, that’s why it IS unix. the open group’s designation is no longer valid. you want to know why? linux isn’t considered a unix by that definition. so don’t give me that crap.
Why do we see the weird meme being repeated that any G4 is too slow for simple tasks?
I used to have a G4/450MHz. In the OS X beta (yes, *beta*) it was slow. But at that point it was well behind the curve and the software was in beta. I expected that.
In 10.1 (I skipped 10.0) it was acceptable. Not good, but usable.
In 10.2 OS X ran nicely on that old machine. Then I bought a 1GHz G4 upgrade card, and it flew. My very subjective testing (using my G4 versus a dual-G4 shiny model in the shop) left me feeling that 1GHz was enough. I had a very smooth system, no lagging between app changes unless I was running the processor at 100%, and even then the lag was just a momentary thing.
OS X 10.3 was a step up even further. Performance was noticably faster in file system access. I didn’t notice a UI speed improvement, but then it was already as responsive as I could have wanted. Everything happens as soon as I click or hit the keys.
Now I’ve got an iBook, with a 1.2GHz G4 processor. Very similar to the Mac mini, although slightly less powerful. OS X 10.3 flies on this thing. I don’t notice the lagginess that others complain about.
Do I maintain my system? Why bother? OS X defragments the drive as it goes, apps don’t write crap to the system folders, and all I need to worry about is keeping my user folder organised enough. I don’t optimise my iBook – there’s no need.
As a contrast, my Dell 2GHz P4 (on Win2K) is horrible to use when I max the processor out. App switches are painful, and responsiveness just plain sucks. I do a lot of database and spreadsheet work, and the processor is running at 100% for about (cumulatively) 1-2 hours each day, chugging the network and hard drive.
I do work stuff on my iBook too, maxing the processor while hammering the hard drive. My little iPulse monitor shows 100% for about an hour each day, but the difference is I can switch apps with no lagginess and start working in other apps more easily. Even launching apps, while slower, is not as painful as *switching* apps on my work PC. OS X has multitasking right, just like all good *nixes.
Maybe the PC is maintained badly? No way. The IT dept at work keeps very tight control over their boxes, and we never see spyware, viruses or other malware. Of course, getting the mainframe guys to extract new data takes six months, but I’m digressing…
I built an Athlon box last year (XP2800, 1GB RAM, WinXP Home, dual drives) and that thing flew through anything. I never got it close to maxing the processor out, and app switching was rarely an issue on that box, but I noticed a few things (too rare to worry about though). After sitting unused for a few months I sold that box and returned to my Mac. The cost of re-buying all my software was too much for me, and the weekly maintenance schedule required was just too much to be bothered with.
Is OS X too slow on a G4? Not if you’re running anything better than a single processor at 1GHz. The Mac Mini will fly through OS X, just like my iBook does.
I have never seen it shown how much other countries are really paying over us Americans once you factor in all local taxes and tariffs. I really don’t doubt that the products are somewhat more expensive though.
Let’s see. In Brazil, this IMac ($1,299.00 on the US):
17-inch widescreen LCD
1.6GHz PowerPC G5
512K L2 cache
533MHz frontside bus
256MB DDR400 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
80GB Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load Combo Drive
Has a price tag of R$8,000.00 (US$2,850.00). The new MiniMac has not arrived here yet, but I guess it will cost around US$1100.
To brazilian standards, this is insanely expensive.
I’m wondering if people place any value at all on software when they criticize the Mac Mini ?
Think about what you get in terms of software with a Mac, and you’ll realise that there are no $500 PC’s that come close to the value of the Mac Mini.
Mac OS X itself is worth a lot, then you get iphoto, itunes, idvd, imovie, Mail, a few games, garage band, xcode, developer tools, unix tools (bash, perl, python, etc), X11 compatibility, DVD playback, Sound studio, worldbook encyclopedia (at least, it came with my ibook), pdf viewer (preview), sticky notes, etc…
Not to mention that most of this stuff works with eachother (e.g. iLife) and isn’t just some third party crapware bundled in with a 90 day trial.
If you place any value *at all* with what you can do out-of-the-box with this system, then you will see that it is a good deal.
I think it’s fair to say that the 1.25Ghz G4 isn’t going to compare very favourably to the cheap, fast x86’s you can get now. Having played around with my mum’s ibook, there is a noticeable lagginess – OSX does hide this reasonably well as it generally doesn’t draw half a window while it’s loading the rest.
Basically the mini mac isn’t going to be a fast machine. But that’s not the point of it; it strikes me that it’s aimed at people who want to use it for internet browsing, word processing and e-mail. It’s not aimed at doing anything intensive like playing games on – but there’s no point there because gaming support isn’t terribly hot on OSX _anyway_.
There has a be quite a market out there for this sort of thing, and I suspect Apple may well have hit it very well.
Crawling Mushroom Syndicate: First of all, no low-end Wintel machine comes with a 32MB ATI Radeon card. None. They all have a crappy integrated video/shared RAM solution that won’t even play a divx file.
A 32MB Radeon doesn’t compare all that favourably to the integrated solution. They’re not fast cards; they’re the sort of thing you get as “minimum necessary”, not for it’s blistering performance.
I have in ibook G4 1GHz with 512MB RAM running Panther, and this thing runs damn fast. I was really surprised that a machine with such a slow processor would run Mac OS X with this speed, but they have really done a good job in tweaking the performance of OS X and the bundled applications.
Last time Apple released what was then a budget PC was the iMac, and that came with OS9. I’m sure that experience left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths.
History would suggest otheriwse. The original iMacs were among the best selling computers ever released.
What are you doing to that poor G4? Editing 43 2100×1600 images in Photoshop simultaniously?
Running Mail, iPhoto (just browsing) a couple of (idle) Terminals and Firefox (Safari is too slow) with a few tabs open.
Re: Al Hartman (IP: —.neave01.pa.comcast.net)
What, you got 128mb in that thing???
768MB. And a 5400rpm, 8MB cache hard disk. My machine is actually a 1Ghz iBook, but I’ve used other Macs extensively for many, many years – I know how fast a 1.25Ghz G4 is going to be.
In my 256mb G3 250 B&W there is NO lagginess. In fact, when I go back to my P4 3.2 w/1gb, it seems MUCH slower…
Then either your PC is *extremely* broken, you’re measuring by very different standards, or you’re lying.
If I take a ca. 1Ghz P3 with 512MB of RAM running XP and fire up, say, Outlook, Firefox with a few tabs and maybe Word, switching between apps, scrolling in apps and switching between tabs in Firefox is *instantaneous*. On my iBook, it’s (comparatively) noticably laggy.
Amazing that people who obviously don’t use Macs daily think they can make a statement like this.
I do use Macs daily. I’ve used just about every Mac ever made in the last 7 – 8 years.
And before you reply, I know you couldn’t possibly be a Mac user, because you’d know better than this…
I’m a Mac user, just not a member of the Mac faithful.
In the x86 world, you need more and more power to make up for the fact that Microsoft could care less about performance on older hardware. They spend very little time optimizing their products…
Rubbish. A comparably aged PC runs newer software *far* better than a Mac.
The Mini Mac is comparable to hardware two generations old in the PC world. It’s a P3 class machine.
My sister still uses a Celeron 500, every day. And it works fine…
Funny, earlier you were saying a 3.2Ghz P4 (a machine probably about ten times faster that a 500Mhz Celeron in raw performance) wasn’t fast enough.
This has NOTHING to do with Mac Zealotry. This just has to do with common sense, and using your intelligence to counter an automatic thought about 1.25GHz being less desireable than 3.6GHz…
It’s not an “automatic thought”. It’s a carefully considered thought based upon a great deal of experience.
User experience is.
OS X offers a fairly good user experience, it’s just a slow one.
Oookay, guess I’ll have to find our for myself.
It’s a matter of perception. I’ve noticed Mac users after a while don’t even notice the lagginess at all (if they ever did), or unconsciously work around it (by simply not doing a lot of interactive multitasking – ie: switching frequently between apps/windows/tabs. Additionally, a few things really are incredibly responsive – Expose, for example, takes quite an impressive load to noticably impact its performance (it also does a good job of hiding some of the lagginess by disguising the app-switch lag behind the zoom effect). Things like the window double buffering also means that when stuff does go wrong, OS X degrades a bit more gracefully (ie: you don’t get blank white windows like you do in Windows – you can’t *do* anything with the OS X app’s windows, but at least you can see them).
The place you’ll notice it is, basically, user interactive multitasking. So if you’re the type of person who is constantly flicking between apps with alt+tab, keeps 4-5 Firefox windows open with a dozen tabs each (switching between them frequently) and likes instantaneous feedback to user actions (eg: there’s often a brief delay using the menu before it drops down, same with context menus) then it will probably annoy you. OTOH the background scheduling is fine. iTunes will merrily play away in the background without skipping a beat, network files will copy at full speed, compiles have little impact, etc.
Really, you need to sit down and use a Mac for a while to see if it will bother you. If possible, I’d suggest going into a store and playing with one for 20 – 30 minutes. Fire up Safari or Firefox and load up a dozen tabs, making sure to get a few heavy ones like 1000+ post threads from slashdot, etc. Get iTunes running in the background. Load up Mail.app. Open a few Finder windows. Now start using it in your typical manner and see if you find the lagginess intrusive. Do it with an eMac – the performance will be about the same as a Mini Mac (maybe a touch faster) and you should have no troubles at all getting the time since everyone else will be drooling over the Mini Macs, Powerbooks, iPods and iMacs.
I’ve got a 12″ 1Ghz iBook, with 768MB and a (custom installed) 5400RPM 8MB cache hard disk. The Mini Mac would be, overall, probably around 10% faster in actual use. I bought it to use for light tasks on the road – quick email check, web browsing in a cafe, SSHing and RDPing back to work and home computers, pulling photos off the camera while I’m travelling, watching DVDs on the plane, etc. For this it works fine, and I’m quite happy with it. However, I wouldn’t want to use it for pretty much anything for extended periods of time as the UI lagginess really starts to irk me. For someone who hasn’t used computers a lot, if at all, it’s probably not going to be an issue (I’m thinking of getting a Mini Mac for my mum) – but if you’re used to the snappiness of a Windows or Linux GUI, it’s might be intrusive.
Hi, I am a new user here and a long-time Windows software developer. I have two big windows server boxes at my house. My office is noisy, the warmest room in the house and also it is susceptible to setting off the power breaker if I run the coffee maker and the overhead fan in the office at the same time the servers and laserjet 4050 are running. There is also a tivo and a tv in here too. Anyway, let me just say it is a lot of crap. One is a box I assembled with all top of the line parts (from about 2 years ago) and the other is a dell server that I picked up for $400 but added a 250 gig hard drive and a few extra gigs of ram.
I have been intrigued with the Mac recently. The g5 iMac was the first real temptation. But I managed to resist it because I already had a beautiful 20″ LCD and it somehow seemed silly to buy a computer that would no doubt become obsolete long before the integrated monitor did.
Now let me just say I ordered one of the these mini-macs on day one (once I managed to navigate through the completely overwhelmed web site). I just picked up the minimum configuration for $499. But I plan to user-install the max ram. Here in Orange County I can get a 1gig 2700 ddr dimm for $80-90.
Why am I so excited about this machine? Because I have calculated that my current servers use over 800 watts of electricity. They are also noisy as hell and the fan of one is next to my head and practically blows in my ear all night long. The more I am around computers the more I want to get rid of the these ugly, huge, power hungry monsters. It is literally not feasible for me to add another server. I am limited because of power and space requirements.
Now you have to understand that as a developer I need my tools to be state of the art, so I generally upgrade my system every year, probably spending $500 or so on this or that, maybe a new processor, more ram, a new nforce motherboard, a new sound card, etc.
With the mini-mac I see a new upgrade path. I’m going to buy a new mini-mac every six months, and never upgrade again. I have an eight way kvm and I will eventually have all eight running with the same monitor, keyboard and mouse. I have figured out that a mini-mac uses about 80 watts of electricity and runs whisper quiet. A stack of eight would be half the size of the tower sitting on my desk here. So instead of adding more ram or a new processor I will just add a new mini-mac to my cluster. I’ll have one be my dedicated web server, one for my database, one for my dev environment, one running some web-scraping applications, one for some p2p applications, one from my music, one for some graphics stuff, etc. Think about that. $500 is the cost of upgrading a system, so the upgrade path doesn’t make sense anymore. Especially now that processors aren’t getting much faster, this option really makes sense. AMD and Intel are no longer increasing MHZ but this year the big focus is on adding additional cores to the the cpu which effectively means two cpus on one chip. For $500 I get everything, a chip upgrade, ram upgrade, disk space upgrade and more.
I expect that i will buy my second mini-mac in six months. That one will probably have tiger and maybe a little more ram and maybe a faster processor and/or a bigger hard drive, but whatever the minimum configuration is, I will buy it. (Then just user-install the max ram, of course).
So in four years time I will have eight mini-macs and it will be interesting to see what types of clustering options develop in that time period. I have a feeling this type of thing will become popular – where you just drop another mini-mac “node” into your cluster for $500.
The key things that will make this work is that the mini-mac is tiny (like 1/20th the size of my huge tower), incredibly energy efficient (80 watts per node), silent, and stackable.
Is it just me or does anyone else see the true possibilities of this new mac? Heck, you could put one in every room. Even one in the bathroom attached to the wall next to the toilet paper
http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/news/minioverview/index.php
What, you got 128mb in that thing??? In my 256mb G3 250 B&W there is NO lagginess. In fact, when I go back to my P4 3.2 w/1gb, it seems MUCH slower…
Unless he’s using OS9 on that thing, I’d say: YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Many of us are power users and developers, and one of the big things people are forgetting is that Apple gives away the Xcode developer tools, while people pay through the teeth for MS Visual Studio 6.
As for the graphics abilities, my TiBook 867 has a 32mb Radeon 9000 in it, and its run fine for games like UT2K3, C&C Generals, Warcraft 3. (I’m not the biggest gamer, but I enjoy games from time to time)
The 32mb 9000 is far from the bare minimum to have graphics.
As for the rest of it, my 867 Mhz repeatedly out-performed my self-built and optimized 2.8 Ghz P4 while using Windows 2000 (note: no special fx). As the old saying goes: “What Intel hath giveth, Microsoft taketh away.”
Upon switching to Linux, the 2.8 Ghz P4 finally out-performed the TiBook. Microsoft knowingly inserts a half-second delay when opening menus, etc. Its a registry key, check it out.
Just my 2c.
I went to the Dell site in the US, France and Germany and looked at the 2400 which is on special offer in all three countries. The $450 package is now marked down to $400 as part of their As Seen On TV 10% off deal. (I hope the computer doesn’t compute 10% of $450 as $50, but even if it does, this is a pretty good price).
That’s 2.4GHz Celeron, 256MB, XP Home, 40GB disk, 17in CRT, 16X DVD-ROM & a keyboard for $400.
In France, they have an incontournable offer for a similar entry level ordinateur. The configuration is a bit better 2.8GHz Pentium, 256MB, XP Home, 80GB disk, 17in CRT, 16x DVD-RW & a keyboard for E700 (about $980). I like what they call XP Edition Familiale, the “systeme d’exploitation”.
This isn’t exactly comparing apples to apples (or is it PCs to PCs), so I went back to Dell US and tried to upgrade my 2400. I could get at 2.6GHZ Celeron for another $36, an 80GB disk for another $18, but getting something that could burn CDs was another $53. Of course, I’m still sticking with the “as seen on TV” special, but we’re getting close for a bit over $500.
I went back to the top of the Dell site and configured a 3000, which does have a 2.8GHz Pentium, and bumped the configuration and wound up with a $570 box. Still, much cheaper than an ordinateur. It’s a good deal when compared with the Apple mini too, but it doesn’t have Firewire which surprised me.
The US price does not include state sales tax. I’m note sure of how that works for Dell. This is often another 8% or so, which takes it up to $615. The French machine price includes VAT.
Interestingly, the Dell service contract is E59 or $62, almost the same at both sites, though I didn’t walk through it term by term.
Just to be fair, I hopped over to the German (Deutschland) site and found a Dimension 3000, with a 2.93GHz Celeron. What does the 3000 mean? Do they have a 1.8GHz PowerPC version? They have a Crazy TFT deal for E799. I assume that the 17in TFT LCD display is sane, but the deal is crazy.
I tried to find the 2400 from the top of the German site, but couldn’t. All the German I know I learned from my Yiddish speaking grandparents, and they never used computers. I did manage to upgrade a basic 2400 to a machine with the same specifications as the US “as seen on TV” special for E690 (about $966).
I tried checking out the Taiwan site. After all, a lot of computers sold in the States have parts from Taiwan, but the only Dimension available was the 4700. Either Taiwan is full of power users or Dell just can’t compete there.
On the mainland, you have much less choice, as one might expect in a Communist country. The processor is a 2.4GHz Celeron, but the systeme d’exploitation as the French so aptly put it is DOS. You can’t get it with XP Home, so you’ll probably have to buy it on a street corner for a dollar or two, or find it on a warez site. I gather piracy is a problem in China, but I’m not sure if this is a cause or an effect. If you want to run XP on your Dell, you have to shift for yourself. The price, including all the special discounts, is about RMB4000 which comes out around $480.
Having seen what’s available in Red China, as they used to call it, I figured I’d check out the heart of the former Soviet Union, but Dell doesn’t sell Dimension systems there. That’s surprising. They aren’t communists anymore. You’d think they’d have a better selection.
In the third world, I went to Peru and clicked aqui and almost got the US $450 special, but with a 2.6GHz Celeron for $528. That’s in US dollars. I don’t think they’re taking Peruvian pesos (or whatever).
In Malaysia, they don’t sell 2400s. You have to make do with a 3000. I configured one with a 2.8GHz Pentium, 256MB, 80GB disk, DVD+CD/RW, 17in CRT & a keyboard for RM2,262 or a bit under $600. I noticed that the CRT was noted as being “Equatorial Zone”, while the Chinese one was “Northern Zone”. Does this have something to do with Coriolis force? I assume Dell sells you stuff that you can plug into the wall and works where they are selling it.
My conclusion: Dell computers are more expensive in Europe than in the States, and by much more than a simple $1 = E1 factor. If Apple is only charging the same price in euros as the dollar price, then they are offering a fairly good deal.
Upon switching to Linux, the 2.8 Ghz P4 finally out-performed the TiBook. Microsoft knowingly inserts a half-second delay when opening menus, etc. Its a registry key, check it out.
1) The OS has almost no impact on the performance on CPU bound apps, so Windows vs Linux shouldn’t have any effect on those benchmarks.
2) The half-second delay is there for a reason. Indeed, Apple pioneered that delay. It’s there so when you can go from a menu item to a submenu without accidentally activating the menu item below the first one.
As for the rest of it, my 867 Mhz repeatedly out-performed my self-built and optimized 2.8 Ghz P4 while using Windows 2000 (note: no special fx).
I find that extremely hard to believe. Outperformed it doing what ?
Microsoft knowingly inserts a half-second delay when opening menus, etc. Its a registry key, check it out.
It’s not “menus, etc”, it’s a specific type of menu – the cascading submenus on the Start Menu. It has no effect on any other menus or UI elements. And it’s not like it’s any different to Apple deliberately limiting scrolling speed, either.
Since about the time of the first PCI Macs, however, Apple has been using the same industry standard components as everyone else – IDE, PCI, non-parity/ECC RAM, etc, so it’s no longer true.
Just naming such technologies doesn’t mean all PCI cards and Motherboards have the same quality.
The quality of components like buffer, clocks, signal integrity and tolerences of the boards can be dramatically different between different manufacturers.
It’s like the difference between a timex and a rolex. The are both the same and are built around the same quartz movement technology but the difference in quality is quiet dramatic.
I can attest to the fact that my powerbook has crashed once but my Home built athlon box has had 2 hard drive failures one Memory slot doesn’t work becuase a DIMM go friend. I attributed to the hardisk failure to the PS but with a new $140 420W PS the DIMM slot went bad.
is the RAM in this thing user upgradeable or is it one of those warranty void if you even think abou opening it things?
If the mini mac sells, it won’t take sony, dell and hp long to come up with their own versions and sell them at a cheaper price. Just like the i-pod knockoffs. Soon we will all have tiny computer appliances strewn about our homes running our media centers, our telephones, walking our dogs….
And they won’t be as nice, as well designed, or as cool as the mac. I ordered two….
>>History would suggest otheriwse. The original iMacs were among the best selling computers ever released.
They sold because they were good looking. Then what happened? Marketshare (which at the height of iMac mania was 12%) plummeted. I think a lot of that plummet was due to OS9. Who would ever want to buy another Mac after using OS9?
1) The OS has almost no impact on the performance on CPU bound apps, so Windows vs Linux shouldn’t have any effect on those benchmarks.
Care to clarify that statement. All apps are cpu bound aren’t they? where else would you schedule them?
The OS can have impact on App performance. The scheduling policy could easily preempt your task with a higher priority task and the one you care about could be kicked off the cpu affecting performance of said app.
Bingo. As I’ve said before, Apple isn’t *going* for the volume market with this machine. They’re not trying to compete head-to-head with Dell, Compaq, or eMachines. Like all the other Macs, the Mac Mini is a low volume, high-margin machine, otherwise, Apple would lose money selling it. It’s a premium product for which you pay a price premium, just like the iPod, the Studio Displays, or the PowerMacs.
Your understanding of business is quite poor.
Apple is going for the volume market. The mac Mini must be a volume *the* volume product in thier line up. The volume products in any companies product range is the cheapest product.
Like the 3 series for BMW, Corolla for Toyota. Civic for honda. The ipod shuffle/mini in the music player line up and the Mac mini in the mac line up.
You will see that Dell follows the same methodology within thier product range. Dell probably sells more of thier cheaper laptops than thier top of the line ones.
A volume product doesn’t mean you compete on a unit per unit basis with you competitors volume numbers.
Most older Macs have cards that don’t support Quartz Accelerated Video.
My G3 doesn’t, yet is still fine.
My G4 does, since I bought a GeForce 2 32mb Card for it. And the difference between the 16mb Stock ATI card and the 32mb Card is noticable.
The video in the Mini will be faster yet, being a newer chip than the one in my G4 500.
A lot of bellyaching and misinformation flying around here…
The Mini is going to run OS X Panther AND Tiger VERY well. It will be decent with 256mb, BETTER with 512mb, and better yet with 1GB.
Most of the naysayers are all talking theoreticals, or comparing to max possible… And that has NOTHING to do with how satisfied people will be with their user experience.
All of you mistake your Geeky obsession with pushing the envelope, and needing the fastest box possible, with the pure pleasure of turning on a computer, getting your work done easily and simply, and not having to spend more time maintaining it than using it.
Macs don’t have that problem. Every Microsoft Based System since Windows 95 HAVE.
I use Windows every day. I’m using it now.
And when I get my Mini, I’ll be using it more and more INSTEAD of my P4 3.2, because it will be smoother, easier to use, and won’t get bogged down with virii and other things constantly.
And yes, my G3 350 feels faster than my P4. It may not be empirically. But, feel is what counts…
Thanks Smithy. I’ll keep that in mind.
Now I’ve heard concerns in some forums that this graphic card isn’t going to be able to handle some of the visual effects in Tiger. What’s your take on that?
I’m not sure if this has been suggested yet (over 150 comments is quite a bit to read) but, don’t companies normally add a bit in the price to account for small size and weight (I guess for the R&D which went into the creation process)? I know this is especially important in low wieght laptops, though I imagine the same could be applied to the mini.
Granted, some people will not have a need for the reduced weight,and if Apple’s target market is the PC upgrader, who would try a low-cost Mac, the weight and size would most likely play only a small role.
People should not compare the mini to the lowest end cheapest pc clones. That is not apples to apples, but rather apples to shitty pc boxes.
But rather the mini should be compared to the shuttle and mini-itx systems. For instance, I just got the dell catalog in today and they have a bare-bones pc for $299 after rebate. But it is a huge system and an energy hog. They also have a “compact” system that is probably at least 5 times bigger than the mini and they sell that (which much worse specs) for $899.
Size and power and style really do matter. Of course, you will see in the sales numbers I’m sure.
Back in the 1980s Digital Equipment (DEC) sold lots of PDP-11/05s. I visited a friend at a startup back in the late 70s and asked him why they had a rack full of them. “Oh, they’re the computer science equivalent of a piece of wire”, he explained. They needed ethernet routers and gateways, dinky file servers, and a way to interface with weird new pieces of equipment, so they bought and hacked up these little machines the way other people use extension cords.
The Apple mini smells like a “piece of wire” in the same sense. You wouldn’t use it as a router, but you might put one in your media room, you might buy one for your set of drums, you might buy one to carry around to use for presentations. Sure, it doesn’t have audio input, but there are bright, hungry 3rd party guys out there who make USB audio input boxes. It doesn’t have 5.1 sound out, but there are Firewire boxes for that. Want an HDTV digital VCR? Get an EyeTV 500.
Steve Jobs adopted USB and Firewire and took a lot of flack for it. Macs were laughed at and people were fuming when he trashed the serial ports and SCSI. But USB and Firewire are moron safe ways of plugging things into computers, and they are Macintosh native. Why should Apple build a media computer that specifies how they think you should use media? Why not put together a hardware and software package that makes it easy to glue parts together and build something that works for you.
I expect to see a lot of weird ass uses for the mini. It took nerve to release it when you realize that it undercuts the iPod photo. Want to show your slides and movies at a friend’s house, or a potential customers? Pop them in a computer that weighs less than your video projector.
The mini is a high level terminal strip. Something you use to make other things to get your work done. As my friend put it years ago, “It’s the computer science equivalent of a piece of wire”.
So just because it has all the userland utilities from Unix make it Unix? If that is the case, then Windows is Unix too if you run Cygwin or SFU. It is different internally, it uses a different windowing system (sure they have X as an option, but it’s not the default), the filesystem hierarchy is different, they don’t use an init system, etc… Things are different internally that make it different than a normal *nix. If I know how to administrate a Slackware server I could most likely do just fine running a BSD or Solaris server learning a few tweaks or quirks between the 3. There are quite a few differences between OS X and traditional *nixes that would cause a few headaches switching between them. Sure a lot would be the same, but there are certain things in OS X that are tweaked/modified or wholly ripped out. Does it have UNIX heritage? Yes, but it also has NEXT heritage as well which muddles things a bit when trying to transfer knowledge you have gained to another platform. It isn’t a true UNIX however and no neither is Linux or BSD, and no one has said they are.
Now I’ve heard concerns in some forums that this graphic card isn’t going to be able to handle some of the visual effects in Tiger. What’s your take on that?
At the moment OS X doesn’t really do that much to exercise the GPU – you don’t get a lot of benefit at thie point solely from a better GPU.
I don’t follow the OS X betas particularly closely, so I don’t know a lot about how much more “stuff” Tiger is going to be doing on the GPU. However, here’s a few things to keep in mind:
* Over the last couple of years, the modest standard video cards has been Apple’s own little “forced upgrade” path as they’ve released versions of OS X that have higher requirements to see real benefits.
* Apple are not known for making much attempt to future proof their machines. (Even if they know a relatively imminent OS release will require a certain level of hardware, they’ll often continue selling or introduce new machines under or just at that level.)
* Similarly, Apple are not known for making great efforts at supporting old hardware, once it has been superceded. They are, after all, fundamentally a hardware company.
With that in mind, I’d predict that the current graphics hardware in the Mini Mac (and iBook and eMac) will be the absolute minimum requirements for using Tiger’s fancy new graphics stuff, if indeed it really is fancy and new (with the same caveats “minimum requirements” brings anywhere else).
Here’s something comparable from Dell’s store. Only still much much bigger than the mini:
priced at $651
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W…
The article ignores the cost of bundled software. If I’m not mistaken, the Mac Mini includes a lot of software that would have to be purchased with a similarly priced PC.
Another thing they ignore is the cost of antivirus, antispyware, antitrojan, antikeylogging, and firewall software needed to protect the PC.
Given this, I think the price is even cheaper than a similar PC.
As a Windows/Linux/FreeBSD user, the only thing keeping me from purchasing a Mac Mini–which would be my first Mac ever–is the lack of microphone jack and the default 256MB RAM.
If the Mac Mini had 512MB RAM, a microphone jack, and a coupon for one free upgrade of Mac OSX 10 at a cost of around $600, I’d go out and order one right away.
In short, there are issues preventing me from buying my first Mac, but the article appears biased to me because it totally ignores the cost of bundled software and the cost of spyware/viruse/trojan protection.
* Similarly, Apple are not known for making great efforts at supporting old hardware, once it has been superceded. They are, after all, fundamentally a hardware company.
OSX has actually gotten *faster* on the older hardware with each version. I’ve heard Tiger is even faster again. Weird eh?
They also have a “compact” system that is probably at least 5 times bigger than the mini and they sell that (which much worse specs) for $899.
Say what ? It’s been a long time since you’ve been able to buy PCs with 40G 4200rpm hard disks and processors as slow as a 1.25Ghz G4.
OSX has actually gotten *faster* on the older hardware with each version. I’ve heard Tiger is even faster again. Weird eh?
Not in the slightest, when you take into account how incredibly slow it was initially (and how slow it still is). It didn’t have anywhere else to go except up.
Steve Jobs adopted USB and Firewire and took a lot of flack for it.
No, he didn’t.
Macs were laughed at and people were fuming when he trashed the serial ports and SCSI.
*This* is what he got stick for. Not because he moved to USB and Firewire, but because he did it without a transition period (ie: a generation or two of machines with *both* interfaces).
It’s much the same reason, incidentally, Apple was criticised for removing the floppy disk in the first iMac. Not because they removed it, but because they didn’t *replace* it. The iMac should have shipped with a CDRW drive from day 1.
Apple do this sort of thing all the time. They really don’t give a shit about legacy hardware support.
“They also have a “compact” system that is probably at least 5 times bigger than the mini and they sell that (which much worse specs) for $899.
Say what ? It’s been a long time since you’ve been able to buy PCs with 40G 4200rpm hard disks and processors as slow as a 1.25Ghz G4.”
Only readable cd-rom. No dvd. Only crappy integrated graphics chipset. No firewire. No usb2. No speaker. Same size ram. Same size hard drive. No software package at all other than OS.
I can tell you that as a network engineer that makes his living working on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD on a daily basis, that I was super excited to hear about the Mac mini. I’ve been interested in the Macs since the OS X debut.
After seeing the headline on Slashdot, I had purchased a mini within two hours. I’ve not been so excited to get a new computer since I got my very first one. I’ll be handing my Athlon 2600 / Radeon Pro 9800 to my wife and I’ll use the mini as my daily driver. I dont play games nearly as much as I used to, and with our first kid on the way, my priorities and focus have changed. The whole iLife suite added in is just icing on the cake.
Bottom line for me was the price. I’ve always been interested in Macs and now that price isnt a factor, I’ve got no excuse. How can you beat a sexy GUI sitting on top of UNIX, with a set of fully-loaded apps?
Lucky
http://gotstrife.com
Quick note, I was wrong saying that Mac OS doesn’t have an init system, it just does it differently and doesnt use it for startup scripts as in various *nixes.
For more information on why Mac OS is unlike most *nixes, omnivector (or anyone else interested), check out:
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/10/22/macforunix.html
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/bsdcon02/ful…
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/index.html
especially:
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_xnu.html
and
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_sys.html
“With all due respect, I’m really wondering if you have ANY experience with actual “end users”. I easily convinced a friend of mine to buy an iBook a few weeks ago. I only had to show him mine, tell him “virus and spyware free” and he was convinced– he knew nothing about OSX or whatever. He’s now very happy with his purchase.”
So you’re happy your exaggeration got your ignorant friend to buy a Mac? No OS is virus and spyware free. You’re only deluding yourself if you believe that.
Care to clarify that statement. All apps are cpu bound aren’t they? where else would you schedule them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_bound
The scheduling policy could easily preempt your task with a higher priority task and the one you care about could be kicked off the cpu affecting performance of said app.
If you’re running a benchmark properly (and the benchmark doesn’t happen to be a benchmark explicitly designed to test multithreading), you won’t have any processes competing for CPU time with the benchmark.
Well, suppose I buy it.
When Tiger will be releasesd I suppose that the mac mini could be upgraded to it.
And for the next 5 years ?
Or after 5 years it will say “you will need more memory more processor speed etc” ?
Sorry for my ignorance but I’ve always seen a Mac as a “closed box” and not too much upgradable so I’m worried!
You know I’m still using a Notebook of 1998 running Debian on it….
Why? cause they love OSX. They’re just waiting for a usable OSX computer which is within their budget. Those of you who think XP is anywhere near plain simpleness of OSX really don’t get it.
Case in point, my parents run a training business. They used to use a PC, but got put off using the computer altogether and preferred to use the good old pen and paper. That’s bcos the PC crashed every once a week, viruses corrputed stuff, slowed down the computer, and things were just so hard to do, bcos the GUI was so so “computer-like”. Using the computer was like a burden they needed to learn to use.
Then they got the tablelamp iMac. How everything changed! They really started to get productive because they were spending more time doing stuff instead of learning how to use the damn computer. Email is natural, they’re converting audio tapes into CD, they’re burning CDs and DVDs, they’re downloading and organizing all their photos in iPhoto and shuffling thousands of documenst they work with everyday through the easy to use Finder.
You can try to justify the winXP (which i am still forced to use unfortunately, tho it may change with this Mac mini), but OSX has truly changed my parents from computer phobics into cutting edge proffesionals in their field. Incidentally, their business has also boomed due to the new audio video and literature resources authored through the iMac. What a wonderful investment!
>>the only thing keeping me from purchasing a Mac Mini–which would be my first Mac ever–is the lack of microphone jack and the default 256MB RAM.
The iMic is a USB microphone, just plug it in.
I ordered my mini with a gig of RAM.
>>A 32MB Radeon doesn’t compare all that favourably to the integrated solution. They’re not fast cards; they’re the sort of thing you get as “minimum necessary”, not for it’s blistering performance.
Spoken like someone who thinks playing Doom 3 is the pinnacle of computing. Myself I don’t play video games, I think they’re boring, a waste of time and I couldn’t care less that the mini won’t let me frag monsters at 60fps or win meaningless online victories over gamer nerds in their basements. If I wanted to play games I’d buy a Gamecube. I’ve got work to do.
You say a 32MB 4x AGP Radeon doesn’t compare favorably to an integrated Intel video chipset with shared RAM? I call bullshit on that. I’ve used some recent bargain boxes and you can’t even play a divx movie on them. They’re worthless without a separate video card upgrade. If my mother’s 700 MHz eMac can handle crisp video playback, exposé, and all the jaw-dropping effects of the OSX interface (which it can), I’m sure my 1.42 GHz mini will handle it as well. A $400 budget PC from wal-mart won’t, however.
A 32mb video card sucks! Does apple think its 1998? This is what will keep me from buying a mac mini. I can understand them wanting to keep the cost down but they ought to at least have an option to go to a 64mb video card for $50 or so. I want to have the ability to run at high resolution while doing a small bit of video editing now and then and 32mb won’t cut it IMO. Except for that it looks like a good little box. I guess I will wait on revision 2 of this guy and hope they get a clue and include a better video card.
Just saw this in Taiwan’s DigiTimes:
“Foxconn Electronics (the registered trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industry) is the contract manufacturer for Apple’s newly launched Mac mini computers, while Asustek Computer is making the iPod shuffle for the vendor, according to sources close to the deals. The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday that Asustek had secured the orders for both the items.
In addition, Asustek will also start shipping iBook G5 notebooks to Apple in the second quarter of this year. Shipments of the current iBook notebooks totaled about 110,000-120,000 units a month in the fourth quarter last year, the sources noted.”
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20050114A7040.html
there are critic voices everytime, if a mac is full complete the people want a stripped of version to use their existing hardware. If Apple brings out such a machine, than it lacks the keyboard and the mouse. And in the calculations for a mouse the analysts calls a price of 60$ or more for both.
which resolution you want to run, that the 32MB Video RAM won’t be sufficient? If you wan’t a more professional computer , there is a long product line from Apple. Don’t forget it’s theis entry level fun machine.
If you’re running a benchmark properly (and the benchmark doesn’t happen to be a benchmark explicitly designed to test multithreading), you won’t have any processes competing for CPU time with the benchmark.
You are not running DOS are you? In any modern OS there are many threads actively being scheduled. Interrupts happen asynchronously, commonly the clock interrupt fires a 100 times a second, disk, and other I/O devices are constantly interrupting the cpu.
Unless you run your benchmark as a real time task, if the OS supports it and block all interrupts you will never get a true CPU Bound task as per the definition you posted from wikipedia. To get a CPU bound task you obviously have to have an OS that has features to bring you as close the above as possible.
So the OS and its algorithms in the scheduler, interrupt handlers and scheduling classes will make a difference in benchmark results, not to mention the other deamons and background process that make up many a modern OSes.
As a recent convert to OS X via a second-hand Powermac, I have to say this little box looks perfect and I will buy one for sure. It has OS X, firwire, usb – so what if the HD is small, that’s what firewire is for. I already backup to an external firwire box with ide HD contained within. I have a monitor, mouse and keyboard, just like most other people who have a computer.
For people buying from scratch perhaps it is not the cheapest, but it is a lot more affordable AND what we computer folks always forget is there is a huge market of people who do not have a computer!
This Mac Mini is good enough to tempt a lot of people to buy a computer for the first time.
For people who travel a lot and want to relax whilst travelling instead of “working” playing games/watching videos – again perfect product. All you need the other end is a monitor, keyboard and mouse.
I hope it sells well.
Total agree with this about the Video.
Eugenia, how can Apple save money by not bundling iLife? They develop Ilife so at most they’d save the cost of burning a CD…
More generally, I’d like to see a comparison of the Mac Mini and a non-pirated WindowsXP box. Hardware is not everything and once you include the software, Apple’s Mac Mini starts to look very favourable.
Let’s do some maths.
1USD ~6.7SEK
Mac Mini costs
499USD excl. VAT
4695SEK incl. Swedish VAT
3756SEK excl. Swedish VAT
3756 / 499 = ~7.5
Now, compare 7.5 to 6.7 and you see that we’re paying a 11-12% premium here in Sweden. I can live with that and don’t feel very ripped off.
umm… this isn’t a deal?
it doesn’t seem to matter since a lot of people on several tech enthusiast sites (windows/linux mainly) have had a lot of people (including here) saying they’ld like to get one or plan to. Damn good strategy, you drag in a few “cheap” geeks like us and then the average consumer who hears that mac’s are easier and you end up with more consumers. The money is in the addon’s of course.
Going to need to buy a mouse and keyboard; most people will just order it from apple; want to go wireless–apple again. In the future; if the experience is good, buy a higher end mac with more features. Only looks like a good idea from my perspective. Small profits in the hopes for bigger profits in the future.
apple didn’t have 12% share during the imac mania. Apple last reached 16% in 1993. After that it’s been a slow and steady downhill to the current 1.8% worldwide (and 3% in the US).
Just to be precise.
1. Even if Apple manages to sell 10 million mini Macs in 2005 it will still have considerably less than 5% share of the total new PC market. I doubt it will manage half that number.
2. ALL personal computers are made using Taiwanese parts.
3. Apple computers and components are made using the same cheap parts and obscure Chineses contract assemblers as any other brand such as Dell or HP.
4. The only unique hardware features of Macs are the cases and (Taiwanese) motherboards. The cpus are IBM or Motorola.
5. The mini Mac has hardware comparable to a mainstream PC of 3-4 years ago. It has a P3 class cpu and a very slow 4200rpm notebook drive.
6. You can’t compare the mini Mac with any desktop – there is NO current desktop brand name PC on the market with such LOW hardware specs.
7. The mini Mac is really just a low end Apple notebook without a screen or keyboard.
8. Any properly configured XP or Win2000 machine is rock solid and almost crashproof.
9. All that is required to make a home XP machine secure is a (free) ZoneAlarm firewall, (free) Avast!antivirus and (free) Firefox browser.
10. XP maintenence should take virtually no time at all. Antivirus, antispyware and security patches are automated. Defragging can be set to automatically defrafg at a set threshold.
11. Linux or BSD are also (almost) virus and spyware free. They are also much closer to true Unix than the highly proprietary NeXT based OSX.
Dear Monopoly rip-off merchants whoever you are……
I see the new Mac Mini is $499 USD which translates to about $704 NZD.
But I see Apple NZ is charging almost $950 NZD for the same machine. That is, um, almost $250 ABOVE the USA price.
Wow, that is a great margin.
I was thinking of buying one of these machines but not from NZ. Ok, so I risk the warranty but at that inflated rip-off price it is a gamble well worth taking.
Perhaps one of the monopolists would like to explain or are they too busy counting all their money?!
Seriously though, I would love to know why we are expected to pay such an overhead here in NZ.
Thanks and regards,
Robocopper
Try to think about it like this.
Anyone who owns a Mac, will tell you, (from experience), that you can plan on at least 5 years of virtually trouble free operation, unless you wind up with a dud, which is rare.
That breaks down to $100.00 per year to own it. About $8.33 a month.
Most will save a little money on electricity, (maybe?), a whole lot of time messing with all the internet bogies, and corrupt this and that, drivers, blah blah blah………, which I think is a good thing, and you could take it to the lake with you, or on a road trip, and it sort of solves the laptop problem, in a way, for students who can’t afford one.
For thos wondering about performance, the mini has been benchmarked by Arstechnica, and hunorously I must say.
Conclusion
It’s clear that the xMac performs considerably faster than both my iBook, which cost me $200 more than an xMac, and nearly as fast as my wife’s PowerBook, which cost four times as much and is less than a year-old (and that makes me want to cry). Beyond that, it appears that Timothy McVeigh would have enough time for an orgasm before dying, if someone who likes doing “jobs” could help him out, and, as always, benchmarks really only matter to people who argue about computers.
Real conclusion
It’s not about the computer. It’s about the effect, or rather the affect. The “y” of xMac, or Mac mini, is another question: why not Windows? For people in the real world, the Mac mini, with the included software, does everything people need, while not doing things they don’t need, like becoming infected with malware.
And the Mac mini does it at a price, US$499, competitive with the charcoal turds produced by more successful PC vendors. It’s taken twenty years, but Apple may have come full circle at last.
Mac mini: the white brushed metal box for the rest of us.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/mac-mini.ars/2
1. Fair enough, but their market share hasn’t stopped them posting a record profit has it?
2. Really ALL? So there are no computer parts made in Malaysia or China etc then? And going from your argument, a shitbox Jo Average pieces together with parts will be as well built as an apple computer?
3. Where do you expect them to be built? Hand made in Italy? The hardware design eg Motherboard, cooling system etc are superior in the first place, which is why they can make the mini whisper quiet and fitting in a such a small box. Now, show me a pc box that does that using your so call cheap parts.
4. Again, the same generic argument about where things are made. Just because they are made in Taiwan doesn’t automatically make them only just as good as all the other brands. Using your argument, ALL computers built in Taiwan would have EXACTLY the same built quality, and you think that’s true? Ever heard of quality testing?
5. Where is this 16.5cm X 16.5 cm X 5cm comparision pc that you speak of? I’ll love to see it.
6. You can’t compare the mac mini with any other desktop, because no one made them that small, yes there might be Via C3 boxes out there as small, but that would shoot your 4 year old hardware argument to pieces wouldn’t it. Since C3 aren’t even up to the speed of hardware from 4 years ago.
7. Oh, so if Dell stripped one of their notebooks of keyboard/screen/mouse he wouldn’ve had a Dell mini. Geez, why didn’t THEY think of that? Oh i know, it’s because it has to be DESIGNED.
8. Almost crashproof? What is that? Once a week? A day? A year, you can defined anything as almost crashproof. On the other hand, I know people who have uptimes of a year or more on OSX and the only time the its down its due to OS upgrade.
9. (Time) ZoneAlarm firewall, (Time) Avast!antivirus and (Time) Firefox browser. Not everyone is like the regular OSnews reader and knows how to configure these things. For a first time user to Firewall, it still takes time to learn about which ports to block, which to allow etc. If time costs you nothing, go ahead, spend all the time configuring it. But the last time I checked i don’t work for the computer, the computer works for me.
10. Even if that’s true, i won’t say the initial time cost of setting it up ‘virtually no time’. Really, why should I have to worry about it at all when I can use a more secure OS? You and I might know about free alternatives, but many others will pay for McAfee and Norton Security, making the initial cost of the PC go up.
11. Linux closer to true Unix? How so?
I think Apple Care is international and transferable. That’s why I’m getting a friend in the US to send me one, it’s about $700 AUS including keyboard and mouse if you buy it at Macmall.
@Andrea
Well, suppose I buy it.
When Tiger will be releasesd I suppose that the mac mini could be upgraded to it.
And for the next 5 years ?
Or after 5 years it will say “you will need more memory more processor speed etc” ?
Good points, this very well WILL happen.
Anyone buying ANY computer now, and thinking that it won’t be obsoleted in 5 MONTHS, no less 5 years… Isn’t very aware of how fast the Computing Industry moves forward.
My current machine, which is NO SLOUCH… Does not meet the minimum standards for Longhorn.
In less than two years, my 3 month old system will be obsoleted.
So?
It will still run Windows XP fine. Or any one of a number of Linuxes.
I have an old Power Computing PowerCenter 132. It won’t run MacOS X. It runs MacOS 9 fine. I love it. I still use it.
It’s only a 604e 200, not even a low end G3. And it’s PLENTY FAST for what it’s doing.
I also have a PowerMac 8500 with a G3 250mhz running MacOS X Jaguar. It’s also fine, and it will run a Linux if I so choose.
It’s not a detriment to the Mini Mac that in 5 years it will be outclassed. Because that’s not a deficiency of the Mac Mini. That’s a detriment to EVERY computer being sold on the market today.
My current machine, which is NO SLOUCH… Does not meet the minimum standards for Longhorn.
We don’t exactly know what the minimum system requirements for Longhorn will be, do we? Anyway, I don’t know what the Mac world is like, but the P3-450 I got back in 1998 still runs Windows XP with respectable speeds. You’re not going to play Doom 3 on it, but works great for everyday use.
I’ve been following the mini since the start of the big thread the other day, and since the video memory has been brought up so much, I went to ATI’s site.
The card the mini is supposed to come with, is a 32 mb Radion 9200, which is shown as discontinued.
The latest 9200 has128 mb.
http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=2531468
Then I came across this.
It’s ATI boasting about the 9200 in the MiniMac.
The RADEON 9200 with a 32 MB frame buffer features dedicated hardware support for vertex and pixel shaders blah blah blah………….
They mention buffer, but not the memory size.
http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2005/4811.html
Either Apple and ATI are disposing of a discontinued part, (which they all do), there has been a potential printing error, or we’ve all been duped.
Now I’m perplexed.
Any feedback?
Just wanted to point out that, contrary to prices in the US, here in Belgium the advertised price in the Applestore is with taxes.
Over here we pay 21% tax on electronic devices. So if you compare $499 in the US to 519 euro here in Belgium (yes that is with taxes) you should realize that it’s a very good deal for us. Also, the online Applestore in Belgium ships them for free, so their advertised price is the final price.
A good deal if you ask me.
“For thos wondering about performance, the mini has been benchmarked by Arstechnica, and hunorously I must say.”
The writers on that site seem to be genuine condescending “know-it-alls” with just about everything be-it computers, cars, or people. They made comments about the Toyota Prius that were just plain stupid, and didn’t have the brains to see or explain to their readers why the Honda Civic Hybrid wasn’t selling as well.
am I the only one missing the OBVIOUS here?
WHERE THE HELL IS THE TV TUNER!?
imagine…. your mac mini already has tv out… there’s a dvi to svideo/composite adapter apple are marketing on the site.. combine with the superdrive dvd burner, and hard drive… but where is the tuner? no tuner = BIG MISTAKE. Imagine… mac mini could have succeeded where xbox screwed up and media center edition windows hasn’t hit yet… a home theater pc, a real one, no drm… no bullshit… just the ONE BOX EVERYONE NEEDS. And hell… it doubles as a pc!
Why are you posting 10-point junk to respond to yourself with another 10-point junk and then go off about a stupid tuner under another alias? FYI, your IP or DNS shows on your message header. Go play with a kangaroo instead of wasting our time.
>>8. Any properly configured XP or Win2000 machine is rock solid and almost crashproof.
9. All that is required to make a home XP machine secure is a (free) ZoneAlarm firewall, (free) Avast!antivirus and (free) Firefox browser.
Oh my God. This guy is funny. XP is so good, but he is recommending to user a third party browser, not it native Explorer. Please man, put your act together. OS X against XP any day.
Size and power and style really do matter.
Not on OSNews – anything which can’t be measured and used in DSWs is not relevant.
(This is a cross post from another Apple discussion).
One overriding theme in the high-spirited debate so far suggests that the new Mac Mini is supremely underpowered because of its slothful G4 processor.
Well, by today’s standards, it is not a cutting edge computer, and the G4 won’t win many speed tests. It isn’t as fast as a well-maintained P-IV running at 2.8 Ghz. And if that’s your definition of power, the Mac Mini isn’t a powerful machine.
However, I would argue that power comes from more than one attribute. For one thing, that P-IV has to be in the hands of an experience user. I visited my uncle the other day, with his 3 Ghz P-IV… and the thing was unbelievably slow. His scanner stopped working. His digital camera wouldn’t connect. My iMac G3 at 400 Mhz , with OS X, could run circles around it.
Obviously, my uncle doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s a very smart guy! In fact, one of the best financial minds in Canada. But he’s new to the tech world, and the sad truth is that many people are like him, wrestling with their computers every single day, all joy in the experience lacking.
That’s why I believe that the Mac Mini is powerful; it has the ability to empower its owners. It’s meant for people who think they only need a basic computer to write letters and surf the web. And those people are going to discover that computers can sometimes actually enrich their lives. And for those people, $500 is going to seem like a pittance price to pay for what they’re getting in return. They’re going to use their computers each day, and have loads of fun using them.
I am returning to the working world after a long, debilitating illness that has left me deeply in debt. I can’t work at traditional jobs, so I need to be creative and make a living from my home. I wanted to buy a top of the line PowerMac when I reentered the working world, but could only afford a mere iMac G4 running at 800 Mhz (512 MB RAM). And yet this computer — running at barely half the speed of the Mac Mini — allows me surf the web, answer email, write persuasive letters, edit photos, design web sites, burn professional quality DVDs, and even edited classy digital movies. This lowly computer is allowing me to change my world. It’s bringing me back to life. And not only does it do all that and more, I’m often able to do all these activities at THE SAME TIME (well, not the film editing, but the rest… sure!)
It’s not all perfect. In fact, Dr. Smithy is correct. Some OS X interface interactions are slow, such as moving a window, and switching tabs in Safari. But that’s about it. Otherwise, OS X runs amazingly well, even on my G3 iMac with it’s 8MB ATi (Rage, I think) graphics chip.
So I think the Mac Mini is a capable computer. And I believe that the Mac Mini’s ability to empower its users makes it a powerful machine. It’s the software that matters, software the runs brilliantly on a 1.25 Ghz G4. For $499, look what they get! People are buying an inexpensive computer: that will crash one or twice a year, at its worst; that runs best-of-breed software in every category (except games); that operates the world’s most advanced operating system; that runs an incredibly beautiful OS that knows how to get out of the way; that will help them express their creativity and touch lives. It’s going to blow most people away. It’s going to enrich their lives. It’s going to empower them!
Not everyone, mind you. It’s not for the Ubergeeks, or the scientists deciphering the human genome. apple has other computers for them. But it is going to convince many people to try a Mac for the first time. And when more people see a Mac, and see what it can do, they’ll buy one.
Apple is now a bigger company than it’s ever been, and it’s profitable. It’s going to be around for a long, long time. In fact, there’s never been a better time to be an apple aficionado.
Apple can make technophobes learn to love technology.
When I first came back to the working world, my sister and her husband became my first customers. They had been burned by a former employer who seduced them by offering a piece of his company in return for their services (and then reneging on the deal). Almost broke, they tried to run a tourism-based business on a couple of cheap PCs that broke so often, they were getting nowhere.
I stepped up to the plate. With my lowly G4, I built a pretty web site for them, and started marketing their business. I made them buy two Macs… and iMac and an iBook… and promised to help them. And low and behold, they hardly needed me.
They soon had some customers, and since their computers worked for them, they started to run the business as they had intended… They were empowered. They developed a database (on their own) that helped them keep track of customers and their various tours. They started to develop neat, impressive information packages (on the cheap) and newsletters that helped sell their business to potential clients. When a customer sent an angry letter suggesting that they had sent a nasty virus that infected their computer, they just had to write a sweet return, stating they were on a Mac, so the virus didn’t come from them. They started editing photos, taking with a digital camera that worked perfectly with their system, so now their web site is full of gorgeous photos promoting their tours. Before too long, I discover that they’re customers keep coming back to them, because they do so many neat little things like sending all their clients a professional-looking DVD with an incredible photographic slideshow from their just completed tour… that the customer can play on their television, set to local music, for their friends…. it’s amazing.
They are empowered. Their Macintosh computers are powerful. They have changed their business, and changed their lives. They even fold proteins when they’re not busy.
Sure, all of this could be done on a PC… but it wasn’t. There computers were just too arcane, and finicky, and they didn’t have the skills, or so they thought. Now they have the confidence to try anything, knowing their computers won’t let them down. From technophobes to power users in three years. And now, owning a business that grows by better than 100 per cent every year, and employs half a dozen people.
Their computers are powerful, and not one of them even meets the Mac Mini’s specs.
500 comments later can easily be boiled down to this:
the mac mini is the only apple low range computer
its ~150$ more expensive then its pc equivilent
my question is “Yeah, and?” mac wouldnt be around today if it didnt offer more then its pc equivilent. we all know this. its very common knowledge.
people who have been saying for years that they would give mac a shot if they had a cheap model, heres your chance. people who say mac sucks because…. mac sucks, are still saying mac sucks, and will probably be saying mac sucks no matter what apple does. they are the flipside of the folks who believe apple can do no wrong, and steve jobs is the reincarnation of christ come to save us all. both desirve to be ignored. theres a fantastic paul graham quote that needs to be in large red text across the comments section
“Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot”
’nuff said