Mac mini add-ons: image mockups

Is this for real? There would be a huge market for these. Especially the FW/USB ports one. How much do you think the price would be for one of those? If they keep it under $50, it would make the Mini more attractive for those complaining they would have their USBs taken up by keyboard and mouse.

Don't forget about a tiny monitor and battery in this same style that attach to the bottom and top like is available for Gamecube

Like I mentioned in another thread, I'd love to see one that had a FW, USB and heaphone port at least....a great addition would be one with a memory card slot as well, or an audio input.

They should also make one with built in speakers. Thats one thing that the Mac Mini is missing.

johnbro23 said:

They should also make one with built in speakers. Thats one thing that the Mac Mini is missing.

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So with all of these addons, the Mac mini is now a 6.5'' square... that's 3' tall

A really well engineered product could have just one of these little units that had extra USB, Firewire, a little LCD screen, another HD and another optical drive and be the exact same size as the Mac mini (making it 6.5'' x 6.5'' x 4''), afterall, Apple fit more in it than just that.

Hehe, you guys should see what I got in mind.

Can't talk about it though, but I'll keep you informed.

Peyote said:

Like I mentioned in another thread, I'd love to see one that had a FW, USB and heaphone port at least....a great addition would be one with a memory card slot as well, or an audio input.

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Headphone port?!

Chaszmyr said:

So with all of these addons, the Mac mini is now a 6.5'' square... that's 3' tall

A really well engineered product could have just one of these little units that had extra USB, Firewire, a little LCD screen, another HD and another optical drive and be the exact same size as the Mac mini (making it 6.5'' x 6.5'' x 4''), afterall, Apple fit more in it than just that.

Click to expand...

Well, dunno if it could be as thin, but even if you'd stack some of those units, you're still taking the same amount of desk space... (compared to the usual gear).

you know i think that would be a great idea for companies to make new addons for the mini ... some of the ideas that i have seen in this thread are really neat ideas. i highly doubt there is a way but what if it were possible to have some type of a video upgrade? you know instead on having 32mb vram have the ability to boost it with some addon. just an idea

These are great ideas, but I think they'll need to get a G5 in the mini before they would really take off.

D

jlewis2k1 said:

you know i think that would be a great idea for companies to make new addons for the mini ... some of the ideas that i have seen in this thread are really neat ideas. i highly doubt there is a way but what if it were possible to have some type of a video upgrade? you know instead on having 32mb vram have the ability to boost it with some addon. just an idea

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Forget any video upgrade, not gonna happen (I got a college degree in computer electronics, so I know what I'm talking about here).

Unless some weird company starts making FireWire videocards....

Yvan256 said:

Forget any video upgrade, not gonna happen (I got a college degree in computer electronics, so I know what I'm talking about here).

Unless some weird company starts making FireWire videocards....

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it would have to use firewire 800 if they do ^_^

Mr. Anderson said:

These are great ideas, but I think they'll need to get a G5 in the mini before they would really take off.

D

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Nope, they're already taking off. Didn't you notice the jump to "shipping in 3-4 weeks" just two days after their announcement?

Not everyone wants/needs a G5, especially those who just want to ditch Microsoft and all the problems related to using their stuff.

Me, I'm just waiting until the Mac mini ships with Tiger, then I'm putting my order for the basic model!

Edit: Apple to manufacture 100,000 Mac minis a month

Yvan256 said:

Me, I'm just waiting until the Mac mini ships with Tiger, then I'm putting my order for the basic model!

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same here, it would be my first mac too!

jlewis2k1 said:

it would have to use firewire 800 if they do ^_^

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Even if they did, the Mac mini only has a FireWire 400 port.

And even if they tried, it wouldn't be possible: FireWire 800 = 800mbits/sec. That's 100MB/sec. The new GeForce 6800 video card has a memory bandwidth of 22.4 GB/sec.

Even if the Radeon 9200 is 100 times slower than the GeForce 6800, that's still 224MB/sec.

Edit: ok, I compared the GPU/VRAM bandwidth vs what should've been the AGP bus... But still, the original AGP 1x specification ran at 66 MHz and provided 266 MB/s of bandwidth, that's still more than twice the maximum of FireWire 800.

So, FireWire 800 might be great, but videocards are in a league of their own.

Yvan256 said:

Headphone port?!

Click to expand...

It's what you plug your headphones into on a computer.