Mini Server New Design

I am quite fond of the new design as well as the old design.

I wouldn't mind a move back to the older 2009 chassis style, with an external brick, and get rid of the slot for the missing OD.

Would get rid of the heat of the PSU, and with me is tucked away under the desk out of sight anyway, so isn't anymore unsightly on my desktop in view then the power cable that connects in now anyway.

Should also present enough allowance to put the GPU and Quad i7 into the chassis along with the disks, whilst still retaining a reasonably small footprint on the desk.

The lack of space is one of my main issues with the Mini. It fits my student budget and has enough raw power to get me through my video production classes but unfortunately it uses those dinky laptop HDs. I believe only the Scorpio Black and Momentus XT are the only 750GB 7200 drives at the moment.

No I personally wouldn't mind going back to the old Mini form factor if they can squeeze more power or at LEAST one 3.5 drive in there. Keep the external brick, get a better GPU, and we're set.

Thunderbolt sorta alievates the capacity issue with a bit a jerry rigging:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MESATATBEK/
and
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technology/ECHOE34/, but thats still an additional 200 or so dollars.

External drives and a Mac mini server. These pictures say it all.

Ugh, that looks horrible but at least it's gotta feel nice over there in the winter.

Heck, I'd like either two 2.5" drives or one 3.5" drive plus a MacBook Air-style SSD stick.

That would be a good differentiation to me if they stick with 2.5" drives: Low end with integrated graphics and one hard drive; high-end "desktop" with discrete graphics, one hard drive, and the option for a second drive; server with integrated graphics, two hard drives and an SSD stick - where the SSD stick 'takes the place' of the discrete graphics. Maybe not the same literal physical position, but the heat-budget position.

I wouldn't mind if Apple or even a 3rd party made an external TB enclosure that matched the style of the mini but could hold 2 more disks. Even if it was taller but with the same aluminum look and width/length, it could be stacked. Maybe even throw in a few expansion ports as well.

jackrv said:

I wouldn't mind if Apple or even a 3rd party made an external TB enclosure that matched the style of the mini but could hold 2 more disks. Even if it was taller but with the same aluminum look and width/length, it could be stacked. Maybe even throw in a few expansion ports as well.

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As long as it had a Thunderbolt or at least MiniDP out I'd be fine.

mac mini

The latest version of the Mac mini, officially called the Mac mini (Mid 2011) and released along with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), sticks with last year’s design, but it gets a price cut while overhauling what’s inside. Though the iMac is clearly Apple's flagship desktop, the 2011 Mac mini is quintessential Apple: beautiful, well-engineered, forward-looking, and powerful enough for most, with at least one design decision that will leave some people wondering, "Why?" Which is to say that, like most Apple products, the new mini is compelling, but it won't appeal to everyone.

do you think we gonna see a new one coming on March 7th ?

Kaiusee said:

do you think we gonna see a new one coming on March 7th ?

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No.

qeemat.com said:

The latest version of the Mac mini, officially called the Mac mini (Mid 2011) and released along with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), sticks with last year’s design, but it gets a price cut while overhauling what’s inside. Though the iMac is clearly Apple's flagship desktop, the 2011 Mac mini is quintessential Apple: beautiful, well-engineered, forward-looking, and powerful enough for most, with at least one design decision that will leave some people wondering, "Why?" Which is to say that, like most Apple products, the new mini is compelling, but it won't appeal to everyone.

Click to expand...

When purchasing the Mac mini server for use as a server, it leaves me with many "Why?" questions, mainly because it isn't optimized for server use at all! HDMI and for that matter dual monitor support is crazy and with shared memory, too much is dedicated to the display. Likewise the Bluetooth, IR, Wifi, and SD card support could go. What to do with the freed space? While Thunderbolt offers potential I'd be happy just to have two FW800 ports and perhaps a second ethernet port. I'd sure like to see it bigger and take 3.5" drives.

You can see from the picture above that the system sits on a shelf. It is managed remotely using Screen Sharing. I only connect up a keyboard mouse and display during setup. And the lack of drive capacity is obvious!

I tried to get the maximum throughput possible by setting up the two internals as RAID0 (only to have a drive fail recently), and having externals both FW800 and USB because spreading out across the two interfaces was faster than FW800 alone. I certainly expect that when accessing large files on multiple systems (such as video footage) I'm maxing out the Gigabit Ethernet at this point. It is amazing what that little box will do, and I've got the first model of mini with Snow Leopard Server, not the latest quad-cores with 7200rpm drives.