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Apple Releases New Sandy Bridge Mac Minis and Thunderbolt Display

Hey! I don't mind the optical drive being removed. If you ever opened a mini you see that it's really cramped inside. Hopefully now the mini runs even more cooler. Besides now days they make DVD external drives so much better and cheaper.
 
Wildhorses said:
I notice how viciously people get thumbed down for noticing possible flaws with Apple products lol.

The thunderbolt port and magsafe port are on the opposite sides of the new airs. Design fail if you buy the new thunderbolt displays with an air. Otherwise they seem good.
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The Airs have always had the DVI on the opposite side of the Magsafe. It's not an issue.
 
WvB22 said:
But the MBA is a total different story. This thing should be ultra portable, as light and small as possible and with no moving parts. Totally get it to strip out the drive. It's basically an iPad with keyboard and Mac OSX.

The Mac Mini on the other hand is a desktop. Sure small and portable but a desktop nonetheless. And an almost perfect mediacenter for your TV. It just doesn't make sense (from my standpoint) to remove the drive. It didn't make it smaller, it didn't make it more usable.

Adding in a Blu-ray drive would have made sense but will never happen (I know). It's all about moving to the digital downloadable content age. Sure it's the future. I surely agree. Mac App Store is great. iTunes music, pretty good to, although audio lovers will agree that the quality is subpar. iTunes movies? Non existent in my country. iBooks? Same. And the quality is unsurpassed which is totally understandable given that a normal Blu-Ray movie is 35-45 gigs in size. Try to stream or store that. 15 movies and your HD is full. I'm a real movie lover and can fully enjoy the small details in sound and images you see in Blu-Ray that you'll miss in HD rips or compressed iTunes content.

And don't say you can't tell the difference. Anyone that I ever shown a compressed version of a HD movie (but still HD) and the BR disc saw the difference immediately. It's like a car. If you drive in your Ford it's great and gets you there smoothly. Make the same ride in a Mercedes and it still gets you there. But you will notice the difference even blindfolded .
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Yes bluray is better quality in sound and video...but that why you buy a dedicated bluray player for that. A computer does not need bluray.
 
miniroll32 said:
Quote from the Mac Mini's product page:

"Mac mini is designed without an optical disc drive. Because these days, you don’t need one. It’s easier than ever to download music and films from the iTunes Store. And you can download apps from the Mac App Store with a click."

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL... Yeah, right Apple. The Mac Mini is a 'hub' with HDMI, yet it can't even play DVD's? Rip CD's? And whats the point of having Boot Camp when you can't use a Windows disc?

Epic. Fail.
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Just by using big words and bold typeface you do not make your arguments more convincing (you just illustrate your intention to use form over facts as your preferred way of winning an argument).
 
The server variant of Mac-Mini looks pretty exciting. All the benefits of an end user Mac and all the benefits of server, but with a Core i7 quad core! I suspect it is faster at all or most of the tasks than a current MacPro (almost 2 years old), plus has terrific I/O!

It seems to come with everything you actually need except an HDMI cable for a monitor/TV and a Thunderbolt cable for I/O and of course a remote, monitor, keyboard. Opportunity for third party bundles.

But it can use all those remotes you have laying around as well as any USB keyboard and mouse. The only add-on you might imagine is a trackpad for gestures.

One wonders if it will become popular to literally buy 2-4 of them and grid or join them for actual server functions.

I look forward to the tear downs, but appreciate it comes ready to readily access the memory without hassle. I wonder how much memory it can actually support?

The interesting thing about the monitor/hub (as I posted before) is it if can act as the same thing for an iPad or iPhone if the connector somehow supports Thunderbolt or if those features can be accessed over wifi.

I am not holding my breath there even for iPad3. If wishes were unicorns.

Rocketman
 
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tripjammer said:
You are 100 percent correct! Death to the optical drive...except for the bluray when it is needed like in a real bluray player or a PS3. A computer does not need a optical drive these days.
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You're right, computers don't need optical media. Computers don't need to burn the bluray disc of the latest family vacation to watch on your real bluray player.
 
tripjammer said:
Yes bluray is better quality in sound and video...but that why you buy a dedicated bluray player for that. A computer does not need bluray.
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Some would suggest if it did have a Bluray drive that would make the Mini a perfect HTPC 😀 - I prefer it without the optical drive, much cleaner 🙂
 
frunkis54 said:
you just transfer the DRM rights to the lendee for a few days he can watch it then after the 3 days are up rights return back to you and you can watch it and he can not.

ps i know apple will not read this.
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Good luck trying to negotiate this with the media companies. A hard nut to crack for sure.
 
Of course they wouldn't pull the OD from the imac and the mbp would they? Get a nice graphic chip in those 13" mbps that would. Shave a couple of mm off an imac. If thats the way its going I think it's way too soon just so you can get it all in digital form specifically from Apple......
 
I have a 2.4GHz C2D 4GB Late 2010 model Mac mini and even though I'd love to have the newer processor and graphics card.. I LOVE having the Superdrive. The Mac mini is supposed to be all about space savings.. and now having a external Superdrive goes against that logic.

I am aware a lot of people don't use CD/DVD-Roms on the computers anymore, but I do and wouldn't have it any other way. Getting rid of floppy drives I totally understand, lol (are there kids on here that don't even know what a 3.5" floppy is?) but CD drives should still be around for a long time IMO.
 
WvB22 said:
But the MBA is a total different story. This thing should be ultra portable, as light and small as possible and with no moving parts. Totally get it to strip out the drive. It's basically an iPad with keyboard and Mac OSX.

The Mac Mini on the other hand is a desktop. Sure small and portable but a desktop nonetheless. And an almost perfect mediacenter for your TV. It just doesn't make sense (from my standpoint) to remove the drive. It didn't make it smaller, it didn't make it more usable.
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Again, folks, not end of the world material. Just get a USB drive.

WvB22 said:
And don't say you can't tell the difference. Anyone that I ever shown a compressed version of a HD movie (but still HD) and the BR disc saw the difference immediately. It's like a car. If you drive in your Ford it's great and gets you there smoothly. Make the same ride in a Mercedes and it still gets you there. But you will notice the difference even blindfolded .
Click to expand...

I'm a big fan of blu-ray and absolutely despise downloaded HD over-compressed movies from the likes of iTunes. I'm all for Blu-ray support in OS X.

Both arguments are completely unrelated. The Mac Mini is now Bring your own mouse/keyboard/monitor/optical drive.
 
weckart said:
You can download Windows isos directly from Microsoft. Google for the links or have a hunt around sites like Neowin. I am happy not to have to pay for ODDs that just sit idle, so the £83 reduction is very welcome. External bus powered DVDRW units can be had for a mere £17.50 for those that still need to rip the odd cd.
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Considering that the base price did not drop you assume a lot. If anything they are padding their earnings even more.
 
vito said:
Some would suggest if it did have a Bluray drive that would make the Mini a perfect HTPC 😀 - I prefer it without the optical drive, much cleaner 🙂
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I would have preferred it as a BTO option. Add in a player if you need it. Hell Apple could make a ton of money out of it by overpricing a built in Blu-ray player with it. Add $200 or something like that.

But Apple knows it will earn more with digital content sold in their stores. Again this is the sole reason why it has been left out. Otherwise the BTO option had been there.
 
diamond.g said:
So no one knows if you get a recovery usb key with the new Mac Mini's?
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Seems that there is no recovery disks or drives. But this is interesting:
If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same Lion Recovery features online. Internet Recovery is built into every newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air.
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http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/
 
trfjason said:
It's nice to have the 6630M in the high end Mac Mini, but where is the quad core CPU option?? They should not make the quad core exclusive to the Server version.
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You could see it the other way around, the server option is exclusive to the quad core option. Since adding the server OS costs only $50 in Lion (and can be done after the fact), the $999 is largely just the price for a quad core and dual disk option.
 
KnightWRX said:
Again, folks, not end of the world material. Just get a USB drive.


.
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Apple should be selling a Thunderbolt compatible external Superdrive, without price increase. Also, the mini should therefor have dropped in price since it lost its optical drive
 
It's interesting that if a student buys an iMac they get a $100 gift card, but if they buy a mac mini and a 27" display, they are ineligible.
 
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