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Mac Mini Still Alive? New Model Coming?

Cave Man said:
That's just it, the $800 Mini's 2 gHz T7200 Core 2 Duo is nearly as fast as the 2.4 gHz T9300 on the US$1,169 Dell - and it's two years older than the Dell's.

The Mini has digital audio and video, and already does 1080p and can play Blu-Ray video files (m2ts, sans encryption and HDCP) without any problems, including up to 7.1 Dolby Digital or DTS surround sound. It also has gigabit ethernet.
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Well, the Mini might fill your needs, but it does honestly fall a little short on the most demanding HTPC requirements, for instance 1080 mkv (with or without Plex). It certainly does very good with most of the multimedia job, including TS files, but it does not for all of it, which is what some people (me included) are looking for. Which is, right now, why I'm not jumping on it - because I don't want to have to think "oh my, this file doesn't work".

And regarding the 2GHz / 2.4GHz gap, "nearly as fast": that's a huge difference, when it comes to decompressing video, and once you've cleaned up the power needed for other tasks (although it is a dual core).

The current Mini is a nice machine, but CPU and GPU are outdated if you want a HTPC covering all medias.
 
Arnaud said:
Well, the Mini might fill your needs, but it does honestly fall a little short on the most demanding HTPC requirements, for instance 1080 mkv (with or without Plex).
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MKV doesn't tell anything about the video's encoding. The m2ts files from Blu-Ray rips are in MPEG2, H.264 AVC or VC-1 and at 30 mbps or more. What are your MKV's encoded with? I cannot imagine they are anything more demanding than AVC.

It certainly does very good with most of the multimedia job, including TS files, but it does not for all of it, which is what some people (me included) are looking for. Which is, right now, why I'm not jumping on it - because I don't want to have to think "oh my, this file doesn't work".
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If your file doesn't work, it's because of the software issue, not the hardware of the Mini.

And regarding the 2GHz / 2.4GHz gap, "nearly as fast": that's a huge difference, when it comes to decompressing video, and once you've cleaned up the power needed for other tasks (although it is a dual core).
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The Dell (for nearly 50% more in cost) is only 4% faster than the Mini with Geekbench.

  • 2 gHz Mac Mini T7200 ($800) = Geekbench of 2591
  • 2.4 gHz Dell Studio Hybrid T9300 ($1,169) = Geekbench of 2682

The megahertz myth is still alive. For that extra $369 cost of the Dell, I could install 3 gb of RAM, wireless N and a 500 gb hard drive into a 2 gHz Mini and still have money left over. The only thing I cannot do is add HDMI (but could add DVI to HDMI and still use the digital optical audio - which is precisely what I have done for my 1080p Mini HTPC).

The current Mini is a nice machine, but CPU and GPU are outdated if you want a HTPC covering all medias.
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Like I said, we're all hoping for an update, but even this 2 year old Mini is competitive with the current Dell Studio Hybrid.
 
VoR said:
On a 2ghz c2d mini... I use a range of players (xbmc over plex for many reasons too), but high bitrate encodes, sliced or otherwise can stutter on all my hardware on all my os'.
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I have not experienced any stuttering from my Blu-Ray 1080p DD/DTS rips, so long as no other tasks are active.

I do actually need to break 3ghz to play that 'famous' planet earth bird scene.
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How did you determine 3 gHz? Which Planet Earth Blu-Ray disc is this bird scene on, and how is it encoded (i.e., video and audio codecs)? I'd like to try it out on my system if I can find the disc.
 
Apple needs to thrust the mini into the htpc market. It's great for utilizing front row. Blu-ray drive, tv tuner, pvr/dvr capabilities.
 
I'd like to buy one to replace a Windows XP media center that records TV and serves it up to the XBox 360. Glad to see that they will probably continue.
 
Felix01 said:
OTOH, you could use a 2"x6"x6" sub-three pound white brick (Mac mini) that makes no audible sound instead of a waste paper basket size piece of hardware with fans in your living room.

Choice is up to you (assuming either will do the required computing job) and your wallet. In my case, aesthetics would play a major role. At least in my wife's mind and she "rules" that area of the house just like the kitchen.

Heck, now that I think about it, her influence is everywhere but my den and the garage. :)
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I love my Mac Mini. Got the current low end model and it fits my home server and media center needs 100%. Get a cheap wireless (bluetooth or USB dongle) keyboard and mouse (the Microsoft ones work nicely with macs) and put that on your coffee table and hide the Apple remote somewhere in the couch. Actually, I got an extra remote that came with eyeTV to control live-TV and the DVR stuff. But for more complex stuff, the mouse is much simpler and less frustrating. Pull up the keyboard viewer to input text without a physical keyboard.

My Mac Mini is my TV, DVR, Audio and Video Podcast player (although not via Front Row or iTunes... both kinda suck at playing video), File Server, Backup Drive Server (got a few Firewire and USB Drives on there for Time Machine and SuperDuper), Video Encoding (VisualHUB) so everything new is converted for and automatically synced to my iPhone. And while doing all that, it's pretty quiet and doesn't use much power (unlike the AppleTV) so it's ok to leave it on. Don't forget to set Energy Saver to put drives to sleep, one of my Seagate Freeagent USB drives is using as much power as the whole Mac Mini when idling. Luckily, Seagate drives support the sleep command from OSX and have working and free diagnostics apps for OSX.


Apple could easily market a new Mac Mini as "the greenest desktop computer" because it's small (less materials) and doesn't use a lot of power. It could also be the quietest desktop computer, especially with a new unibody enclosure with lots of passive cooling and a large fan (thin but alsmost as large as the footprint of the Mac Mini) to get the air out in emergencies. The low-end Macbook specs would be totally fine, minus 300 bucks because ther's no display or trackpad.
 
They could easily use the new Nvidia parts at the current price points, given that they generally only update the Mini once a year they can have slimmer margins on it now knowing that the exact same hardware will have considerably higher margins over the life span of the product. In fact, they need to base it on the same hardware as the current MBs to realize the economies of scale they've relied on in the past.
 
jim.arrows said:
They could easily use the new Nvidia parts at the current price points, given that they generally only update the Mini once a year they can have slimmer margins on it now knowing that the exact same hardware will have considerably higher margins over the life span of the product. In fact, they need to base it on the same hardware as the current MBs to realize the economies of scale they've relied on in the past.
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Good point, but in the past it seems Apple has used the mini to unload leftover (and cheaper) parts that went in previous MacBooks. I think they'll do it again.
 
The difference is that when they've done that in the past, the mini shared the current architecture of the macbook when the macbook got upgraded; this time that's not the case, since the mini was never updated to penryn & santa rosa. I think that's a significant difference, as they would have to re-engineer the mini to utilize a "dead" chipset; nope, I think any existing stock of SR & gma x3100 parts are being sold out of the refurb store and as the "new" $999 macbooks (why they kept it around) and everything going forward will be nvidia 9400 based... hope so, anyway.
 
jim.arrows said:
The difference is that when they've done that in the past, the mini shared the current architecture of the macbook when the macbook got upgraded; this time that's not the case, since the mini was never updated to penryn & santa rosa. I think that's a significant difference, as they would have to re-engineer the mini to utilize a "dead" chipset; nope, I think any existing stock of SR & gma x3100 parts are being sold out of the refurb store and as the "new" $999 macbooks (why they kept it around) and everything going forward will be nvidia 9400 based... hope so, anyway.
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More good points. I hope you're right.

I'm in the market for a new Mac. If the mini gets this significant upgrade I'll probably get one. Otherwise I think I'll get a new MacBook and my older MacBook will become the HTPC connected to the TV in closed-lid mode.
 
katewes said:
It's the matte screen issue again.

Since the current iMac and MBP have lost the matte screen option, if ever my matte, white iMac dies, I'd be forced to get a Mac Mini with matte external screen.

No way would I buy a gloss screen, and yes, I have used one at my friend's house. The glare and reflections from outside, particularly on a sunny day, are hiddeous. You don't see the glare when the screen is positioned facing away from the window, but when the screen faces the window, it is totally un-usable, if you need to work for hours and hours -- not just fun stuff like movies and photos.
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I'm surprised there isn't some sort of film-overlay that can be purchased, similar to the screen protectors available for the iPhone. Applying it might be a pain, but a matte overlay would do the trick just fine. Anyone know if these are available?

Or you could just take some standpaper to your display.
 
Cave Man said:
I have not experienced any stuttering from my Blu-Ray 1080p DD/DTS rips, so long as no other tasks are active.

How did you determine 3 gHz? Which Planet Earth Blu-Ray disc is this bird scene on, and how is it encoded (i.e., video and audio codecs)? I'd like to try it out on my system if I can find the disc.
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I don't have the actual discs myself, but theres a sample floating around that lots of people seem to use for testing the decoding grunt of their systems - googling quickly gave me http://tracker.hatters.org.uk/torrents/killa.sampla.x264.mkv.torrent if you want to test (This is a few second long clip of some birds flying, I assume it's free)

The bitrate spikes massively during the scene, mainly due to bad encoding - but it's still a good way to benchmark and compare systems - what does geekbench tell you? :) Tells you things like a q6600 is much faster than an e8400. Actually using the system to run software shows a different story - the quad will encode a video quicker and decode a video slower.

How do I determine 3ghz? I mean a c2d running over 3ghz. I don't have any recent amd system, I'm not sure what their equivalent is (not what it says on the box). I stated 3ghz because that's what was needed to play the high bitrate parts without dropping any frames, the behaviour is the same (with ffmpeg) on windows/osx/nix on 3 different systems (cpus) that I've tried.

There are a few other videos I've used previously for the same sort of thing. Ducks.Take.Off.1080p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD is 106mbps, there's a 2060 res version too that's interesting.

I'd like to not have to worry about decoding current media. Things will only get better as the software improves, and maybe one day they'll actually be some decent, open and consistent methods of using the features advertised on gpu spec sheets.
 
iDave said:
If, as many are suggesting, Apple upgrades the mini to specs similar to the new low-end MacBook (which I doubt) the price would probably increase to $899 or $999.
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MM123 said:
This one sentence moves me to write the reply and I think you are wrong. Of course I don't have any internal information, but #1 selling Mac desktop on Amazon, you can hardly buy it on Refurb Store, because they just sell very quick and the price on eBay gives another view at the so "bad selling" MacMini.
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That might very well be a valid reason. We hear constant complaining on this board that Macintosh computers are too expensive for what you get, so it may very well be that there are a lot of people who want OS X, but cannot afford the $1000-2000 that most Macs command so they buy the Mac Mini.

Such a trend would mean that all those who claim the Mac Mini has poor stats are not wrong, but that the significant majority of the market for the product doesn't care about stats. They want OS X and feel even a Mini with a 65nm CPU and an ancient IGPU is "good enough" for it so Apple has no reason to make it better because if they did, it would get more expensive.

That 13" panel likely costs Apple less then $100 to source, so a Mac Mini with identical components to a MacBook could easily run $799 or even $899. The market really prefers portables now, even if they never run off the battery, so if the price difference is $100-150, chances are the majority would buy the MacBook, instead. I notice the Mini dropped to #8 on the list preceded by the new and old MacBooks, MacBook Pros and even Applecare. However, this could be expected since new product drives new sales. :)

It is unfortunate that Apple no longer breaks out sales by model, but in Q1 2008 of the 2.4 million units they sold, 1.4 million were notebooks. So that means they sold 1 million Mac Pros, iMacs and Mac Minis. That's not a bad haul, and even if the Mac Mini was just 10-20%, that is 100,000 to 200,000 units.

However, if it is a low price that is driving Mini sales, then those who believe that the Mini will see a huge stat bump are likely going to be very disappointed. We could see, at best, the most mild of stat bumps. Perhaps an nVidia 9100M or 9200M instead of the 9400M. Maybe only one CPU option - the 2.1GHz T8100. And maybe only a 200GB or 250GB HDD. The goal would be to keep it cheap while still making a nice margin.
 
Since all of the MacBooks now have DVD burners, is it reasonable to assume all minis will have them if/when there's a refresh? If so, will the lowest price on a mini be $799?

CWallace posts some interesting thoughts. Will mini sales take a dive if there's no $599 model? Would a mini with the new MacBook specs be too expensive? I might buy a modern mini at $899 because that's $400 less than a MacBook. But would others get a WinPC instead?

For some reason I think it's very unlikely a $599 mini will still be sold come January unless it has 2006-2007 specs. And I expect an uproar on the Mac web no matter what happens. :(
 
VoR said:
I don't have the actual discs myself, but theres a sample floating around that lots of people seem to use for testing the decoding grunt of their systems...
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OK, got it. It stutters quite a bit on my 2 gHz Mini, but plays fine on my 3.2 gHz Hac Pro quad-core in Plex, but Quicktime (with Perian) stutters, too. So, the long and short of it is - you're not going to see adequate performance from any Mac Mini form factor (Mac or Windows) computer. Just can't be done with the current crop of components (unless leveraging the gpu comes with OS X, then all bets are off).
 
I disagree with that, you can get some incredibly low profile cases and coolers off the shelf, easily enough for an older and hot quad - I'm sure apple could easily achieve cooling for any desktop cpu with their current mini form factor.

I prefer the look of some of these aftermarket cases, though they tend to match av equipment in width. I could stack it with an av receiver and have an internal psu, but I like the idea of being able to easy hide it - I think my ideal mini wouldn't bother with an optical drive and was sold as a vesa mounting bracket for pc/tv screens :)
 
So even if the Mini is updated, or replaced by another model, I'm not sure how good it will be compared to other makes.

I was walking through the store this weekend and came across an offering from Asus. Not only does it look good, but the specs are impressive as well:

2445_m.jpg


Product Weight 7.5 lbs.
Processor BrandIntel
ProcessorIntel® Pentium® Dual-CoreProcessor Speed 2.2GHz
System Bus 800MHz
Cache Memory 1MB on die Level 2
System Memory (RAM) 4GB Type of Memory (RAM) DDR2
Hard Drive TypeSerial ATA (7200 rpm) 640GB
GraphicsIntel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3500
Video MemoryUp to 256MB (shared)
AudioHigh-definition audio (7.1-channel support)
Network CardBuilt-in 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN with RJ-45
Wireless NetworkingBuilt-in Wi-Fi wireless networking (802.11b/g/n)Recordable DVD DriveYes, double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW
Recordable DVD Drive Speeds6x DVD+R DL; 6x DVD-R DL; 8x8x8 DVD+RW; 8x6x8 DVD-RW; 5x DVD-RAM; 24x24x24 CD-RW
Digital Media Reader or SlotsYes, digital media card reader
Total Expansion BaysInternal: 1 (3.5")
Total Expansion Slots1 PCI-E x1
USB 2.0 Ports 6 (2 front, 4 rear)
IEEE 1394 PortsNone
Keyboard Description Wireless multimedia with MCE hot key and track ball
Other Control Devices (mouse, etc.) USB optical mouseOperating System Windows Vista Home Premium
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Now that's for about $650. I can't find it - I'm assuming it's not out yet - but there is also supposed to be a model that supports NVIDIA 8600M and optional Blu-ray drive (slot)!

http://event.asus.com/desktop/cs5110/en/
 
Mac mini is an essential consumer product for Apple.

I doubt highly that Apple would discontinue this staple product. It is the entry level mac that Apple needs right now. Low priced and spares no hardware doing it. I hope that rumors are true and we see a mac mini tower redesign.
 

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