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Apple Releases New Sandy Bridge Mac Minis and Thunderbolt Display

The Base Model should have 4Gb RAM, that is just inexcusable. It should also have the Optical Drive.
The $799 Model makes sense for people who want the extra Graphics Power, but the Base Model is ludicrous.

Apple has always taken chances pissing people off with their overpriced hardware but they are really getting close to becoming an Evil Empire.

Having said that, if the Drive was still there the $799 Model would be sweet.
 
steve333 said:
The Base Model should have 4Gb RAM, that is just inexcusable. <snip>
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That part I agree with...and it should not be two 2 GB sticks, just to make you replace all of it if you later wanted to upgrade to 8 GB.
 
Damn, damn, damn. Had a new base Mini IN MY HANDS at the Apple Store. They went to ring it up and its not in the system yet. :mad:

"Sorry but come back tomorrow." :(
 
ArcaneDevice said:
I like music, why wouldn't I?

I can buy a CD that I can play in almost any music device in the past twenty years, rip into any format I want to, it comes in an universal storage format so I always have a backup, it includes liner notes and from more creative artists, cool packaging.

For the same price as buying it on iTunes.

So, yeah why wouldn't I buy a CD? Why would anyone who likes music not buy a CD?
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I buy my Music 60% from iTunes (mostly single tracks), and 40% (albums) from record stores and used CDs from Ebay. CDs are great, you can share them with friends and family, you can buy a CD for a buck or two from Ebay, rip it and resell it for a buck or two.

I buy and rent Movies in HD mostly (80%) from my local movie rental and the local movie stores since iTunes doesn't offer full HD. I don't like the low quality and high price iTunes offers, but occasionally I rent iTunes movies when I am too lazy to get outside. :)

As soon as AppleTV and iTunes offers full HD I may change my mind.
 
RBR2 said:
The recovery "partition", I am told, is not actually a separate physical partition on the drive such as is used on many OEM installations of Windows. It is apparently an alias of sorts which accesses the essential elements of the OS (if they are not damaged or the drive is not hosed) and reportedly takes up only about 130 MB or so of drive space. I suppose one could create a separate physical partition to use for reinstallation though it would be lost n the event of disk failure.

In the instance where a completely new installation is required, I do not believe that internet recovery is the only option. There was a discussion at a meeting I attended about making an install disc from an SDHC card or USB flash drive which would allow for reinstallation of the OS without internet access at all (which could be very important in some instances). They could even be made into bootable drives with some utilities installed. Obviously, a DVD could be made for Macs that either have one or if you were using one with the new Mini.

I have not read anything about the SSD installation in the Mini, but I had seen some things prior to release that Apple were believed to be moving away from soldering in SSDs because of the warranty costs. (The article was specifically in reference to the MacBook Air.) If there was a problem with the SSD the entire logic board had to be replaced when the SSD was soldered in place. With a removable SSD, only the drive need be replaced. The reverse would be true in the case of a logic board failure. Either way Apple stands to reduce warranty costs which has been an objective of the design teams for some time now. The MagSafe connector is probably the number one example of this which has benefitted everyone involved. I am pretty sure that Apple counted down the days until the liquid cooled G5 Mac Pros were all out of Apple Care Warranty coverage as they had a nasty habit of dumping coolant and destroying the entire system.
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Where is the recovery media on a new Mac Mini and MacBook Air? Kinda hard to replace a broken HD when you have no media to put on it. Apple proposes that you re download Leopard (and iLife) from their servers to do the recovery. I am just saying that that will add time to the recovery of a system.
 
I don't get it that people say optical disks are dead. :D CDs are here to stay a decade or two. Same with DVDs and BRs. And the next bigger formats like BluRay XL or TeraDisc are lurking around the corner.

With movies getting more features like 3D and getting bigger resolutions like 2160p HD or FA4K they are also getting bigger. I can not picture myself downloading a 400 GByte 4096 x 3112 resolution Movie from iTunes for a week! :D
 
Especially without an optical drive anymore, seems like a no-brainer to put the SDHC slot in the front. Who wants to reach around the back every time they need to load photos from a memory card? Stupid. :confused:

If I ever replace my current mini with one of these, guess I'll just keep using the USB card reader I have - which of course annoyingly takes up a USB port that could be used for other things.
 
ekwipt said:
Not that fazed by no DVD drive, but doesn't make a lot of sense if you wanted to use it as a media centre.

Does anyone know if the new AMD Radeon HD 6630M can handle blue ray rips and 1080P video?
Click to expand...

I would have thought the the HD3000 was capable of both, so why wouldn't the more powerful Radeon?

TheReef said:
Now that the optical drive is gone I hope there's "space" for a 2nd hard drive in the non-server models.
Click to expand...
thedenethor said:
I' m also really waiting for iFixit teardown to see that if the new internals fits the previous chassis or not :cool:
Click to expand...

This is what I am waiting from iFixit. Not just the space, but whether Apple has retained the second spare SATA port.

Shivetya said:
Considering that the base price did not drop you assume a lot. If anything they are padding their earnings even more.
Click to expand...

As per my post that you quoted, the base model fell by £83 in the UK and a similar amount in the euro countries, which is more than the cost of the overpriced superdrive. The dollar has fallen in value, which is why the base price hasn't fallen in the US.
 
Why Mac Book Pro can have 128 GB SSD option (for 250 $),
and Mac Mini CAN'T ?!

The only SSD option for the price of entire Mac Mini computer ?!
 
Eidorian said:
I take it there is documentation for this now?
Click to expand...

Yes, of course :

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2267/_index.html

The Video Decode Acceleration framework is a C programming interface providing low-level access to the H.264 decoding capabilities of compatible GPUs such as the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M, GeForce GT 330M, ATI HD Radeon GFX, Intel HD Graphics and others. It is intended for use by advanced developers who specifically need hardware accelerated decode of video frames.
Click to expand...
 
Agent Smith said:
I remember the exact same concerns people raised when the floppy drive was removed from the iMac back in 1998. A couple of years later, most people had moved on and were none the worse for wear.
Click to expand...
There is a difference between a drive supporting disks holding 1.44MB of whatever and removing a drive that can read/write CDs (700MB) and DVDs (4.7GB-9.4GB) that hold music, software, video, backups, ISOs, etc.
 
Sodner said:
Damn, damn, damn. Had a new base Mini IN MY HANDS at the Apple Store. They went to ring it up and its not in the system yet. :mad:

"Sorry but come back tomorrow." :(
Click to expand...

What the F? It came out today. You should be able to legally buy it NOW.

COMPLAIIIIIN! :mad:
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'm actually glad I bought my Mini three months ago. I bumped it up to 8g RAM and haven't looked back. I'm surprised as the next guy the new one still is 2g RAM stock and no drive! I use mine all the time to play DVD's, rip cd's for kids and clients. Perhaps I'm old-school, but I don't want another box on top of my mini just for burning discs!
 
I have to agree with most of you. I can understand a laptop that is not used as a main computer to not have a disc drive but I don't think that we have went far enough away from the disc drive to take it away from a home computer. You can't listen to cds, watch dvd's or even install windows with out using another COMPUTER or having external disc drives. That kind of makes this computer pointless if it is going to be your only machine.

I guess by this time Apple just expects you to have multiple computers. :D
 
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