Gradual Mac Mini Updates?

[DavidCar]

Hi all-
I ordered a Mini last week (1.42, stock, combo drive), received it on Friday, and just got around to setting it up. I think it's the new model. ...

If anyone received a new PowerMac on Friday, I'd appreciate it if they could check the hardware specs to see if it says 970MP, or maybe 4 CPUs (or cores).

Thanks,
DC

 

[phairphan]

If anyone received a new PowerMac on Friday, I'd appreciate it if they could check the hardware specs to see if it says 970MP, or maybe 4 CPUs (or cores).

Thanks,
DC

I need a larger iPod than the current 60 GB model. Given my luck with the Mini, perhaps I should have ordered an iPod too!

 

[MarkCollette]

Now I think they HAVE to update the powerbook soon. How can they justify the low end consumer machine only being 167Mhz slower than their top of the line professional portable? I understand that the video card, hard drive, etc are not as good, but still, it's a $700 machine vs one at least twice as expensive. I'm still holding out hope that we'll see an upgraded Powerbook before the end of the expo.... but that hope is getting smaller and smaller.

Sometimes I just don't get you guys. For what, like 15 years or so, it's been the expected fact, in the computer industry, that notebook computers have lower specs, and cost more, than desktops. Period. Yet somehow, some of you have some illusion that Apple could defy the laws of physics and economics, and make notebooks with better specs. Yes, true, it is possible, by intentionally crippling desktops that is. But somehow I think that would lack a little business sense...

 

[ininjacorndog]

questoin

Question.

I need some professional advice.

I want a powerbook badly, I have been waiting all month hopeing the powerbooks would update at the expo but they didn't. Should I buy one TODAY since the Student Union offer ends today, or do you think these pb's will have updates worth waiting for before christmas?

 

[powerbook911]

Question.

I need some professional advice.

I want a powerbook badly, I have been waiting all month hopeing the powerbooks would update at the expo but they didn't. Should I buy one TODAY since the Student Union offer ends today, or do you think these pb's will have updates worth waiting for before christmas?

I think there is a chance they will be updated. If so, the updates would probably value more than the $179 of the mini price, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would be worth it to you.

 

[MarkCollette]

Another thing about it: It shows capacity as 149 GB. That seem small when they call it a 160 GB.

Do you mean that the Finder shows 149 GB capacity? That's formatting overhead. Any filesystem, like HFS+, or Fat32, or NTFS, etc. takes up space just to set itself up, even without holding any operating system or user data.

 

[ininjacorndog]

I think there is a chance they will be updated. If so, the updates would probably value more than the $179 of the mini price, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would be worth it to you.

I would also be saving 100 off the powerbook its self. I plan to purchase a powerbook and an 20g ipod

 

[the_smiler]

Does anyone know a way phairphan can check if his CPU is a 7448 or a 7447B?

And how about this thought: What if there was not going to be a replacement for the PowerMac? What if it was the Mac Mini that was going to be Apple's only headless desktop in the future? Would we all be building stacks?

judging by the 512K of L2 cache, that's probably a 7447B

 

[Chundles]

Sometimes I just don't get you guys. For what, like 15 years or so, it's been the expected fact, in the computer industry, that notebook computers have lower specs, and cost more, than desktops. Period. Yet somehow, some of you have some illusion that Apple could defy the laws of physics and economics, and make notebooks with better specs. Yes, true, it is possible, by intentionally crippling desktops that is. But somehow I think that would lack a little business sense...

There was a time way back when (PowerBook G3, early PowerBook G4) when the laptops had the same specs as the desktops.

Now however with the size of the cases, bigger, hotter, faster chips are the norm and people want light, slim laptops so smaller, cooler, slower chips have to go in.

People are annoyed at the lack of G4 progress (all Moto's fault mind you) and the fact that the iBook has excellent performance for the price when compared to the PowerBook. They want the PowerBook to get a big update because the gap between the consumer and professional portable lines has never been closer. And in some ways I agree. It would be good to see the PowerBook reclaim some of it's former glory (it used to be the fastest laptop in the world bar none) but I don't think that this will happen until the switch to Intel when it will be competing with every other laptop on speed, specs and features. I really hope Apple have got Tiger and all the apps running at blazing speed on the new Intel Macs (I say Tiger cause at least some Intel Macs will be shipping long before Leopard comes out) because unless it's very quick and good to use it's gonna be hard to justify a price premium on hardware everybody else has. And once that happens, Leopard had better be mind-blowingly cool.

Either way, this is much more exciting than waiting for anything new from the Wintel makers...

 

[MarkCollette]

Cool.
I can finally get rid of this 500 MHz iMac G3 and get me a Mac mini to use with my 20 inch monitor. Good thing I held until after I got my financial aid money this week, but that's as long as I can wait. It's kind of aggravating running Tiger with this iMac, the beach balls kill me sometimes. Anyway, it has served me well in the 4+ years I've had it.
Can't wait 'till I get my mini!

You're telling me, my home computer is an iMac G3 333 running Jaguar !
All I was waiting for, to get a Mac mini, was a 5400 rpm hard drive and a Core Image computible GPU. Argh, so close...

 

[Chundles]

Do you mean that the Finder shows 149 GB capacity? That's formatting overhead. Any filesystem, like HFS+, or Fat32, or NTFS, etc. takes up space just to set itself up, even without holding any operating system or user data.

The formatting overhead is much less than the 11 gigs of so called "missing" space. The difference is much simpler than that, it's the difference between the accepted advertising definition of a gigabyte (one billion bytes) and the computer definition of a gigabyte (10 ^ 32 bytes) this leaves a difference of 73 741 824 bytes per advertised gigabyte when the drive is read by the computer, so the difference for a 160GB HDD is 11 798 691 840 bytes or roughly 11GB.

You're telling me, my home computer is an iMac G3 333 running Jaguar !
All I was waiting for, to get a Mac mini, was a 5400 rpm hard drive and a Core Image computible GPU. Argh, so close...

Jaguar! Man, a mate of mine's home computer is a 600MHz iMac running Jaguar and I can't stand it!! Safari is sooo slow, no exposé (that really sucks) let alone all the goodies Tiger brings.

Forget the graphics card, anything you get is going to make your life a lot easier.

The 5400 rpm drive will make more of a difference unless you're trying to run a massive screen.

 

[eji]

It's the iMac G5 bs all over again. I find it really difficult to recommend the mini to anyone because it can't deliver the flashier effects of the OS it ships with. True, most people in the mini's intended market won't notice their absence, and they may not ever task the mini's meager GPU to its full potential; but I think it should be a matter of principle that *all* of the Apple models introduced post-Tiger should support every one of its features at some basic level. Would it have really been a logistical or financial nightmare to put something like the 9550 in the new minis?

Whether I'm happy with the idea or not, stuff like that ripple effect is the wow factor that Apple sometimes needs to get average Wintel users to sit up and take notice. I know that every PC user who looks over my shoulder goes slackjawed when they see it; and the first thing my wife asked me when she got my old iBook was: "How do I make my widgets do that water effect like yours?"

 

[MarkCollette]

There was a time way back when (PowerBook G3, early PowerBook G4) when the laptops had the same specs as the desktops.

I just wish people would realise that that was an anomaly. Plus, didn't it suck back then, when the G4 first came out, that it didn't ramp up in speeds for, like, ever? Why would we want anything like that again?

I really hope Apple have got Tiger and all the apps running at blazing speed on the new Intel Macs (I say Tiger cause at least some Intel Macs will be shipping long before Leopard comes out) because unless it's very quick and good to use it's gonna be hard to justify a price premium on hardware everybody else has. And once that happens, Leopard had better be mind-blowingly cool.

Yeah, I hope it means that they'll totally focus on bringing software innovations, and form-factor innovations, once they can finally forget about CPU issues.

The formatting overhead is much less than the 11 gigs of so called "missing" space. The difference is much simpler than that, it's the difference between the accepted advertising definition of a gigabyte (one billion bytes) and the computer definition of a gigabyte (10 ^ 32 bytes) this leaves a difference of 73 741 824 bytes per advertised gigabyte when the drive is read by the computer, so the difference for a 160GB HDD is 11 798 691 840 bytes or roughly 11GB.

Ah yes, that makes more sense. But, when you say the computer definition, you mean 2^32 bytes, right?

Jaguar! Man, a mate of mine's home computer is a 600MHz iMac running Jaguar and I can't stand it!! Safari is sooo slow, no exposé (that really sucks) let alone all the goodies Tiger brings.

Forget the graphics card, anything you get is going to make your life a lot easier.

The 5400 rpm drive will make more of a difference unless you're trying to run a massive screen.

Yeah, I couldn't take the pain and switched to Firefox a while ago. I really only use this for Mail, Firefox and iTunes, so I can survive until I can get exactly what I want. Oh, but I did have to do some video editting once for a school assignment, and my god did that hurt!

 

[Chundles]

I just wish people would realise that that was an anomaly. Plus, didn't it suck back then, when the G4 first came out, that it didn't ramp up in speeds for, like, ever? Why would we want anything like that again?

Ah yes, that makes more sense. But, when you say the computer definition, you mean 2^32 bytes, right?

Yeah, all Moto's fault again.

And, yes, 2^32, sorry must've had a brain melt.

 

[spaceballl]

...the clockspeed isn't that big of a deal, but i'm pretty happy about the hard drive rpm being bumped up.

-Kevin

 

[lexfuzo]

Do you mean that the Finder shows 149 GB capacity? That's formatting overhead. Any filesystem, like HFS+, or Fat32, or NTFS, etc. takes up space just to set itself up, even without holding any operating system or user data.

Actually, it's the difference between 1kB being 1000 Bytes and 1 KiB being 1024 Bytes. Drive manufacturers calculate with 1000 to boost the capacity numbers, the computer calculates with 1024. The drive in question features 149 GiB or 160 billion bytes.

 

[MacSA]

So even with the second revision to the Mac mini - Apple STILL havent put a core image capable graphics card in it

Was getting excited for a while....

 

[advocate]

Yes... I've only seen a 5.25" hard drive once, in a circa 1995 machine. Today, the standard is 3.5" for desktops, 2.5" for portables. But in a small form factor machine like the mini, a 2.5" is used.

I remember a 5.25" full height (about 3.5" tall) hard drive holding 120 megabytes costing about $1000 not so long ago. And before that, a 30 megabyte hard drive was 5.25" half height and took about 10 hours to format. *sigh* Those were the days..

 

[Hattig]

The issue is not for Apple suers looking for a new machine for the Mac mini, but more for switchers. To that end Apple needs to address the low end needs of Mac users, while making the Mac mini attractive spec and performance wise to some of the Dell/Intel offerings.

Not quite sure how the Mac mini would stack up against this Dell offering:

I would hope for something more from Apple.

Ugh. I used my girlfriend's mother's Dell (2.6GHz Celeron) and it made me want to go back to my old PII 266 based laptop. The low end Dells are poorly engineered. Never mind that it'll use crappy Intel integrated graphics that make a 64MB 9200 look like a Radeon X1800. Never mind that it has *no* style. XP Home?!

A 17" TFT (probably analogue too, what's the point?) can be bought for not much money. Couple that with the Mac Mini and you've paid a little more money, but got yourself something that works and isn't slowed down horrendously by the Dell bundled anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-working software.

 

[spinko]

ethernet 1000

what about the ethernet interface ? will it be limited to ethernet 100 ? Hope they upgrade it... 'cause then it would be a candidate for a nice osx server

 

[JeromeOD]

and video - wise

will it play HD video files? I'm not buying one as a media server until it can. I'm suspecting not, as my firiend with a 2.5 dual powermac gets dropped frames on HD video...

 

[phairphan]

what about the ethernet interface ? will it be limited to ethernet 100 ? Hope they upgrade it... 'cause then it would be a candidate for a nice osx server

Just went into System Preferences:Network and tried to manually configure the Ethernet connection. The list only gives me 10 and 100 options. However, none of my network equipment supports gigabit Ethernet speeds, so is there a more definitive place to check (the system profiler doesn't seem too helpful)?

 

[MacSA]

Just went into System Preferences:Network and tried to manually configure the Ethernet connection. The list only gives me 10 and 100 options. However, none of my network equipment supports gigabit Ethernet speeds, so is there a more definitive place to check (the system profiler doesn't seem too helpful)?

What about Bluetooth?

 

[phairphan]

What about Bluetooth?

What about it? As I said earlier, from what I can tell it appears to be the 2.0+EDR variety. Here are the particulars:

Phairphan's Mac Mini
9/22/05 6:40 AM

Bluetooth:

Apple Bluetooth Software Version: 1.6.3f2
Hardware Settings:
Phairphan's Mac Mini:
Address:
Manufacturer: Cambridge Silicon Radio
Firmware Version: 3.1965 (3.1965)
Bluetooth Power: On
Discoverable: Yes
Requires Authentication: No
HCI Version: 3 ($3)
HCI Revision: 1965 ($7ad)
LMP Version: 3 ($3)
LMP Subversion: 1965 ($7ad)
Device Type (Major): Computer
Device Type (Complete): Desktop Computer
Composite Class Of Device: 1057028 ($102104)
Device Class (Major): 1 ($1)
Device Class (Minor): 1 ($1)
Service Class: 129 ($81)
Services:
Bluetooth File Transfer:
Requires Authentication: Yes
Folder other devices can browse: ~/Public
State: Disabled
Bluetooth File Exchange:
Requires Authentication: No
Folder for accepted items: ~/Documents
When other items are accepted: Ask
When PIM items are accepted: Ask
When receiving items: Prompt for each file
State: Enabled

will it play HD video files? I'm not buying one as a media server until it can. I'm suspecting not, as my firiend with a 2.5 dual powermac gets dropped frames on HD video...

This is based on The Brothers Grimm trailer on the Apple website:

480P: Nary a dropped frame
720P: Tops out around 12 FPS
1080P: Unwatchable, as you can imagine. The video stutters and the rate oscillates between 5-ish and .5-ish FPS

 

[ScubaDuc]

I remember a 5.25" full height (about 3.5" tall) hard drive holding 120 megabytes costing about $1000 not so long ago. And before that, a 30 megabyte hard drive was 5.25" half height and took about 10 hours to format. *sigh* Those were the days..

My 386 Compaq I bought in 92 came with 120 Mb HD but it sure as hec was not a 5.25 inch. HDs were already in the 3.5" format then. I actually can still remember the days of NO hard drives in PCs.... You had to load the OS and then the program you wanted to use everytime and it would take an hr to boot