Gradual Mac Mini Updates?

Superhob said:
Can you run Xbench (run it right after a fresh restart) and post the results here, I would really appreciate it...
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I agree with Superhob, I'd like to see those Xbench results, too. It would be nice for comparison. I have an iBook 83-800 w/128M RAM and a PM dual G4-450 w/1G RAM. I've attached these results, so it would great to be able to compare it with the Mac Mini.
 

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MacSA said:
.....Thinksecret also say the mini will be upgrading to a faster hard drive - 5400 RPM.
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The mini I bought in February has a 5400rpm 40gb drive. A lot of people who bought the cheaper mini got the faster drive. There was a big to-do about it over on XLR8YourMac.
 
i like the idea of gradual updates and think apple should do this with all their computers small, but frequent updates are the bast way to keep their computers fresh
 
jiv3turkey748 said:
i like the idea of gradual updates and think apple should do this with all their computers small, but frequent updates are the bast way to keep their computers fresh
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I think Apple will pretty much have to do things this way once they become a true Intel shop.
 
These might be coming sooner. I placed an order for a mini through the edu store over a week ago. It has been delayed with no reason given, and when proding is done from our edu buyer he is told it is on a "hold" with no more reason given. Didn't think much about it until the mini update rumor showed up.
 
Chundles said:
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.
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The diference amounts to 0,93 x N (or 1000/1024 (KB) x 1000/1024 (MB) x 1000/1024 (GB). Apparently the same factor of 0,93 also applies to Apple's student discounts (at least in the Netherlands) :p
 
MacPhreak said:
For the target market, the mini is fabulous. If you're into gaming, it's not for you, period.
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I wouldn't necessarily say that ... it all depends on what kind of games you're looking for. For example, I play Warcraft III all the time on my mini. It's not silky smooth like the dual 1.8 G5 at work, but it's certainly not annoying.

will it play the latest releases? probably not. But, it's certainly not useless for gaming.
 
longofest said:
going to a gradual cycle is going to make it a lot harder to guess when new models come out, and hence will make it harder to know when to buy and when to hold out.

then again, i'm not in the market for a mini... i'm in the market for a powermac.
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You should buy one when you need one. If you can wait six months for a faster mac to come out probably means you don't really need it.
 
oskar said:
You should buy one when you need one. If you can wait six months for a faster mac to come out probably means you don't really need it.
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Exactly. Buy the machine that you need, when you need it. If you play the waiting game, all you'll ever end up doing is waiting for the next best thing. :cool:
 
Today at aple expo, you can buy a Mini Mac 1,25Ghz for only 357 euro. The classic price is usuly around 500 euros. That resembles much a liquidation of stocks, before update?
 
lexfuzo said:
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.
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Yes, thanks :eek:

But, I still think that people should realise, that above and beyond the decimal versus binary definition of a billion, is that the following issues will reduce your hard drive capacity:

- Formatting it with a filesystem will take up some space
- Journalling takes up space for the rollback log
- Spotlight taking up space for all of the indexing

So, if the person before felt they "lost" 11 GB before, they'll probably lose, for real, even more to the factors that I've mentionned, by the time they fill up their drive.
 
You guys made me wonder something. I've been holding out for a fully Core Image capable mini, because I wanted something that would last as long as possible. With the upcoming Intel transition, I wonder if there's a point to that?
 
MarkCollette said:
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...
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Yeah, like a 64MB FX 5200 Ultra GPU would cost Apple more then a dollar or two over the old 9200! It's silly not to upgrade it to a Core Image compatible GPU.
 
Abercrombieboy said:
Yeah, like a 64MB FX 5200 Ultra GPU would cost Apple more then a dollar or two over the old 9200! It's silly not to upgrade it to a Core Image compatible GPU.
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Keep in mind Apple's tendency to "cripple" certain hardware so it's not tempting to those who might buy higher-end stuff.
 
After following the mac mini through its first two versions, I have a theory on the lack of a core image GPU. In a nutshell, I think Apple has every intention of using the lack of a core image GPU as a clear point of differentiation between its low end machine and the machine next on list, the iMac. Your normal everyday user off the street isn't going to know the mini lacks core image abilities or even what that phrase means. If you DO know what it means, the mac mini isn't being made with you in mind. I really think it's that simple. In other words, the mini will always be lacking in functionality that the other Macs posses. Currently this amounts to no more than a ripple effect, but with future versions of Mac OS, who knows? I certainly hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
 
Vis, I agree, except that IMO, the iMac is not next on the list; the Power Mac is. For those who don't intend to get an all-in-one, that's it. All the more reason for Apple to offer a mid-Mac that's much like the iMac without a display, but that's another topic.
 
Vis said:
Currently this amounts to no more than a ripple effect, but with future versions of Mac OS, who knows? I certainly hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
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Actually it's a lot more than that. Try running Motion 2 on a mac mini or playing Doom 3 on it. You can see the major differences there. But you know, the iMac is standard 128, so it would be logical for the PowerBook to go 128 standard as well and maybe the Mac mini could go to 64 at least for the middle model.
 
Why are people talking about 'frequent' gradual updates?? Last real update was 8 months ago with the launch of the mini. I'm not caunting the increased standard memory as it should have included that from the beginning and they upped the price in the EU with more then the price difference between 512 and 256 MB.
 
The last mini update seemed a bit of a palceholder to me, as though the next big update wasn't quite ready at the time and Apple needed to show some movement on the mini. So I'm wondering if the speed bump due soon is really the introduction of a G5 Mac Mini @ 1.5GHz.

Ben
 
lazydog said:
The last mini update seemed a bit of a palceholder to me, as though the next big update wasn't quite ready at the time and Apple needed to show some movement on the mini. So I'm wondering if the speed bump due soon is really the introduction of a G5 Mac Mini @ 1.5GHz.

Ben
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No, because that guy earlier in the thread showed that his faster Mac Mini was a G4.

However if the Intel switch wasn't going to happen then yes, I could see it happening. The 970FX processor is quite small, and you would only need a system controller with a single memory controller and a single processor interface. You could have, for example, a 1.6GHz low power G5 processor with a 400MHz (or 800MHz) FSB which would match 400MHz DDR memory nicely.

But alas I do not think that this is ever to be.
 
lazydog said:
The last mini update seemed a bit of a palceholder to me, as though the next big update wasn't quite ready at the time and Apple needed to show some movement on the mini. So I'm wondering if the speed bump due soon is really the introduction of a G5 Mac Mini @ 1.5GHz.

Ben
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wth :eek: my greedometer just went off the scales. Don't push it bub. :cool:
 
How can this single Mac mini accidentally make it off the production line to be shipped to a customer several weeks before its officially announced?
 
MacSA said:
How can this single Mac mini accidentally make it off the production line to be shipped to a customer several weeks before its officially announced?
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Maybe its also the only one to get sold under the 'test drive' program :)
 
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