sushi said:
I agree, Dell and Compaq had systems only slightly larger then the Mini for years now. The only thing that is unique about the mini is it being Apple hardware, and the fact that it is a small flat laying device.
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Intel's Mac Mini Look-Alike
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I agree, Dell and Compaq had systems only slightly larger then the Mini for years now. The only thing that is unique about the mini is it being Apple hardware, and the fact that it is a small flat laying device.
I've also seen PC cases that look a lot like the G5 tower design:
http://uk.geocities.com/vincecutting@btinternet.com/casezc7104hsi.jpg
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-17011.php
http://uk.geocities.com/vincecutting@btinternet.com/casezc7104hsi.jpg
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-17011.php
mvc said:I'm afraid Intel copying Apple is like a fat girl doing ballet - making the same moves does not mean you have the same style.
somewhere there is a husky girl wearing a tutu, sitting in a corner, crying.
aafuss1 said:
Something I've always noticed with PC industrial design is that they try to "tech it up" a little too much with bezels and bolts and about 5 too many visual elements.
The G5-like jpg above is a great example extraordinarly poor design, even by ripoff standards. The Dell above looks like a short overweight man wearing clothes that are just a size too small. Here's another couple of Frankenminis:
It's got to be a cultural thing - in order to _look_ powerful, we must bevel/chrome/bolt/screw/curve/protrude/extrude everything everywhere.
mcarvin said:
That CappuccinoPC (? -- the top one in your post) actually doesn't look half bad to me. Nowhere near the mini, but not half bad. It would look better if a mismatching mouse wasn't paired with it. PC companies seem obsessed with ugly keyboards and mice sometimes. Of course Apple is obsessed with pretty and overly simplistic. But no one should discount the effect pretty has on selling Apple hardware.
You know, I had subscriptions to many different PC magazines back in the eras of 1998,1999,2000, and there was at one time, a fairly popular format being produced by one company whose name I never grasped, and it definitely took me a while to find a picture of this small format, but if you consider this, it came definitely long ago before the Mini, and the mini, is very resemblant to this physical dimension wise.
Update: Found a few more images, and found out that the latest versions of this thing held a 1.4 Ghz Tualatin 512KB L2 cache cpu. ****ty graphics though.
Update: Found a few more images, and found out that the latest versions of this thing held a 1.4 Ghz Tualatin 512KB L2 cache cpu. ****ty graphics though.
~Shard~ said:Exactly, thanks for that Sushi. It's just like the people who say that MS ripped off Apple's OS back in the day. But we won't get into the whole Xerox discussion, now will we?
haven't you seen "pirates of silicon valley"?
mkrishnan said:That CappuccinoPC (? -- the top one in your post) actually doesn't look half bad to me. Nowhere near the mini, but not half bad. It would look better if a mismatching mouse wasn't paired with it. PC companies seem obsessed with ugly keyboards and mice sometimes. Of course Apple is obsessed with pretty and overly simplistic. But no one should discount the effect pretty has on selling Apple hardware.
Right - the Cappucino isn't overly horrendous, but the mix of angular and curved faces plus the grill design really hurts it by making it too visually busy. Plus, that blue capsule-shaped element on the front should highlight something, but it's not clear what because both the chrome and blue have ports but apparently no drive door. It's probably the least bad of the crop.
mo0805 said:haven't you seen "pirates of silicon valley"?
Oh yes, many times - and have done a lot of supplementary reading on the subject as well. Fascinating stories...
840quadra said:I agree, Dell and Compaq had systems only slightly larger then the Mini for years now. The only thing that is unique about the mini is it being Apple hardware, and the fact that it is a small flat laying device.
only slightly larger? that looks like it's more than double the size of a mini, to me.
mcarvin said:
Yes...busy is definitely a big problem with industrial design in the windows world...I think there's also a mentality that goes, "If I add a row of buttons in a different color, and put it along an arc, then the design will look cool and high tech!"
Except for the printer world. There, the mantra seems to be utter incomprehensibility and inscrutability....
Maxx Power said:
Don't you love the storylines that the photos of some of these PCs inspire though? I really like my new mini PC. Not only is it extremely small, but the textured bezel doubles as a flint stone and sometimes I like to strike my matches against it. The only problem with it is that I confuse it with my cellphone. So I took this picture to put in my wallet to help me remember which is which. This is very important, because my cellphone doesn't have a textured bezel and I cannot light matches with it. Incidentally, I am obsessed with simulated woodgrain, preferably in light oak stains.
mkrishnan said:Yes...busy is definitely a big problem with industrial design in the windows world...I think there's also a mentality that goes, "If I add a row of buttons in a different color, and put it along an arc, then the design will look cool and high tech!"
I had something about the culture of PC industrial design in my first post but got rid of it. You sir, nailed it. The whole thing just reeks of having a hostile, condescending view of the non-geek user.
mcarvin said:
This, in return, sir, is such a fine piece of wordsmithing that I am sore tempted to put it in my sig.
mo0805 said:
Not really, it is possibly the size of 1.5 Macintosh Mini computers.
It also pre-dates the mini by about 2.5 years.
I know, I know, she's probably one of my daughters, neither are prima ballerina build, but every girl wants to be a ballerina. It can be really bad to get them involved if they are not the right size, I have a 'solid' niece who was involved, and she got a lot of grief from the other kids as they all got older.Wonder Boy said:
You just gotta work with the body you are given.
<sour grapes>Ballet looks silly anyway!</sour grapes>
Which 'they'? If you're referring to the Intel prototype, sure... but Shuttles? Industry standard PCI, and AGP/PCI-e slots, 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays, along with socketed processors put them in a different league. Indeed, a different target market... the Mini (and non-Intel clone hardware) won't exactly play Half Life 2.840quadra said:
mvc said:I'm afraid Intel copying Apple is like a fat girl doing ballet - making the same moves does not mean you have the same style.
This is an eternal truth since Macintosh was born
and its the best statement of-the-day!!!!!!
Nice say! mvc
lets also change "intel" into "M$"
see what they are doing in the dark side?! longlonghorn
~Shard~ said:It's just like the people who say that MS ripped off Apple's OS back in the day. But we won't get into the whole Xerox discussion, now will we?
Actually... Xerox's GUI work introduced some of what we are used to today, but Xerox was only part of an evolution that started with writings of Vannevar Bush in the 1930s and 40s that predated digital computers! Bush's writings inspired Douglas Englebart, who made the first working GUI and invented the mouse. BEFORE he worked for Xerox.
And after Xerox's work (which mainly stayed in the labs) came Apple, who perfected the mouse hardware (it wasn't a practical, reliable device before Apple's) AND introduced much of what we now expect in a GUI. Apple built on existing concepts.
And then Microsoft did the same--and in fact they did indeed copy the Mac GUI quite directly in many ways. Including renaming the Apple menu to the Start menu and moving it to the bottom
One difference: Apple really made something innovative that never existed before, with the 1983 Lisa/Mac GUI. Microsoft on the other hand took backward steps and spent years catching up. Only recently have they contributed some small tidbits of their own GUI functionality.
Jobs' NeXT went its own way and innovated some things we now expect from GUIs too--and of course NeXTStep is a big part of Mac OS X's lineage.
So for the record, some things Apple and NeXT contributed to the GUI:
Drag-and-drop
Pulldown menus (including the File Edit View structure still used today)
Checkmark-selected menu items
Keyboard shortcuts for menus
Graying-out unavailable items
Trashcan
Double-clicking
Every file being an icon (and dragging for file management)
Hierarchical file browsing with windows for folders
Metadata fork, including assigning what app would open what file
Redrawing of only the necessary part of a window when something in front of it is moved
Shaded/beveled look for windows and icons (NeXT is the first I'm aware of that went all the way with that)
"X" symbol for closing windows (NeXT had it, then it showed up in other UNIXes and Windows... now it's on Mac too)
Dock that can be placed at any edge
Dialogs ("sheets") visually attached directly to their associated windows
Exposé
So Xerox PARC did a lot--scrollbars for instance, and some limited use of icons--but imagine life without the above before you say Apple copied what already existed.
See: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars/ and wikipedia for more info.
Now... more directly on topic... I'm surprised nobody's posted a picture of this new machine yet. It looks Apple-esque, but unlike Intel's concept, this one is NOT an Mac Mini rip-off. For one thing it's too big
And apparently, it's STILL not as quiet as a Mac Mini!
poundsmack said:so much for not talking about that one
Yep
But I think he meant we won't talk about how Apple copied Xerox. And I didn't talk about that, I talked about how Apple didn't And we ALSO shouldn't be talking about how AOpen copied the Mac Mini, because they just didn't. They copied Apple's style, but it's more iPod-like than Mac Mini-like.
nagromme said:Yep
Precisely. Well done!
nagromme said:Yep
And we ALSO shouldn't be talking about how AOpen copied the Mac Mini, because they just didn't. They copied Apple's style, but it's more iPod-like than Mac Mini-like.
hahaha touche
840quadra said:
Sorry 840Quadra, that thing is hideous, we have those here at Mohawk College in Hamilton, ON, Canada. Man that is a lot bigger than it looks. thickness may be slightly 4 mm thicker than the Mac Mini, but length & width oversize the Mini. If you put that over the Mini, you'd think the Mini is its stand. Man the cables are way too annoying on that puppy.