It probably also helps that the PC/Windows market accounts for 95%+ market share, so, Apple cannot realistically compete with that kind of market saturation, and just has to work on chipping away at that little by little over the next 5 years.numediaman said:
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Intel's Mac Mini Look-Alike
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Maybe I shouldn't be surprised about this, given that it's a mac forum, but it seems weird to me that nobody's really mentioning one of the big pluses that this mac mini ripoff has over the mini : little to no fan noise .
I love my mac mini, and it's an order of magnitude quieter than the quietest PC I've built (I've tried hard at this), but it's still a fair bit louder than I expected it to be. I certainly wouldn't call it whisper quiet like it was touted, not with a high pitched whiny seagate momentus (an unexpected upgrade) paired with a small fan which is always on at some level, and always audible. I really expected it to be much more like the (fanless) Cube, or at least like the powerbooks that I've used that are basically dead silent. I feel like the powerbooks and the ibooks show that it can be done, they just... didn't. I can only wonder if they had put a few holes in the top that they would have lost some of the style but gained a silent machine, a tradeoff I'd make every day of the week.
Noise is my only complaint with the mini, other than that I absolutely love it. But if this ripoff ran OS X, I'd pick one up in a heartbeat. If they made a ripoff that runs fanless, then I have to say that they've done one better than Apple did. I hope Apple rises to the challenge with the next revision of the mini.
I love my mac mini, and it's an order of magnitude quieter than the quietest PC I've built (I've tried hard at this), but it's still a fair bit louder than I expected it to be. I certainly wouldn't call it whisper quiet like it was touted, not with a high pitched whiny seagate momentus (an unexpected upgrade) paired with a small fan which is always on at some level, and always audible. I really expected it to be much more like the (fanless) Cube, or at least like the powerbooks that I've used that are basically dead silent. I feel like the powerbooks and the ibooks show that it can be done, they just... didn't. I can only wonder if they had put a few holes in the top that they would have lost some of the style but gained a silent machine, a tradeoff I'd make every day of the week.
Noise is my only complaint with the mini, other than that I absolutely love it. But if this ripoff ran OS X, I'd pick one up in a heartbeat. If they made a ripoff that runs fanless, then I have to say that they've done one better than Apple did. I hope Apple rises to the challenge with the next revision of the mini.
cr2sh said:Odd. I was looking at one tonight with a friend.. I picked it up and held it to my ear... dead silent.
That is odd. Were you actually in a quiet room? There's way too much ambient noise in even quiet stores for you to hear it. Even the dual G5's seem fairly inaudible in most places with any kind of background, and they're actually not even all that quiet in a room with no other noise sources. I can't hear the mini well in my local Apple store, which seems fairly quiet when it's not busy, but take it into a room that actually has very little background noise (e.g. , the room I work in most of the time), and you'll definitely hear it. A big chunk of my noise signature is the high pitch of the momentus HD, but there's also an audible whoosh from the fan as well. I was expecting neither when I got the mini -- most notebook hard drives are inaudible, and I expected the fan to be inaudible as well, if it even turned on.
You must be a real stickler for silence. I own a Mac mini and it is really quiet. I am impressed with the noise level. I can hear the HD noise you talk about and when the fans kick into high you can easily tell, but that's not often and even still it's more quiet than most PCs unless you build one to purposely be very quiet. I certainly wouldn't consider the noise level on the mini bad in any way.pna said:
As for the entire copying argument. Was this new AOpen machine prompted by the Mac mini? Sure, but who cares - this is business as usual. If Pepsi started selling their soda in one gallon bottles and it sold well, what would Coke do?
A computer is a computer is a computer. You get a Mac to run OS X and/or you can get a PC to run Windows/Linux. If style is very important to you, you'll lean towards Apple probably - but you are going to buy what you need which, I would hope is based more on what you need to do with it, i.e. what software you can run on it. Apple came out with a great SFF design and it was successful, so the x86 market is making their own version to generate money off of the market that wants this type of SFF machine that can be used well as a second/third machine for email and basic computing tasks, or as part of a multimedia system. The design is not as elegant as Apple's but it fills the same basic purpose within the x86 market. It makes perfect business sense, so why all the bitching? This isn't a holy war, it's an industry - it's not about copying and cheating or innovating and pioneering... it's about making your shareholders money. Like it or not, that is what drives the industry.
Since Mini ~ laptop...you can imagine the sound levels are about the same. I don't know why people are surprised that its quiet. If a laptop had that amount of vertical space to work with, yeah it could definitely reduce noise a bit.
On the other hand, I think what I would really like is a Mini G5. Of course, we won't even start seeing that until well after PBook G5's are out. Pipe dreams...pipe dreams
On the other hand, I think what I would really like is a Mini G5. Of course, we won't even start seeing that until well after PBook G5's are out. Pipe dreams...pipe dreams
pna said:
My sister has a nice portable, a pc one, also not so noisy (if you do nothing). But if Microsoft is not doing anything about their buggiest software OS XP, Just put on your shoes and run, run men ..... if you see the "send bug report"-warnings
Oh yes, it's a 2,4 Ghz full pentium IV processor ... but the performance, also because the (anti) malware-spyware-virus programs it runs, is close to mine 667 Mhz G4
It's blows a lot that 2,4 Ghz Portable PC
Whoopsie:radio893fm said:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator
Sorry, try again.
Dust Gatherers
Hmm...
Starts at $599.00 WITHOUT an OS, without apps. Can't put XP Media Center on it because it would jack up the cost too much beyond 599.
See THIS link and imagine just how many they will sell. Who in their right mind would plop down hard earned money for it? Not even my most jaded XP-apologist friends are THAT stupid.
Hmm...
Starts at $599.00 WITHOUT an OS, without apps. Can't put XP Media Center on it because it would jack up the cost too much beyond 599.
See THIS link and imagine just how many they will sell. Who in their right mind would plop down hard earned money for it? Not even my most jaded XP-apologist friends are THAT stupid.
darkwing said:
Apple doesn't have much of a choice as long as we're using PowerPCs, they don't make processors themselves. It's either embedded G4s or Firebreathing G5s. Besides, with intergrated graphics that P-M machine is fairly limited in what it can do.
I think I know what the 'A' in 'AOpen' stands for.
I believe it comes from a popular insult that drivers yell at each other: "Hey, watch where you're going A******!!"
Anyway, I like this bit:
If making small PCs is not advantageous, then please tell me why you dimwits are making them then??!! Is this just some sort of pathetic show off attempt? If you're going to insult the Mac mini, at least make an original case instead of almost completely copying it
This isn't just me being an Apple fan boy either; I'm pissed at the sudden influx of cheap rip-off crap from certain countries in Asia. When I go to pool halls here in Japan, I think I'm playing on a Brunswick table when it'll turn out to be a cheap POS table from China or Korea Don't even get me started on Chinese-made cues...
I believe it comes from a popular insult that drivers yell at each other: "Hey, watch where you're going A******!!"
Anyway, I like this bit:
If making small PCs is not advantageous, then please tell me why you dimwits are making them then??!! Is this just some sort of pathetic show off attempt? If you're going to insult the Mac mini, at least make an original case instead of almost completely copying it
This isn't just me being an Apple fan boy either; I'm pissed at the sudden influx of cheap rip-off crap from certain countries in Asia.
When I go to pool halls here in Japan, I think I'm playing on a Brunswick table when it'll turn out to be a cheap POS table from China or Korea Don't even get me started on Chinese-made cues...Mav451 said:
It's true -- and that's why I was surprised that it was actually louder than the powerbooks I've used, which make no noise at all. I was expecting silence...
And yes, it's also true that I'm a real stickler for noise. I've spent unbelievable amounts of time (and money, which I don't have much of being a grad student) trying to make silent desktop machines running linux, from watercooling to passively cooled thin clients and on and on. So I was absolutely blown away by the announcement of the Mini, like no other product I've ever seen announced. 500 bucks for something that was exactly what I wanted (silent) and ALSO ran OS X? Unbelievable, and for the first time I had that experience where people elevate Apple designers and execs to deity status.
It was going to be the most fun ever to hang out in the silentpcreview forums, and any time anyone was talking about spending x dollars on x product that would make their rig a little quieter, to just pipe up with a 'Why don't you buy a Mac Mini and be done with it?'... The reality is that if it still makes noise AT ALL, it's still too noisy for lots of folks over there (including me), so there was a bit of disappointment.
I finally just hunted and found a good deal on a used powerbook and took the Mini in to work. Happiness both places, though I'm a little disturbed at how much money I've spent on apple products since first picking up the mini. If you're looking for a 'halo effect' poster child, look no further. Yikes.
pna, my mini is generally dead quiet -- except when it is encoding / decoding video files (and sometimes audio files). Otherwise, I never hear the fan. Further, when I do hear the fan, it is not too bad -- quieter than my PowerBook.
If you feel your mini is loud, you might want to have it checked out. Some G5 users say their desktops sound like jet engines -- that shouldn't be the case with your mini. Good luck.
If you feel your mini is loud, you might want to have it checked out. Some G5 users say their desktops sound like jet engines -- that shouldn't be the case with your mini. Good luck.
BenRoethig said:
Is the Intel Mini UMA? If so, then the Mini should trounce it nicely for anything graphics related. It'll be interested.
I know it isn't Apple's fault that the processors available to them suck. I usually post things like that to remind people that we're not on top of the world in everything.
Steven
numediaman said:
Same here, my mini has been far quieter than my previous PowerBook was. The fan doesn't kick on anywhere near as often and even when it does, it's not as loud as the PB was. Anything that's highly RAM or graphics intensive will cause it to fire up far more often though, like when I occassionally use Virtual PC for example.
Why ...
... do people talk about feature comparison, when the AOpen and Intel mini pcs are still prototypes and no one really knows how they really perform against the mac mini.
They are planned to be shipped in autumn the earliest, so what is the big deal on this?
I feel trippled by the pc crowd, when first they shouted "uuuh, we don´t need it" and later after it turned out to be successful shout back again "la la la, our´s the better one. And we already invented it in the early 19th century".
Think of it like that: The DRM empire Microsoft and Intel in partnership together with AOpen goes out and pirates ideas to the limit in violation of copyrights. They are the ones, who literally copy the world to death.
By the way: Someone should call the MPAA, because some of the mac minis in future movies could be pirated clones ... MPAA doesn´t like that.
... do people talk about feature comparison, when the AOpen and Intel mini pcs are still prototypes and no one really knows how they really perform against the mac mini.
They are planned to be shipped in autumn the earliest, so what is the big deal on this?
I feel trippled by the pc crowd, when first they shouted "uuuh, we don´t need it" and later after it turned out to be successful shout back again "la la la, our´s the better one. And we already invented it in the early 19th century".
Think of it like that: The DRM empire Microsoft and Intel in partnership together with AOpen goes out and pirates ideas to the limit in violation of copyrights. They are the ones, who literally copy the world to death.
By the way: Someone should call the MPAA, because some of the mac minis in future movies could be pirated clones ... MPAA doesn´t like that.
Maybe Apple should retaliate and make an ugly, beige computer. Oh wait, they've already been down that road.
Okay, well, then maybe they can make OSX Tiger freeze and crash a lot more. Oh wait ... they've already done that, too. Hmmm... Has Bill Gates bought Apple?
Okay, well, then maybe they can make OSX Tiger freeze and crash a lot more. Oh wait ... they've already done that, too. Hmmm... Has Bill Gates bought Apple?
No. PCs still come with floppy drives!Sonofhaig said:Do these guys ever have an original idea? I mean really.....
I dunno, I kind of wish Apple put the power button for the Mini on the front of the machine... They made something that can practically slip between almost anything and put its primary ignition in back where you have to yank the whole machine out of its resting spot to access it. A power button like those on PowerBooks on the front of the Mini (or heck, even on the side toward the front) wouldn't kill the aesthetic too much...Yvan256 said:
OK, now that's fugly. Looks like a colander.Yvan256 said:
There were 2 mini-PC designs on display at Computex, one at AOpen's booth and the other at Intel's. Much has been said about these copycat designs so I'll just leave a few pictures of my own...
AOpen:
Intel: (Sorry, a bit blurry as the thing was rotating.)
More pictures from the final day of Computex.
http://www.fototime.com/inv/CD25946F997F88F
AOpen:
Intel: (Sorry, a bit blurry as the thing was rotating.)
More pictures from the final day of Computex.
http://www.fototime.com/inv/CD25946F997F88F
