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Mac Mini Released

3Memos said:
I was a proud PC SOB, until I tried Mac, I never go back. :D
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Heh, me too! Still have a PC but for gaming only. I would have classed myself as a near-Power User, but the amount of effort that it takes to keep a PC running smoothly these days is just time that could have been spent better. Too much scanning for spy/malware, defragging, reinstallations after upgrades etc, etc.... I just got tired of it. So when it came time to get a laptop for "work" I was all set to get an all singing all dancing PC... until I tried a friends iBook for 30min.
Thats all it took! 30min, and my decision was made, and the next day bought my Powerbook and literally haven't looked back. I'll be getting a mini for my main home computer and using it with a widescreen LCD TV to give me a rather robust all in one entertainment unit.

Can't wait! I'll be getting a G5 unit when they've cracked the heat issues - either in a PB or a mini....

Macs ought to come with a warning... never knew I'd get this addicted to the world of Apple so quickly!

Maybe its karma for making get my girlfriends dad to switch from a Mac to a PC :eek: the horror, oh the horror! /me waits for stoning\
 
kahleeb said:
If anything, I hope Apple gains market share by people like me and clayjohanson. Microsoft needs competition because their OS is full of security holes and bugs that they refuse to fix. I already know of several people who are going to order a Mac Mini and this may lead to many more Mac users in 2005!
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you can bet on it ... personally i knew few similiar people (including me) who would fit in that group (of windows users who don't have problems with spyware etc.)

tried linuxes of all flavours but they are just buggy as well (especially in the UI) or have other problems

mac os x simply seems to be the best way to go because it has the advantages of both (with only rather small disadvantages)
 
One crude measure of price that I use is cost per GHz. The cheapest PowerMac on this basis is the dual 1.8 GHz -- $1999 / (2 x 1.8) = $555 per Ghz.

The 1.25 GHz Mac Mini comes in at $499 / 1.25 = $399 per GHz ... maybe the lowest ever.

As another post suggested, instead of buying Tiger and ILife in cardboard boxes to upgrade the PowerMac, why not pay a little more to get them in an aluminum box with a whole spare computer thrown in?

Here is my dumb but sincere question. If I buy four (4) Mac Minis and network them like U. Va. did, do I get a "quad G4 supercomputer" for $1,996.00? :confused:
 
Piarco75 said:
So when it came time to get a laptop for "work" I was all set to get an all singing all dancing PC... until I tried a friends iBook for 30min.
Thats all it took! 30min, and my decision was made, and the next day bought my Powerbook and literally haven't looked back.
<snip>
Macs ought to come with a warning... never knew I'd get this addicted to the world of Apple so quickly!
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My story nearly word for word. Configured an iBook at work and that was that. I don't even have the patience to list all the Mac hardware I now own ...and I was a hard-core PC self-builder just one year ago. :D

Although in my case my first "appreciation" for Apple came with the 2G Windows iPod I bought... I just wish I had a defined use for a Mini, I'd buy one in a minute.

JT
 
mkwilson68 said:
I just saw that someone posted a set of MacBench results for the mini.
http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge.xhtml?doc2=91336

It scored pretty well - basically, this machine is comparable to a current top of the line powerbook, which is not too shabby for a machine of that price. It ain't no G5, but it'll do what most people ever need pretty well.
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Based on MacBench, the iMac G5 with 1gb RAM is about 22 to 25% faster than the "maxed out" Mac mini. Really showing that the death of the G4 is not as close as one might think.
 
One more switcher coming!

I was talking to my dad a couple of days ago and he was telling me how some friend gave him a cheapo computer that was broken with no apparent fix. He said, though, that now that made two sets of display/keyboard/mouse he didn't have a use for. (the other one being from another cheapo PC he had)

So I told him about the Mac Mini. Price, specs, appearance, etc.
He got so excited! He said he was looking for a new computer, but now that he knows there is the mac mini, he will hold off. I told him how he could use the DKM he has at his home (another city) and when he came to visit me, he could use a DKM I have flying around from a PC I had ( :eek: ) It will be almost like a laptop for him, since he travels a lot.

He was really, really excited with the idea. It was funny he said 256 MB of ram was perfect... LOL... I'll get some more for him!

So one more switcher coming. :D
 
Chip NoVaMac said:
Based on MacBench, the iMac G5 with 1gb RAM is about 22 to 25% faster than the "maxed out" Mac mini. Really showing that the death of the G4 is not as close as one might think.
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Those percentages would presumably go up once Tiger is installed, no?
 
BillD222 said:
lol

check these out...
http://www.boldata.com/html/minipc.cfm
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Yikes. Fugly. $753. 128MB RAM. Integrated video.

MiniPC_P4_Main.jpg
 
wdlove said:
Since I have a G4 now, just don't want a G4 as my next Mac. I can certainly understand about the cost, in the future the cost of the G5 will decrease. Heat definitely would be an issue, but if they can over come the problem in the iBook and PowerBook then it shouldn't be an issue. If the other issues are overcome, then there will be the need in the future.
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There will be need in the future, sure. Likewise there will be need for better chips than the G5, and better display technologies than a mere monitor. That doesn't change current need, which current products address.

Machinehead said:
Here is my dumb but sincere question. If I buy four (4) Mac Minis and network them like U. Va. did, do I get a "quad G4 supercomputer" for $1,996.00?
Click to expand...

A caveat to the response above: you can't actually network them like U. Va. did. That was using a completely different networking technology for much faster interconnects (Infiniband), implemented through a PCI card (which this computer cannot accept). If you can settle for FireWire or 100baseT for the speed of the interconnect, though, then yes you can.

~J
 
Piarco75 said:
Heh, me too! Still have a PC but for gaming only. I would have classed myself as a near-Power User, but the amount of effort that it takes to keep a PC running smoothly these days is just time that could have been spent better. Too much scanning for spy/malware, defragging, reinstallations after upgrades etc, etc.... I just got tired of it. So when it came time to get a laptop for "work" I was all set to get an all singing all dancing PC... until I tried a friends iBook for 30min.
Thats all it took! 30min, and my decision was made, and the next day bought my Powerbook and literally haven't looked back. I'll be getting a mini for my main home computer and using it with a widescreen LCD TV to give me a rather robust all in one entertainment unit.

Can't wait! I'll be getting a G5 unit when they've cracked the heat issues - either in a PB or a mini....

Macs ought to come with a warning... never knew I'd get this addicted to the world of Apple so quickly!

Maybe its karma for making get my girlfriends dad to switch from a Mac to a PC :eek: the horror, oh the horror! /me waits for stoning\
Click to expand...

Even on an OS as refined and efficient as OSX, still requires hard drive maintainence. In this case, its called "repairing permissions". There are quite a few other things that I would certainly call "maintenance", but this work can be done with scripts. I'm certainly not a Mac power user, so you would need to ask someone else here to give you the details.
 
Demon said:
why is it just G4? i would buy it in a second if it was G5.
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Why? Would G5 make it somehow better? Before you say "But G5 is faster!". Yes, in a way it is. It's about as fast, clock-for-clock, as G4 is. But it also runs hot. really hot. So they would have to seriously underclock the G5 in order to fit it in the Mini. And that means that it would propably give no performance-benefit over the tried and tested G4. And besides, Mini seems to be based on the iBook, and iBook uses G4, so there.

Seriously, G5 in the Mini would only give bragging-rights, while giving any REAL benefits in the end.
 
Chip NoVaMac said:
Based on MacBench, the iMac G5 with 1gb RAM is about 22 to 25% faster than the "maxed out" Mac mini. Really showing that the death of the G4 is not as close as one might think.
Click to expand...

I'm not disputing that the G4 is still a useful chip (I'm generally quite happy with the performance of the 1.33GHz G4 in my 12" PowerBook), but Xbench scores aren't worth the pixels they're displayed on. My 1.6GHz G5 originally scored 146.14 running OS X 10.3.0, and now scores 139.78 when running 10.3.7. That's after upgrading the original 64MB Radeon 9600 Pro to a 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro Special Edition (everything else except the OS X version were the same between the two tests).

I think we'll need to wait for some real world benchmarks in a few days when the Mac mini makes it into people's hands...Xbench isn't reliable. Still...a 1.42GHz G4 with enough memory will be a nice system.
 
I dont put too much stock on Xbench scores either. A better test would be to use real-world apps and compare how long they take to do certain apps. The millions of combinations of hardware specs and software upgrades make it near impossible to distill a user experience down to a number.
 
too cute- ordered...

Sad that since apple 2, despite wasted decades with windoze (useful unix times), most computers dull.

Yup -ordered a mini (too cute!)- rationale basically really tiny for a useful, reliable computer that'll plug into a Win monitor or a TV.
 
JCT said:
My story nearly word for word. Configured an iBook at work and that was that. I don't even have the patience to list all the Mac hardware I now own ...and I was a hard-core PC self-builder just one year ago. :D

Although in my case my first "appreciation" for Apple came with the 2G Windows iPod I bought... I just wish I had a defined use for a Mini, I'd buy one in a minute.

JT
Click to expand...

Forgot about the iPod! I was onto my second one at the point I tried my friends iBook, so I guess I was already well open to giving the World of Mac a chance! God knows if that was the case for me, Apple have got it spot on by thinking that a lot of iPod users will buy a Mac Mini given their already positive experience of Apple..... genius...
 
machinehead said:
Here is my dumb but sincere question. If I buy four (4) Mac Minis and network them like U. Va. did, do I get a "quad G4 supercomputer" for $1,996.00? :confused:
Click to expand...

No, for the simple reason that UVa didn't network anything to get a supercomputer. System X is at Virginia Tech, UVa's arch-rival. (Guess which one's my alma mater) ;)

And, as others have pointed out, the mini lacks the network interface VT used.
 
Evangelion said:
Why? Would G5 make it somehow better? Before you say "But G5 is faster!". Yes, in a way it is. It's about as fast, clock-for-clock, as G4 is.
Click to expand...

Perhaps so, in terms of general performance. But when it comes to your specific application, your mileage may vary considerably. Consider, for example, using Logic Pro. A 1.5 Ghz Powerbook can do 4 Space Designer convolution reverbs at once, maximum. A 1.8Ghz G5 iMac can do 17. That's a serious amount more processor power - so for any musician running Logic they'd be silly to get a G4 if they could stretch to even a uniprocessor G5.

Perhaps it's because Emagic/Apple have optimised their DSP for the G5. But it's still an example of how you can't always say G4 ~= G5 in terms of CPU grunt per clock.

Cheers. :)
 
Kagetenshi said:
There will be need in the future, sure. Likewise there will be need for better chips than the G5, and better display technologies than a mere monitor. That doesn't change current need, which current products address.



A caveat to the response above: you can't actually network them like U. Va. did. That was using a completely different networking technology for much faster interconnects (Infiniband), implemented through a PCI card (which this computer cannot accept). If you can settle for FireWire or 100baseT for the speed of the interconnect, though, then yes you can.

~J
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i am not a techie, but what about a cluster?
 
I've been contemplating a Mac purchase for about a year now. I'm a Solaris admin at work and hate going home at night to fix all of the things my kids have done to our PC's.

My kids do a lot of light video editing. Can the mini handle this or should I be looking at the imac? I prefer the headless approach but maight be able to get used to the idea of an all-in-one.
 
pigbat said:
My kids do a lot of light video editing. Can the mini handle this or should I be looking at the imac? I prefer the headless approach but maight be able to get used to the idea of an all-in-one.
Click to expand...

iMac would be the better choice.
 
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