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Mac Mini Released

Daisy-Chaining

I had originally posted this as a private message, but while doing so found that many other had posted, so here goes...

When daisy-chaining a DV cam through an external FW drive, don't you run into the problem of "doubling up" on the FW bandwidth? Take an iMac G5 for example...2 FW ports, but only one FW bus.

So, doesn't the video come in through the FW bus, get processed by the OS, which then spits it back out through the same FW bus to the external hard drive?

Is the FW pipe big enough to handle DV in and out at the same time or will this result in dropped frames?
 
G3 worked fine, too.

3Memos said:
Basically any G4 over 500Mhz and 384MB RAM and FW ports are all that is needed to edit DV video.
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I have (along with my students) been using my iBook clamshell and iceBook G3 for iMovie for a while now. Not as speedy as on my iMac G5 but OK for basic stuff. So I think the mini will be more than fine for home stuff. If you only have the 40, you'll just prob have to export back to tape and delete the project. no biggie!

I want to try to get a local German Society to buy a mini for my "peecee only" FL lab so my kiddies don't have to use my iBook!!!
 
CandyApple said:
Hoffer,

The photo books are great. I've made 2 myself. Also, iMovie and iDVD will do a great job of producing a DVD for your sisters wedding. Just don't expect it to be all that fast on the Mini. I've got a Dual 2 G5 and DVD encoding still takes awhile.
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I expect the video encoding to be an overnight process. I won't be creating tons of DVDs. So, overnight processing is fine with me.
 
ravenstar said:
Maybe this will help. My son and I just finished producing a DVD for the school of his elementary school drama production using a 2 1/2 year old PowerBook G4 (800 MHz G4, 512MB Ram) to do all the editing in iMovie. We used an external 40GB Firewire drive to store the movie owing to the fact I don't own a digital camera and needed to use another system to digitize the video. The only operation we really noticed take time during editing was rendering the titles (20 - 30 seconds to render a rather lengthy scrolling cast list), but because the rendering is done in the background that didn't slow us down at all.

Now when it comes to encoding the DVD, that's another story. The powerbook didn't have a superdrive, so I took the hard disk to a lab dual processor 2GHz G5 tower to create the DVD. Even with all that horsepower, it took over an hour to encode the 40 minute video. That's the kind of process I'd run overnight if I had my own system.

Based on that experience, I wouldn't hesitate to use a Mac mini to do the same editing again. I just wouldn't expect to finish editing, pop the DVD out and throw it into my DVD player.

I should note this was our first attempt at video editing, and we never had to refer to any help or documentation. The ease of use of iMovie and iDVD more than made up for the time it took to encode the video.
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Thanks for the info. Right now he's doing all of his editing on a Sony VAIO 1.8 P4 that's about 3 years old. Adobe Premiere is completely unusable on that system so he's using Pinnacle Studio.Most of his videos are 4-5 minutes long (skating videos) so rendering is never a real issue.

I've actually been ready to switch for about a year and have been getting used to the idea of the all in one iMac. This just sounded like a good starting point because I'll probably end up with a dual proc a year from now. Just more choices now.......
 
oingoboingo said:
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.
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Why oh why didn't they strip the iMac G5, take out the screen and repackage it as the new Mac mini/midi. That's certainly what I was hoping for ...

Bw

RTJ

one hopes...
 
Hoffer said:
I expect the video encoding to be an overnight process. I won't be creating tons of DVDs. So, overnight processing is fine with me.
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The good news is that the Mini is almost silent, I always do my late night encoding on the powerbook as the MDD Powermac that I have I can hear in the bedroom next door. :eek:
 
Photorun said:
The good: Everything about it except one thing...

The bad: WTF?!? That video card would hardly power Tetris, are they nuts? The upper one they should throw in the rather crummy MX or FX5200 as at least it's 64 VRAM and vaguely passible. And hell, retail price of that, at least for peecee lusers, is $30-50, so wholesale it'd cost Apple, what, $15 tops? Basically Apple must have gotten a real REAL cheap deal on the 9200, like a buck a pop, or free, they were throwing them out. Again, Apple is friggin' clueless about the gaming community. And more laughable is they show it playing Halo in one of the pics of it (cough)... yeah... right... Halo. Halo would absolutely CHOKE on 32 MB of VRAM unless you turned off EVERYTHING and ran it at 640 X 480. What a joke.
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i agree. Switchers will choke.
 
I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but:

I play Halo at 1024x768 on a 32 meg video card (iBook). It works well. I play UT2k4 on a 32 meg video card. It works well.

I want to choke both of you for spreading idiocy.

~J
 
LinuxGigolo said:
My Mac mini shipped!!! Tracking number not yet entered into Fedex's system, but it's on it's way! Hooray!
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When did you buy yours? I'm curious about the Apple Order Status page, and when it says you placed the order.

Still haven't seen a change on my order status:OPEN. Ugh.
 
Gerg said:
When did you buy yours? I'm curious about the Apple Order Status page, and when it says you placed the order.

Still haven't seen a change on my order status:OPEN. Ugh.
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Ordered at 11:58am ET on January 11th. It just shipped within the past few hours because I looked at it earlier and the ship status was 'Open'.

EDIT: I also just got the shipment email confirming this! YAY!
 
It amazes me how people just don't get the mini and Apple's strategy.

OK, a few truths:

1. At this price point, ALL manufacturers must cut corners.
2. At this price point, ALL manufacturers try to up sell.

OK, so what is the difference between Dell, et al, and Apple's strategy?

Dell, et al., cut corners inside of the box. Yes, you can get a cheap keyboard and a cheap display, but the components are of lacking quality. Notice that default 90 warranty from Dell on their low end? There is a reason for that. And yes, complain all you want about the memory on the GPU, Dell's low end DOES NOT EVEN HAVE a DEDICATED GPU.

Apple took a different strategy. They cut corners outside of the box. You get a full year warranty and quality components, firewire, a dedicated GPU, etc. But you don't get a crappy monitor or keyboard and mouse. Apple put the money inside of the box.

Is one right and the other wrong? No. They are just different, and they will appeal to different people.

A lot of folks want as much "stuff" included in the price. "Hey I get a 'free' printer but only need to buy a proprietary cord for 69 bucks. Sweet."

Others value quality inside and out. Or, they want to hook their mini up to their TV or stereo. Or, they already have the components and want to get the best OS on the market and the best digital hub suite. And to them, they are paying 500 bucks for it and getting a Mac for free.

To each his own. But to those who think this is "stupid" and the mini will fail, you need to understand it is not meant to appeal to you. And maybe a class in Marketing 101 and an explanation of market segments will do you well.

But don't kid yourself doubters. Apple will sell at least a million of these this year. At least. And if you are still doubting, go to slashdot and look at the thread when the original iPod came out. Thousands of featuritis techies bashing Apple for the iPod and pontificating how the iPod will never sell. I am sure 90% of those haters own an iPod now.
 
ordered one...

Super-cute size, works (reliably like a Mac), pretty cheap- a no-brainer to get one.

It is a replacement for windoze laptop, and maybe something i pass on in a year or 2.
 
I just noticed. On my order status page, it says DDR400 ram. Everything else I've seen says DDR333.

Is the order status page incorrect??
 
No fair, I ordered mine at 11:36 AM PST on the 11th!

Well, to be fair, I did add RAM, a SuperDrive and Airport Extreme to it, so I guess that takes just a little longer!

BTW, did you buy a 1.25 or a 1.42?
 
wdlove said:
If you don't really need a new computer now, that sounds like a great plan. Having Tiger pre-installed, means one less thing that you will have to accomplish.

Here is an interesting read that I came across.

http://lowendmac.com/lite/05/0113.html
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Interesting article, but something that lots of "computer people" don't get is that there is a huge number of people out there that do nothing but email, surf the internet, type the occasional document, and that's about it. Why do they need a floppy drive, need liquid cooling, and about 3/4s of the negatives listed? I'll be working on no less than 4-5 people to switch to the mini when the time comes to "upgrade" their current setups. :)
 
Ive finally decided to get a mac mini. I dont know whether to get the 1.25 with an 80BG hard drive and 512MB Ram......or get the 1.42 with 80GB and 512mb Ram.....is the slightly faster processor really going to be noticable since I will only be doing thinks like typing papers, surfing the interet, listening to music, and playing around in iPhoto??
 
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