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And codecs change over time time, and Apple has no problem obsoleting anything 'too old'. Some day I won't be able to play back my 'protected AAC' songs from Apple. My CDs sitting in the basement however can and will be reripped to the latest codec -- 512kbps AAC-super-plus, and I won't have to spend another penny. Music and video companies LOVE it when you re-buy the same old content.

Not that I have a stake in the optical drive debate, but I actually think you have it backwards here. I would think you'd be able to playback those m4p files much futher out in the future than you would a CD. Eventually, CDs and DVDs will go away, but the obsolete codecs will still be playable.

Look some of the files used in the 80's versus the storage mediums. MIDI files are still easily playable, but you'd be hard pressed to find a cassette drive, 5.25" floppy, 3.5" floppy, zip drive, etc. to use on a modern PC/Mac.

As for the protected m4p files, as long as Apple keeps the authentication servers active, I'd bet that you'd be able to play them even 50 years from now. And even if Apple goes away without giving anyone the DRM keys, I'm sure the computers 50 years from now would be easily able to break the DRM ... but then again, that same computer could probably scan a CD found in someone's basement and play the files back as well ...
 
Backwards is as Backwards does, my Momma used to say

Look some of the files used in the 80's versus the storage mediums. MIDI files are still easily playable, but you'd be hard pressed to find a cassette drive, 5.25" floppy, 3.5" floppy, zip drive, etc. to use on a modern PC/Mac.

It's all about the form factor. Despite Steve Jobs' personal best efforts, the optical drive is alive and well and the form factor lives on in Blu Ray. This particularly form factor has been unbroken since the early 1980s. I can play a 1984 CD on a new Blu ray player as a result. That disc form factor went from 650MB to 50 gig, and has room to grow on as they add more layers (test labs are up to 100 layers). Yeah, yeah, it is all going to die someday -- so won't we all.

As for the protected m4p files, as long as Apple keeps the authentication servers active, I'd bet that you'd be able to play them even 50 years from now.

I think there is a good chance Apple will turn off those servers in less than 5 years. 50 years? Not a chance. Why? Apple doesn't need to give a reason---just because. Maybe you can buy it all back again from them at a one time price, but Apple will turn them off. It is what Apple does.
...
that same computer could probably scan a CD found in someone's basement and play the files back as well ...

As the crew of Monty Python might say, "I'm Not Dead Yet". Of course, if you say something twice, it makes it twice as true, and we've been hearing for *years* that optical is dead, so it MUST be that many times true! RedBox is stupid all the way to the bank with those dead DVDs.

As to file formats, thanks to the sunset of Classic and now Rosetta, they are dying like flies. I can read a floppy disk way easier than I can read some of the files on it because it is becoming hard to run programs that used those formats. My physical media and the playback are way outlasting my ability to open them--and that is for truly dead media, not imagined/desperately wished for.

We tell us ourselves it is the cost of progress and maybe that is true, but like reading Lotus 1-2-3 and old versions of Word or MacWrite, there is nothing you can do if a company stops supporting your specific format/codec, etc---and saving digital media to a different format is lossy (and spreadsheets/documents lose formatting, sometimes badly and irretrievably). It gets worse each generation of the MacOS.

Taking just codecs, it has already happened. I used to be able to edit/save MPEG2s with ease. It is getting very hard to do that now and even iDVD is dead. Buggy as hell too due to neglect. Sure MPEG4 is better, but MPEG2 used to be the best and greatest, and now you have to jump through hoops. It can and will happen with MPEG4. MPEG5/6/7 etc will always be better---and conversion is always lossy---you lose information.

So far my CDs/DVD have had longer life support than some of my old digital movies/audio. Apple can and will sunset support for certain codecs. Next I expect I won't be able to do MPEG2 playback (snap! too late! My iPad doesn't do MPEG2 at all **right now**). Remember Mpeg level 2 audio? I do and I can't find squat that runs those and they sounded great! I have some Quicktime movies that I can't play back on my Macs. I hate Flash but we should add it to the list; Apple wants it dead too.

All of those dead digital formats are way newer than my copy of "Rolling Stones Greatest Hits" I bought in 1989 and which still sounds fantastic on a $20 Walmart CD player and ripped to 256K AAC on my iPhone.

Going all digital is not safe either.
 
iFixit tore down the base model which doesn't have the AMD 8550 graphics. That's why I'm guessing the graphics card goes in the empty space available for the second drive.

Except Apple offers two hard drives on the discrete graphics model (AMD Radeon HD 6630M, not 8550...) So obviously it's not that they put a "graphics card" in the space of the second hard drive. It's likely just a different motherboard with the graphics chip soldered on to it. The 6630M is a low-power laptop chip, it likely doesn't take up much space, and the teardown shows plenty of space on that motherboard.
 
Except Apple offers two hard drives on the discrete graphics model (AMD Radeon HD 6630M, not 8550...) So obviously it's not that they put a "graphics card" in the space of the second hard drive. It's likely just a different motherboard with the graphics chip soldered on to it. The 6630M is a low-power laptop chip, it likely doesn't take up much space, and the teardown shows plenty of space on that motherboard.
I would like to see a tear down of that model.
 
Even the dedicated graphics model is going to have everything on the board I would imagine. All dedicated really means is it has it's own RAM.
 
I think there is a good chance Apple will turn off those servers in less than 5 years. 50 years? Not a chance. Why? Apple doesn't need to give a reason---just because. Maybe you can buy it all back again from them at a one time price, but Apple will turn them off. It is what Apple does.
I seriously doubt that Apple would turn off the servers without offering users a way to un-DRM the files. And since I doubt that would ever happen ... I guess I'm saying that we'll just disagree that Apple will ever turn off the servers (as long as Apple as a company exists)


As the crew of Monty Python might say, "I'm Not Dead Yet". Of course, if you say something twice, it makes it twice as true, and we've been hearing for *years* that optical is dead, so it MUST be that many times true! RedBox is stupid all the way to the bank with those dead DVDs.

As to file formats, thanks to the sunset of Classic and now Rosetta, they are dying like flies. I can read a floppy disk way easier than I can read some of the files on it because it is becoming hard to run programs that used those formats. My physical media and the playback are way outlasting my ability to open them--and that is for truly dead media, not imagined/desperately wished for.

We tell us ourselves it is the cost of progress and maybe that is true, but like reading Lotus 1-2-3 and old versions of Word or MacWrite, there is nothing you can do if a company stops supporting your specific format/codec, etc---and saving digital media to a different format is lossy (and spreadsheets/documents lose formatting, sometimes badly and irretrievably). It gets worse each generation of the MacOS.
In my previous post, I was referring to media files, not proprietary application formats. I'm guessing that the inability to read files generated from obsolete applications have more to do with the fact that these file formats are proprietary than anything else. Whoever owns the rights to Lotus 1-2-3 is probably waiting for someone to infringe on the format so they can sue ;)

Taking just codecs, it has already happened. I used to be able to edit/save MPEG2s with ease. It is getting very hard to do that now and even iDVD is dead. Buggy as hell too due to neglect. Sure MPEG4 is better, but MPEG2 used to be the best and greatest, and now you have to jump through hoops. It can and will happen with MPEG4. MPEG5/6/7 etc will always be better---and conversion is always lossy---you lose information.
We weren't talking about creating new projects using older (obsolete) codecs. We were talking about reading files generated years ago using, then current, technologies. As far as I know, my Mac can still playback all of the videos formats used back in the 90s. These would include MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MIDI, GIF, JPEG, etc. As long as I can get the file onto my Mac, it'll play

So far my CDs/DVD have had longer life support than some of my old digital movies/audio. Apple can and will sunset support for certain codecs. Next I expect I won't be able to do MPEG2 playback (snap! too late! My iPad doesn't do MPEG2 at all **right now**). Remember Mpeg level 2 audio? I do and I can't find squat that runs those and they sounded great! I have some Quicktime movies that I can't play back on my Macs. I hate Flash but we should add it to the list; Apple wants it dead too.
I'm not sure what files that you have that won't play on OS X. I don't have that problem. BTW, Flash is not a codec ... but as long as Adobe keeps making a plug-in for Flash, you'll be able to play it.

All of those dead digital formats are way newer than my copy of "Rolling Stones Greatest Hits" I bought in 1989 and which still sounds fantastic on a $20 Walmart CD player and ripped to 256K AAC on my iPhone.

Going all digital is not safe either.
I agree that going all-digital isn't complete safe. But eventually, optical drives will wither away and your CD collection will be obsolete, unless you keep an old computer or standalone player handy.

But at least with digital, as long as someone is willing to invest the effort, all formats will be playable, even the obscure formats. The risk is that some of these formats may not have an "advocate" that keeps the playback alive. I will say that formats/codec like MP3, AAC, h264, etc. have enough traction that they'll be kept alive far longer than optical discs.

ft
 
It's a darn shame you can't order the quad-core server model with the better graphics chip. That plus USB3 (which I want for my existing 3TB USB3 media drive) would have made that model a winner. As it is, you're stuck choosing between the better graphics card model with a mere dual-core or the i7 Quad with two hard drives (insta-backup) but with garbage intel integrated graphics. Once again, the geniuses at Apple overlooked the obvious.... :rolleyes:
 
It's a darn shame you can't order the quad-core server model with the better graphics chip. That plus USB3 (which I want for my existing 3TB USB3 media drive) would have made that model a winner. As it is, you're stuck choosing between the better graphics card model with a mere dual-core or the i7 Quad with two hard drives (insta-backup) but with garbage intel integrated graphics. Once again, the geniuses at Apple overlooked the obvious.... :rolleyes:

Everyone is thinking that it would have been too much heat in the server Mac mini for 2 drives and also a graphics chip and also real server machines do not usually contain discreet graphics chips.
 
Everyone is thinking that it would have been too much heat in the server Mac mini for 2 drives and also a graphics chip and also real server machines do not usually contain discreet graphics chips.

A Mac Mini is about as close to a "real server machine" as Kentucky Fried Chicken is to a home cooked meal. :rolleyes:
 
A Mac Mini is about as close to a "real server machine" as Kentucky Fried Chicken is to a home cooked meal. :rolleyes:

Exactly. They should call it a "Server" in quotes. It has more than enough CPU power to be a server but not near enough storage to be anything more than a office server. It would be a tad impractical to buy one then hook a bunch of external HD's to it.
 
It's a darn shame you can't order the quad-core server model with the better graphics chip. That plus USB3 (which I want for my existing 3TB USB3 media drive) would have made that model a winner. As it is, you're stuck choosing between the better graphics card model with a mere dual-core or the i7 Quad with two hard drives (insta-backup) but with garbage intel integrated graphics. Once again, the geniuses at Apple overlooked the obvious.... :rolleyes:
Be interesting to see what they put into the next version of this model.......
 
Well I figure they must be nimwits to have $70b cash, b as in billion, sitting in the bank. for some stupid reason they like selling iMacs and Pros over Minis. Crazy geniuses I guess. You think they don't know how to market a cheaper powerful headless Mac? The obvious is that Steve, like many people, and businesses, likes the cashola people are throwing their way for the current conFigs.
 
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It's a darn shame you can't order the quad-core server model with the better graphics chip. That plus USB3 (which I want for my existing 3TB USB3 media drive) would have made that model a winner. As it is, you're stuck choosing between the better graphics card model with a mere dual-core or the i7 Quad with two hard drives (insta-backup) but with garbage intel integrated graphics. Once again, the geniuses at Apple overlooked the obvious.... :rolleyes:

Overlooked the obvious? I think it should be obvious to most people by now that Apple has always limited the mini to some degree in relation to the higher end Mac models. Apple basically sells a pro line and a consumer line of notebooks and desktops and "never the twain shall meet"...

When has the "entry level" mini line ever offered a high-end graphics card as an option?

Do you really think Apple would ever consider equipping their non-pro mini systems with more features and better overall specs than the iMac or Mac Pro lines?
 
Even the dedicated graphics model is going to have everything on the board I would imagine. All dedicated really means is it has it's own RAM.

Yes and no - while separate VRAM is usually associated with discrete graphics, some integrated graphics solutions have had separate VRAM. Usually, the discrete GPUs have both VRAM on a private bus and much better GPUs.


Everyone is thinking that it would have been too much heat in the server Mac mini for 2 drives and also a graphics chip and also real server machines do not usually contain discreet graphics chips.

You mean that everyone is *guessing* about the heat - only the Apple engineers know the specifics.

And, almost without exception, "real servers" do have discrete graphics chips - server chipsets don't have integrated graphics, so a cheap GPU is needed (e.g. ProLiants have ATI ES1000 with 32 MiB VRAM).
 
Let me get this straight.

Apple replaces alu/plastic mini with solid alu mini, price hike of £100.

Apple replaces solid alu mini with DVD-less alu mini, price drops £100.

So, essentially the price hike was down to the housing correct? Why are people so blind and keep going about great value/price reduction etc?
Its blindingly obvious the thing was not selling, they dropped price and got rid of the OD to maintain some of their margin.

I just got my new MBA and I love both that and Lion, but man, dropping the DVD from a desktop that half the people I know use as a media server is plain dumb.

I know a lot of people are keen on digital storage and cloud services etc, but I recon their just young & naive. My CD&DVD collection is quite valuable at this moment, and the chances of DVDs and primarily CDs going away anywhere is pretty slim.

And yes, Apple has a nasty habit of leaving you in the cold. I've been using Macs on and off for 15 yrs now ( my 1st proper comp after my Commodore was a Mac!), its their mode of going forward. Every time Jobs pisses me off I switch to IBM, then back to Apple.

Too bad Microsoft is gonna screw 8 (the 1 in 2 rule = 95 bad, 98 ok, Millenium bad, XP ok, Vista bad, 7 ok - see the pattern? lol).
 
Well I figure they must be nimwits to have $70b cash, b as in billion, sitting in the bank. for some stupid reason they like selling iMacs and Pros over Minis. Crazy geniuses I guess.

Wow, another mindless and utterly thoughtless fanboy reply of the usual "they make money so everything they do is PERFECT" type. :rolleyes:

Yeah, Allied Waste that picks up my garbage makes a lot of money too. Does that make them geniuses? :rolleyes:

Overlooked the obvious? I think it should be obvious to most people by now that Apple has always limited the mini to some degree in relation to the higher end Mac models. Apple basically sells a pro line and a consumer line of notebooks and desktops and "never the twain shall meet"...

When has the "entry level" mini line ever offered a high-end graphics card as an option?

Do you really think Apple would ever consider equipping their non-pro mini systems with more features and better overall specs than the iMac or Mac Pro lines?

I think you don't even READ or you would see that the Radeon that comes with the 'high-end' Mac Mini is less than the bottom of the line iMac Radeon model. If a Radeon 6630M (M as in mobile) GPU is your idea of "high-end graphics" you must come from an alternate parallel universe or something.... :rolleyes:

It is better than the Intel integrated graphics, however and thus the reason someone might be interested in a combination of a quad-core (for whatever use, it doesn't have to be as a server; I use Logic Pro and more cores are quite handy for more real-time effects processing, for example).

iMacs are different beasts as they include a (unwanted in my case) monitor. If you want to use your own monitors (for whatever reason), you have the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro as your only choices for 'desktops' from Apple. That in and of itself is absolutely ridiculous, IMO, but I'm sure that comment will get another lecture from the fan squad about how Apple makes money so it must be a good thing.

The 'obvious' thing I was referring to would be to offer the 6630m with the i7-quad or hell, for that matter to offer the dual-core model with the 6630m with TWO 750GB 7200 RPM hard drives (even without the quad CPU, it'd be nice to have two hard drives in the regular Mini). Apple offers NEITHER. They do offer a SSD + a regular hard drive option, but that's not the same thing (i.e. you can't use it as a backup for one thing).
 
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You didn't get the point. Apple is in business to make money. they are not going to offer a cheaper Mac that will cannibalize sales of higher profit machines. I was merely stating their goal of being in business and making money is being achieved. and no I do not think making money means total success. and Apple is not 'stupid' because they chose not to cannibalize their Mac lines. ugh.
 
Interesting. In contrast, I would be hard pressed to find something more useful than a optical drive.

I can rip DVDs to movie and put them on my iPhone without having to pay Apple to 'rent it' (when I already own it). We burned Graduation DVDs for my daughter's preschool---you know, cherished memories. (Sometimes you don't want your kids up on YouTube; we don't even list their ages on Facebook. It is a bad idea). Cherished memories are best on physical media. I spent 10 cents apiece on my Taiyo Yuden DVD media. Making copies for friends takes minutes. I also can usually get better prices on CDs from Amazon and rip 'em. When there is a better audio codec, I re-rip em without having to re-buy them. Pressed CDs/DVDs last pretty much forever, way better than hard drives.

I really get why optical media is not in the iPad or Macbook Air---they are mobile devices and these things are meant to be light. This is why I bought an iMac too---as a desktop, it feeds media to my optical-less mobile devices. It is a compromise and totally logical. But no optical in a desktop? The Mini was already quite Mini WITH an optical drive. Hey, each to his own; I've got plenty of other things to spend my money on.

This is just a cost cutting move that Apple has fooled some people into thinking is a feature. Wow, just wow.

You can buy an external DVD/Bluray for the very FEW times you will rip the movie, then put it back in the cupboard for the remaining 99.9% of time, it may be slower but how often will you do this? If its a lot then a mac mini is not the right choice. I have never required a DVD on my custom mini PC except to install windows.
 
A Mac Mini is about as close to a "real server machine" as Kentucky Fried Chicken is to a home cooked meal. :rolleyes:

Are there not 'mini server farms' already..?


In any case, it's like this:
Apple chooses not to compete in every market. They make a few models with (and without) some features. Buy them or don't. Seems to work for them.
 
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