New Intel Mac mini

[stcanard]

Hence, it's not as good a differentiator.

Okay, lets back up and look at this from a historical viewpoint:

When Jobs took over on the second coming, he was (and is) quite vocal about the fact that Apple's biggest problem was there were way too many models without any clear differentation, it overwhelmed and confused people.

Since then he has been very careful: 4 models (now 5 with the mini) with very clear differences.

In the latter days of the PPC chips that differentiation started to get muddied, and people were getting confused again (we heard a lot of 'why buy a powerbook, when the iBook is so similar? Why by a powermac when I can get a G5 in an imac, and get a builtin monitor')

Now, with the move to intel that differentiation needs to be reasserted, and needs to be clear in people's minds. Processor isn't an option, there aren't enough choices yet.

Sorry, but model number of graphics card isn't an option, because there's no easy way to say that the ATI 948345IVBS is better than the ATI 9483451VBS (yes I've made this more complicated than real life to drive home a point -- when most people look at these things their eyes gloss over; they don't see that one has an ATI 9500 with 128MB and one has an ATI 9100 with 64MB, all they see is both systems have ATI chips).

Integrated vs. Non-Integrated. Now there's a clear differentiator. Easy for a layperson to see. Easy for a salesperson to explain.

That's where they are going. It's easy, clear, explainable, and people can remember it. From a marketing standpoint it makes sense, and fits with the intial philosophy: keep the lines clearly, and simply different.

 

[Abulia]

Can someone please explain why all these Mac Intel revisions with Front Row have IR remotes? Whats is wrong with using Bluetooth for a remote. That way they don't have to build in the sensor, they could sell Front Row for existing machines that already have Bluetooth. Plus you wouldn't need line of sight, so when the mini is hooked up to a projector behind the sofa I can still use Front Row!

I believe that Bluetooth devices occasionally "poll" each other to see that they're alive/still connected. This would be a drain on battery life. An IR sensor just looks for an IR signal and does something with it; the transmitter (the remote) doesn't use any power until you press a button. Bluetooth would be a much larger power drain.

Plus, cost. IR is cheap. Bluetooth has so much more capabilities that go beyond what you need for a 6 button remote.

 

[Dark Horse]

Why so negative?

I don't understand why everyone is rating this so negatively. Sure the integrated graphics is not to everyone's liking, but this is inherently a low end consumer pc for internet and media. I think it'll do just fine.

Connectivity options is just great, and I think Bonjour is awesome so any extension to that seems like a cool idea to me.

The only down side I'd say is that the UK is again way overpriced compared to US$. Just glad I've moved to California!

 

[Tastannin]

Wanna bet the kids at tivo will be working a bit harder on this now?
http://customersupport.tivo.com/knowbase/root/public/tv2181.htm?

Yeah, baby.

My "entertainment center" (a large piece of furniture) is now pretty much obsolete.

I saw the Tivo To Go for Mac application running on a Powerbook at CES. Looked pretty much done. The Tivo fellow said they were working on the DVD burning integration with iMovie/iDVD, though I encouraged him to use Toast because of its support for keeping closed captions in the video stream (iMovie/iDVD strip the CC stream). It's been nearly 2 months since, so I expect they will be ready very soon. I can't wait, even though I do have an eyeTV that does almost the same thing hooked up to my G5.

 

[matticus008]

At $600 the iMac Mini is a joke. I can understand it if they were priced to compete with something like a Dell. The lowest end Mac is priced like a upper mid ranged Dell. At the listed price for what you get out of it massively lacks in comparison.

Actually, if you look at things based on the CPU involved and step away from the fact that "entry level" means different things to different companies and target markets, you have to take a Core Solo system in stride with an mid-range Dell. Those systems are going to sit at around $750 or so. You'll get a bigger hard drive and a crappy keyboard/mouse out of it. But strangely, Dell's entry "entertainment" PC line comes with GMA900 (and more infrequently 950) graphics. Dell gives free monitors away pretty often, but not always. Even still, let's say $750 with a 17" LCD.

The Mac mini offers the Front Row experience, a fashionably small package, and wireless. The Dell has a bigger hard drive and a 17" LCD for $150 more. Even if you don't care at all about aesthetics, $750 gets you a Mac mini (and 17" LCD) with Front Row and a much better set of software. You can upgrade the graphics in the Dell. I'd say it's still advantage: mini, but any way you slice it, they're comparable.

You can't take Dell's worthless Celeron line as a baseline...start with the real line of Pentium 4 machines and the price advantage disappears.

 

[ts1973]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1821805,00.asp - Interesting article on the Graphics Card.

Just sifted through your link. I thought it was bad. Now I know it's terrible.

What a disappointment 🙁

 

[mokeyjoe]

The way I see it is;

This is not a games machine.

This is marginally more expensive than the present G4 mini but with overall better specs.

This and the Boombox are a statement of intent from Apple. They've cornered the portable music market and now they're coming for you living room.

The Mini streams media and comes with a remote. It also easily hooks up to a TV and had digital audio output. (The Boombox had digital audio input). This is the system that Apple intends to launch their Movie download/rental service around. This is the home equivalent to the iPod - or at least could be.

Storage capacity? Well most people rent a lot more movies than they own. And if you want to shell out and download? Well it streams remember. Maybe from an external HD? Or a desktop PC/Mac?

HiDef? Well the iTunes music store does ok for itelf with its 128kbps downloads. They take up less space and most people couldn't care less. The larger the file the longer it takes to download too remember. I think Apple would want more of an 'on demand' experience.

Apple don't want to provide a DVR, they want people to get their content through them, not other providers.

The iTunes music store will morph into a multimedia provider. And this is the access point. Watch movies and listen to music at home, or take them with you on your ipod. So many people use the iTunes store, if or when they start providing full movies then people are going to want to know how to access them, and will find that the products already exist.

On their own these product are nothing special. Just like on its own the iPod isn't. There are more fully featured mp3 players out there. But its the overall experience, including the content delivery that make the ipod what it is. And that'll be true for these products too.

Of course this is speculation. But its the direction Apple are surely headed. The new Mini is the ideal machine for this. And the boombox may look daft with an iPod sticking out of it, but I bet it'd look a whole lot nicer sat under your TV.

 

[Tastannin]

Actually, if you look at things based on the CPU involved and step away from the fact that "entry level" means different things to different companies and target markets, you have to take a Core Solo system in stride with an upper-mid range Dell. Those systems are going to sit at around $750 or so. You'll get a bigger hard drive and a crappy keyboard/mouse out of it. But strangely, Dell's entry "entertainment" PC line comes with GMA900 (and more infrequently 950) graphics. Dell gives free monitors away pretty often, but not always. Even still, let's say $750 with a 17" LCD.

The Mac mini offers the Front Row experience, a fashionably small package, and wireless. The Dell has a bigger hard drive and a 17" LCD for $150 more. Even if you don't care at all about aesthetics, $750 gets you a Mac mini with Front Row and a much better set of software. You can upgrade the graphics in the Dell. I'd say it's still advantage: mini, but any way you slice it, they're comparable.

You can't take Dell's worthless Celeron line as a baseline...start with the real line of Pentium 4 machines and the price advantage disappears.

Amen, brother, amen. 😎

 

[mark88]

It is not the low end computer it originally was, so let's stop making excuses for Apple.

I agree, with the duo mini the GPU brings down an otherwise decent mid-high end computer.

 

[Stella]

You are so correct.
Some people here are living in cookoo land. They want a 2gig Duo, the fastest graphics card money can buy - all for the bargin price of $599.

Well, its not going to happen.

That graphics card isn't good for games ( cut down the graphics detail ) - but for multimedia content, its more than fine. Its fine also for word processing, iLife apps, internet, email and so on.

The Mini Mac solo is a fine machine, a lot of people won't need to add more memory, another hard disk.. the default package would be what they need. If you need more, your looking at the wrong machine. You are not Apple's target market.

The new Mac Mini is by far a much superior machine than the original. Apple have done really well for the price.

Put into perspective - the Mac Mini will have better overall performance that the PowerBook G4.

EDIT: I cannot believe the amount of whinners there are on here. Nothing is ever good enough. People would still whine if the Mac Mini had the same graphics card that the iMac does.

I don't understand why everyone is rating this so negatively. Sure the integrated graphics is not to everyone's liking, but this is inherently a low end consumer pc for internet and media. I think it'll do just fine.

Connectivity options is just great, and I think Bonjour is awesome so any extension to that seems like a cool idea to me.

The only down side I'd say is that the UK is again way overpriced compared to US$. Just glad I've moved to California!

 

[Yvan256]

Sorry, but model number of graphics card isn't an option, because there's no easy way to say that the ATI 948345IVBS is better than the ATI 9483451VBS (yes I've made this more complicated than real life to drive home a point -- when most people look at these things their eyes gloss over; they don't see that one has an ATI 9500 with 128MB and one has an ATI 9100 with 64MB, all they see is both systems have ATI chips).

Integrated vs. Non-Integrated. Now there's a clear differentiator. Easy for a layperson to see. Easy for a salesperson to explain.

It's actually more complicated.

Anyone can see that "ATI X1600 is better than ATI X1300" (or "ATI X1600 is better than ATI X200").

Read all the forums about this new Intel Mac mini. The debate right now is "ATI Radeon 9200 vs Intel GMA950".

"Integrated graphics" doesn't mean anything to most people. The Radeon 9200 with 32MB dedicated memory was "integrated" on the Mac mini G4 motherboard. So is this GMA950 with 64MB shared memory.

If they're both "integrated", it leaves us back to the "ATI Radeon 9200 vs Intel GMA950" debate, which nobody seems to be able to answer correctly.

Even worst, it takes 80MB of system memory to give 64MB memory to the video chip... which means you waste 16MB that goes down the drain somewhere for no apparent reason.

Also, I don't get the point of optical audio, 5.1 support, GB Ethernet and Bluetooth 2.0 on what's supposed to be the entry-level Mac. They're nice options for some users, I agree. But they should've been BTO options, not standard features. The new price is ok because of all these new features (GPU aside), but they lost their "magical 499$US" price tag along with it.

As for those who say the Mac mini isn't supposed to be for gaming, I've been playing WoW on mine (1.42GHz G4, Radeon 9200/32MB) for almost a year now. Sure, I have to set everything to "low" or "off", but I'm not even sure if the GMA950 can equal the Radeon 9200... The iBook currently has a Radeon 9550/64MB, so I was at least expecting that for the Intel Mac mini...

 

[heesey1010]

holy crap

thread's been moving very fast, a lot of ppl furious about the whole integrated graphics

it took me a while to realize why they moved the price up...although a little stupid, it's understandable, i mean with airport and bluetooth and apple remote.

the 799 is unbearable however.

also...integrated graphics...i want to wait until we see benchmarks. mac os x has always had its way with making graphics better...didn't the ati cards use some special mac code or something to make it seem better on mac machines than windows?

as for this being "words in stone" for the iBook? i wouldn't be so sure. if people kept on ramping up their complaints about the graphics in Mini, i'm sure they'd put discrete graphics back into computers. front row, for example, has learned from its mistakes and now can use shared music across networks. it might just take some time ( i feel sry for rev A ppl). this might just be my optimism talking however.

what i'm more worried about is price. if iBooks go up i'll be real pissed and go get a dell because I've been waiting for the right iBook for a while now.

iPod leather case? what bs. iPod Hi-fi? more BS.

April 1st, here we come...

 

[Airforce]

You are so correct.
Some people here are living in cookoo land. They want a 2gig Duo, the fastest graphics card money can buy - all for the bargin price of $599.

I think you are calling it completely wrong. People aren't mad because it isn't the top of the line graphics card. They are mad because it is the BOITOM OF THE BARREL! Sub par for an Apple product.

 

[birdeee]

So it's no brainer to get the $799 model with twice the processing power,

Ok, I need some help on this.

Is a core duo really 2x faster than a core solo? Again, I thought the two cores could not exactly 'split the work' that the computer is doing to really be 2x faster unless you are processing many different things at once. Wouldn't the core duo seem only marginally faster to the average user??

thanks,

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

It sure is a bugger that they put integrated graphics into the Mini but Apple have probably wanted to do that for years. Unfortunately for Apple, IBM didn't do integrated graphics.

The GMA950 series of integrated graphics is a completely different spiel to the older useless integrated chips. Ask anyone who had a transition kit, they're not half bad cards. They're not going to be any worse than the 9200s from the previous range. Remember that the 9200 chip is largely based upon the 8500 chip. The 9550 and onwards were a generation newer technology. The 9200 is 3 generations old!! This one supports all of the graphic niceties that there are in Tiger and will probably support everything in 10.5 and even if it doesn't its not going to run it badly *AT ALL*.
The core duo chip is lightyears ahead of the G4 in every way.

Yes this mini is more expensive but the core solo is only £50 more expensive than the G4 mini with BT/AP over here in the UK. The core solo is a vastly more expensive processor. This is good value.

Photoshop's not going to go any slower. I haven't used iMovie or iDVD before but they're not going to be majorly affected. In no way is this a bad thing. The GMA950 chip is in no way worse than the predecessor. Sure I'd rather have an X1300 but its no big loss.

 

[xJus10x]

Can someone answer this pretty quickly - I play WoW quite a bit =P and was wondering if I can turn the graphics to high with this graphics card and 1GB RAM. I'm getting tired of these crappy graphics on my PowerBook and want WoW to look nice. Thanks.

 

[Choppaface]

can anybody confirm if it uses a 3.5inch SATA drive or we are still using notebook drives here?

either way, this is still beyond awesome

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Ok, I need some help on this.

Is a core duo really 2x faster than a core solo? Again, I thought the two cores could not exactly 'split the work' that the computer is doing to really be 2x faster unless you are processing many different things at once. Wouldn't the core duo seem only marginally faster to the average user??

thanks,

Multiprocessor optimised applications will be faster. Also running more than one program at a time will be faster. I'm pretty sure all of iLife and iWork are multi processor optimised and the professional apps most definately are. In optimised programs an average of a 66% speed boost is usually expectable.

 

[ddrueckhammer]

if people kept on ramping up their complaints about the graphics in Mini, i'm sure they'd put discrete graphics back into computers.

Where do I complain? They don't have an official feedback site for Minis as far as I can tell. Maybe they are reading these forums but maybe not...

 

[Airforce]

Can someone answer this pretty quickly - I play WoW quite a bit =P and was wondering if I can turn the graphics to high with this graphics card and 1GB RAM. I'm getting tired of these crappy graphics on my PowerBook and want WoW to look nice. Thanks.

Keep your powerbook. The mini won't satisfy you.

 

[50thVert]

I am a fan of the new Intel chips and added ram capacity. The optical out is a HUGE plus for me, considering before i could never play dvd movies in surround sound. But the fact that i can buy a $599 eMachine desktop from Best Buy that contains an onboard Geforce 6100 is a bit unnerving.

Choppaface, same form factor on the outside = same 2.5" laptop HDs inside, only on the SATA interface. Doesn't make much difference tho as laptop HDs dont come close to the ata-100 bandwitdh ceiling.

 

[stcanard]

It's actually more complicated.

Anyone can see that "ATI X1600 is better than ATI X1300" (or "ATI X1600 is better than ATI X200").

You'd be surprised. I can't even tell you which Radeon I have in my powerbook. I used to know, but numbers don't stick in people's heads, not unless the video card is a very important thing to you. I would bet a significant portion of the mini-buying public would walk out of the store rembering (at best) the system had a one-thousand-something ATI.

"Integrated graphics" doesn't mean anything to most people. The Radeon 9200 with 32MB dedicated memory was "integrated" on the Mac mini G4 motherboard. So is this GMA950 with 64MB shared memory.

Ahh, but -- "this one shares the cpu, and uses system memory. This one has an second cpu and memory just for displaying graphics" is easier than explaining fill rates and pixel shaders. And when people hear <X> is faster than <Y> they want to know how much.

 

[Stella]

I think you are calling it completely wrong. People aren't mad because it isn't the top of the line graphics card. They are mad because it is the BOITOM OF THE BARREL! Sub par for an Apple product.

As I said previously, if you need to do more, your looking at the wrong machine.

Its a $599 machine.. with very good specs. That graphics card is very usable bar gaming.

The Mac Mini has better *overall* performance than the PowerBook G4.

Whinners, the lot of you!

 

[G5power]

Mid Range system

AtariMac - sign me up for one of the mid-priced systems with upgradeable video for $1k.

I started following the Apple hardware in the second half of 2004. The system I had in mind would have 2 or 3 memory slots. Two internal 3 1/2 drive bays (one in use for the hard drive) and a video card that could be upgraded. At the time the 1.8 single processor PowerMac was overpriced and under spec. I closely followed the rumors that led up to the Mini being introduced and was disappointed in the Mini's specs.

I admit that the Mini is a pretty good package for people looking for a low end Apple. I don't want to beat a dead horse - as the "mid range" headless Apple system has been discussed to death in the forums numerous times.

When the Mini was introduced, I took the money I had saved and bought a used G4 867 dual. That let me switch to OSX and I have enjoyed tinkering with the OS and iLife and have bumped the memory up, added a 4 port USB card and upgraded to a Pioneer DVR109 optical drive.

Then starting a few months back I started saving for my "next" Apple. I was hopeful with recent rumors that Apple would offer my dream system, but once again reality doesn't match up.

So now I guess I patiently wait and try not to get distracted and spend the money on some other electronic must have item.

 

[ddrueckhammer]

Can someone answer this pretty quickly - I play WoW quite a bit =P and was wondering if I can turn the graphics to high with this graphics card and 1GB RAM. I'm getting tired of these crappy graphics on my PowerBook and want WoW to look nice. Thanks.

Well my powerbook is 2 years old with a 64Mb NVidia card and 1.25 gigs of ram and my graphics can't be turned up all the way on WoW and still maintain decent framerates. I'm guessing the answer is no...Can someone confirm this?