The inaccuracy in the packaging is bizarre. I'd hate to be that graphic designer.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Unboxing and Disassembly Photos of the New Mac Mini
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The inaccuracy in the packaging is bizarre. I'd hate to be that graphic designer.
Sucks for us up here in Canada. The new high end mini costs $949 and the low end is $729. It used to be only $50 more than the American price but now it's almost $130 more than the American price. Ugh I hate exchange rates
Actually, I just knocked up a quaint little idea, and admittedly I have NO IDEA about the architecture of the Mini, but...
Could you build a mini tower affair with drive slots like inside the MacPro, 4 drives on easily removable trays, and a space below for the mini to be "bolted in" with felt clamps?
You just need to open the mini, disconnect something in there, plug in the 4 drive SATA cable with the mini adapter, and go off with a media tower you can wallow in?
Again, I have no serious idea of how the drive architecture can handle that in the mini. The little ribbon drawn at the back is just to show there is only a single cable needed to connect the mini to the drive tower with a small mod.
EDIT: OH, and you need a power source for the drives as well, I guess, with power cables. That's not too hard. Could be made to transform the mini into a tower system for those loving video and music on their computer.
Oh cool. Thanks! I didn;t see any of the add ons people make.
I'd like something like this for the Mini, an external PCI box.
http://www.cooldrives.com/1popcto4xpci.html
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=353588
Same processors as last time.
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/6633765/
Nope, match spec for spec between the low end Mac Mini and the iMac and you get an overpriced Mac Mini. The iMac is a deal in my opinion and the Mac Mini to overpriced by $100. This is only because Steve refuses to go below $500.
BTW, you can't purchase a 20" Cinema Display similar to the low end iMac. So for the Mac Mini 24" is it if you buy from Apple.
One more thing, by the line-up of iMac coming mostly in 24" I say Apple is going to have one more iMac update before Christmas - the 30" iMac. The 20" will go away as an option next year.
I'm trying to understand the logic of the mini + 24" display (one of the purchase options from Apple): if you get a new iMac, it's faster (starts at 2.66ghz), has more memory, a bigger disk, has more upgrade options, and is at least $400 less than the mini.
Now, if you already have a display / kbd / mouse you like, fine, but other than that, why?
Eddie O
I picked mine up tonight. $549 with the education discount! Just setting it up now... I like it!!!
Plus sales tax.
Well duh...
But thats like saying "the Mac Pro is 20,000 dollars!!!!" after you spec it max...
The 2.26 upgrade is a 150.... add that to the 799 price and there you have it...
Say, are the drives 2.5 or 3.5 in size? Thx!
2.5, just like in the laptops.
Because Apple wants ridiculously high profit margins on all of its products always. If their profit margins would be like that of Dell, then the high end Mini would cost 350 dollars tops.
Don't forget that the mac mini was 499 when it was introduced. Also comparable configs are indeed cheaper on the PC side. Also its absurd that the mac mini went without being updated for such a long time without a price drop.
Lotta complaints about price. Did you really expect Apple to increase the specs...and lower the price at the same time? Just be happy they are still selling the Mini, and didn't raise the price (at least in the US...sorry everyone else). I bet that they had planned to kill it off - there were many rumors about that happening, and the long time with no upgrades supports that theory - but then Apple struck upon a genious plan. They made the iPhone SDK require a Mac. Suddenly developers all over the place are buying the cheapest Mac they can get: the Mini. So now the Mini is selling like hotcakes again, so instead of killing it off, Apple decided to upgrade it. In fact, it seems to me that could even be the reason for the extra USB port: for connecting your iPhone/iPod Touch to the machine along with all your other equipment.
I'm one of these developers, I bought a Mini two weeks ago, and I'm damn glad they upped the specs. I returned my old Mini today for the new one. And it's not really a small upgrade. The CPU went up a notch, the memory speed almost doubled, the amount of memory it can hold doubled, the video chip is way faster and can use more system memory (and since system memory is faster, that makes the video chip upgrade that much better), the hard drive is larger which means better speed from that too... Sure, you can buy a desktop Windows-based PC for cheaper with better specs. But that's not a Mac. Apple has always charged more than the competition, and they always will, and they make a tidy profit by doing so.
I'm one of these developers, I bought a Mini two weeks ago, and I'm damn glad they upped the specs. I returned my old Mini today for the new one. And it's not really a small upgrade. The CPU went up a notch, the memory speed almost doubled, the amount of memory it can hold doubled, the video chip is way faster and can use more system memory (and since system memory is faster, that makes the video chip upgrade that much better), the hard drive is larger which means better speed from that too... Sure, you can buy a desktop Windows-based PC for cheaper with better specs. But that's not a Mac. Apple has always charged more than the competition, and they always will, and they make a tidy profit by doing so.
This is such a ridiculous statement, does your MacBook have DDR3 RAM, a 9400M, mini displayport, FW800, SATA ODD, 5 USB ports?
Sure it's not a major upgrade, I agree with that but what you have said is just a lie as my 1 year old MacBook doesn't match the specs on the low end mac mini
Edit: BTW Apple doesn't use desktop CPUs
Now I see that as a problem. The added expense of a 7200 rpm drive is minimal to Apple, but quickly makes their product appear faster to the end user. (for laptops the added power consumption in understandable, but not in a desktop) If I were in the market for a Mini I would swap the drive out as previously mentioned - but hardly anyone in the target market of the Mini is going to do that!
5400 rpm drives should go the way of the combo drive, except for mass storage - solely concerned about raw data capacity applications - but then you can make 5400 rpm the option to "upgrade" to.
I completely realize the mini is an "entry desktop", and love it all except for this.
I think if you look at what people are saying with a critical eye, they're not saying they want the Mini to be a full desktop computer for $300.00. What people are saying is that when you compare the Mini, spec for spec, with a $300.00 computer, the Mini is a ripoff. Don't be surprised that people want value for their money. When I bought my top of the line G4 Mac Mini for $749.00 Canadian, a similarly configured PC was going for around $550.00 to $600.00. When I considered OS X, the fact that the Mini is whisper quiet, and the reduced virus impact, I felt it was worth switching from Windows to Mac and paying the "Apple Tax".
Now, the new Mini is close to a $1,000.00 Canadian for the top of the line model. I don't know about you, but that is quite a bit of money. If I'm going to spend that, I expect to get $1,000.00 worth of computing power.
Unfortunately with Apple using Core 2 Duo's, which have been out for at least 15 months already, and their use of the 9400M Nvidia Integrated Graphics chipset rather than the 9600M discrete one they use in the MacBook Pros, the piddly 2GB of RAM, and the somewhat slow 5200 RPM hard-drive, the "Apple Tax" is simply way too high.
I'm getting a year and half old technology, paying this year's price for it, while getting a computer that is underpowered when compared to others in it's price class (a thousand bucks can buy a pretty powerful scream demon of a machine) and I'm paying a ludicrous $600.00 to $700.00 "Apple Tax" just so I can have the privilege of using OS X? What part of this is providing value to the client again? Where is the value for the money we're spending?
Had Apple put a 9600M, a full 4 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB hard drive in the Mini, the "Apple Tax" would be closer to $150.00 - $200.00 against a comparable machine and I'd be heading over to my nearest Apple Store tomorrow after work to order one. Now? I'll probably save the $700.00, buy a screaming fast machine, and switch back to Windows.
Simply put, Apple needs to greatly reduce their prices or make a product that provides value for the money spent. Until they do, people who love OS X but don't want to pay the ridiculous "Apple Tax" have every right to complain about it.
The GeForce 9400M can decode 1080p on chip. I think you just need drivers and software that is hardware-accelerated. No need to worry about CPU speed, as even the Atom + 9400M was able to keep up with decoding 1080P video.