Apple's supply of Mac minis dwindle ahead of new models - Page 2

This was solved eons ago, it's just hasn't been used by Apple yet. I already stated how it's trivial to copy your Restore Disc to another drive. Compared to the cost of a DVD drive used in Mac notebooks the cost of a USB or SD card is less. And that's without considering the limitations an optical drive adds to engineers of modern computers.

Imagine how much smaller an Upgrade Disc box would be if it came as an SD card (which Apple oddly added to their machines so late in the game)?

Apple is in a unique position in that they can afford to do this better than other OEMs. The HP Envy's don't come with internal optical drives, yet the Windows install discs come on a DVD. Oddly, they do come with a 2GB SD card containing the User Guide.

We can argue that the price per machine is still too high. I can find 8GB SD Card for $8 retail and I'm sure Apple can get cheaper, slower NAND than that. That's beside the point since Apple hasn't enacted this option. The optical drive going away in notebooks and NAND getting cheaper are inevitable. They still have a couple Macs that don't have SD card slots yet. If the next Mac Mini, MBA and even Mac Pro get SD card slots then I think we shouldn't be surprised to see the next version of Mac OS X be shipped on SD cards and as optical discs.

It's not a problem hooking up DVI & audio out to any HDTV already. I've been doing it for 4 years already. Are you saying your HDTV doesn't have VGA and/or DVI with audio input connector(s)?

i'd say the iMac's are about to be updated as well! You can't even configure them on the apple store right now!

That sounds pretty conclusive to me.

I can't believe you have been waiting for so long. I would be pretty annoyed that point.

The DRM that it imposes on consumers. The fact that it requires HDCP if the content producer said that it needed HDCP to watch it. You couldn't watch it on component or unprotected HDMI or any other type of connection. That plus the licensing costs and fees and the hassle of implementing the DRM make it all a "bag of hurt".

H.264 doesn't have DRM mandated. That's the difference

No, I don't think so. Light Peak won't be ready until 2011. USB 3 would be good if they can do it but even at that, I'd say not in the Mini first.

I reckon this update will be to push the entry CPUs up a bit to either 2.4 or 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 320M. This would make it much more worth the entry asking price.

Then they bump the entry iMacs to 320M also and that moves the entire lineup short of the MBA away from the 9400M.


That's a 65W GPU though. The highest they could realistically go is the 15-19W Radeon 5650, which is only 20% slower than the 4870.

The 320M is also only half of the 4870 so I personally don't mind the 320M - it's pretty amazing performance from an integrated chip and it runs CUDA code unlike ATI GPUs.

I think the only way Apple would switch to ATI is with the Fusion processor next year as it uses a 5000-series GPU.

And one that that seems to get overlooked is the "protocol independent" nature of LightPeak. I've read more than a few times that any protocol can be used over it so you won't have to alter your devices, but there is never a mention of the costly convertors from optical to copper for this to work.

I had hoped Apple would use the USB3.0 chips that have been out for more than 6 months now, but it looks like they might be waiting for Intel's integrated solution.

You can get rid of that black border by opening your Display System Preference and in the HDTV pane check the "Overscan" box. On my Sony 1080p @ 60 Hz Overscan is equal to full screen which you can check by clicking on the representations of each monitor in the Arrangement pane on your home screen which displays a RED box around each display. Overscan was in the Color pane in earlier versions of the OS. This is in Snow Leopard.

Certain models, including the iMac, 13 MacBook Pro, Air, Mini and Mac Pro's cannot be purchased/reconfigured at the Apple Store. Possibly, there is some site maintenance going on. However, certain models (15/17 MBP) can be purchased. e.g. http://store.apple.com/us/browse/hom...co=MTM3NDk3NzI

Could it be Apple is ready to upgrade a substantial portion of its product line - perhaps on Friday???'

______
Turns out it was probably maintenance as the buy section is now accessible - unless Apple is priming the site pages for a major refresh (file under "hope springs eternal".

As soon as Apple unveiled the iPad, I thought that it could signal a resurgence of the desktop. I think a lot of people are going to be looking to combine a unit like the Mini with the iPad. It makes a lot of sense for many, though certainly not everyone.

My intention is to go that route being as I already have a Mini+Cinema Display that works rather well.

Cost wise, here in Canada it's $899 for the top-end Mini, $999 for the 24-inch Cinema Display and $549 for a basic iPad = $2447. A MacBook Pro 17" is $2,349.

The MacBook is more powerful but you get more screen real estate with the Cinema Display while the iPad has its advantages as a portable device. And as each generation of Mini ups the performance ante, horsepower becomes progressively less of an issue.

I realize that for many having to be tied down to a fixed desktop system at any point is a deal breaker. I don't feel that way and I believe quite a few people will not mind a desktop/iPad combo. Laptop sales will take a hit but if the sales of Minis, iMacs, and of course millions of iPad sales, more than compensate, Apple will still come out ahead. And there is the incremental impact that would prompt some of us to spend more. I would, for example, balk at spending $2,500 for one computer but being as I've already paid for the first element of this overall package, putting the finishing touches on the arrangement by buying an iPad seems like a no-brainer.

I also like that the Cinema Display is a product that could easily last more than a decade, meaning over the long haul this set-up could cost me less than springing for a new laptop every four or five years. I wouldn't want to be tied down to five-year-old technology in any event. The Mini retains a lot of its value so you trade it in every three years and in the process wind up with the latest Apple software at no additional cost.

The best part is that the iPad will get more powerful, just as the Mini will continue to beef up so if I'm running a 2013 circa Mini/iPad combo, it will mean excellent performance. You're looking at less than a $1,000 every three years to keep your set-up current. Every fourth refresh you spring for a new monitor.

Considering I paid close to $7,000 (including upgrades made later in graphics and memory) for a first-generation g4 DP500 tower, that strikes me as being a great bargain.

...I'm hopeful with regards to where the price will land for the new machines.

Most people that I talk to about moving to Mac lose interest when they hear how much a Mini costs. At $600, they're far above the entry price for a (lousy) PC, and while I feel the price is worth it and the Mini anything but "lousy", that's not going to mean a lot to someone who is unable to squeeze another few hundred dollars out of the budget -- it goes from "doable" to "forget it" pretty quickly.

At the higher end, prices are more comparable, but again... a lot of people aren't at the high end, especially these days.

Well, prices probably won't change, but... I am hopeful.

I wonder if the new mini's will have the newer processors in them (such as the i5).

[QUOTEThat's a 65W GPU though. The highest they could realistically go is the 15-19W Radeon 5650, which is only 20% slower than the 4870.[/QUOTE]

Does anyone remember what the wattage was on the first minis that had PPC chips in them? I was not a Mac user then but was under the impression that even a G4 chip was pretty hot and power hungry. I am thinking that if they could reliably cool those then maybe they could cool a little hotter gpu.

The only thing is why get rid of the optical on the desktops? Those are the machines that most people, IMHO, would still want an optical in. You know how Apple works, and if they remove the optical from the mini, imac etc they won't give you a useful option like a second hard drive they will instead make em 3/8 of an inch smaller and raise the price.

I do believe that within the next 18-24 months Apple will start phasing out the optical drives off of all portables. That's my simple W.A.G.

How about an eSata connector. The current choices for external storage even with Firewire 800 limits the throughput to less than half of eSata. With internal drives from Apple being limited to laptop drives at 5400 RPM with slower response time and less reliability it makes the MacMini server less than exciting. How about an external eSata port, an option for one of the internal drives to be an SSD with the second drive bay as optional with choices of 7200 RPM drives in the second bay. Then again who says the new MacMini has to stay the same height. Add another 1/2" to the height and we now have room for an SSD and twin HD's for mirrored storage.

All good points...I want to end up with an MBA, iPad and an iPhone 3Gs.... in that mix for the time being I will have a separate optical drive to do just what you say, upgrade OS's!

it all adds up! 10 oz over 365 days is like carrying 8,000 oz per year...

OK! Sorry! I didn't have a pencil and paper when I made that last calculation!

This is different than serial and parallel ports, and even different from the floppy drive depreciation, which it has the most in common with. There is no reason to remove the optical drive from most desktops. They tend to have the room for such a large component and they can use a larger, cheaper and more capable ODD than notebooks use. When this inevitable change happens I would not be surprised to see Apple include AACS in Mac OS X.

IMO, it doesn't need an HDMI connector, it just needs to pass audio over the mini-DisplayPort connector (and Apple needs to sell six-foot or ten-foot *cables* that convert mini-DP to HDMI.)

Although having a MacMini with HDMI as a media center will appeal to some, I don't think it is the right direction for Apple to go.

In order to capitalize on the "App store" and hence have an interesting box for the TV, they should fit it with an A4 processor or another ARM.

Steve Jobs said, during AllthingsDigital, that no one wants to buy "another box" to watch TV... I agree with this opinion. Another matter would be to buy a box for the TV that does things a cable box cannot do, for instance run all or some of the apps available on the app store, play music from iTunes, download movies and tv series from itunes and maybe even be "cloud connected".

Apple, in my opinion should:
1. Get their act together on MobileMe. Not only calendar and address book (and mail and findmyiPhone) but also, more importantly, sync apps you purchased, store music you purchased, and movies and tv series
2. provide a set top box, small form factor, HDMI connected, which doesn't need a power plant to supply energy (go for A4 instead of Intel), which doesn't double as a stove (go for A4 instead of Intel) but which doesn't need a 400 bucks TimeCapsule to store some stuff.
3. Provide content for "the rest of the world". Part of the reason the AppleTV never took off is due to lack of content outside a small set of countries. Provide more, as Apple did for the iPhone and the iPad, and people might actually see a benefit (there is no Netflix, nor Hulu in place in Europe)
4. Let the developers create games for the TV, they will know how to, provide the possibility to create Bluetooth controllers so that not everyone has to own an iPad or an iPhone (or iPod Touch)
5. Either put a big HDD drive in it (500GB) or leave a USB port open for adding one. I know the 2nd option is not going to happen, besides it will be bad from a design point of view (as well as cluttering the living room with yet more stuff). Some have data caps, others don't want to have a Mac constantly on and running for listening to their music collection or watching pictures (which belong to the main benefits of the AppleTV in my opinon).
6. Design it in such a way that it can actually sit next to the TV and not look ugly (but I don't worry in this regard).
7. Allow it to capitalize on the App Store ecosystem and the lively community around it.

Price? Price it below the current AppleTV, but not too cheap. It still has to make a profit. But it will be made of parts readily available for Apple, so cost is not going to be a major issue, also because the minaturization required is less than a Phone or Pad, and it doesn't need batteries.

Give me:
True surround sound
1080i

And keep prices as they are. You might actually have a winner.

Ah.. Apple also needs to fit it in the current ecosystem (iMovie still cannot create an HD movie formatted for AppleTV...).
Don't get me started... iMovie reads my HDV videos, I can edit them.. But then I have to scale them down on a DVD or view them in standard def on the AppleTV?? Where is my HD???

Yeah, when AI used that image before they clearly stated it was a mock up of how it would appear, yet the entire thread was still full of OMG PHOTOSHOP posts.

I agree entirely. Two mini-DP ports would also fit in better, the HDMI port is larger. mini-DP to DVI and mini-DP to HDMI dongles aren't too expensive, and thus it would be the best overall solution (as long as a dongle was included in the box) for compatibility.

Still, many monitors support HDMI input so it's not all bad.

Does anyone remember what the wattage was on the first minis that had PPC chips in them? I was not a Mac user then but was under the impression that even a G4 chip was pretty hot and power hungry. I am thinking that if they could reliably cool those then maybe they could cool a little hotter gpu.[/QUOTE]

The PPC G4 chip consumed much less power than anything Intel. When Apple moved the mini to Intel, the power consumption (peak) went from 85W to 110W. Of course the Intel minis (except for one old model) are all dual-core, and quite a bit faster.

If they ditch the optical drive, keeping a 65W GPU cool in the top slot shouldn't be hard. Apple manages to offer them in the iMac after all.

They had 85W power supplies so the whole system couldn't consume more than that and it used the RV280 integrated chip. The RV280 (150nm) and the G4 chip used around 30W each. Apple has never used parts with higher power draw in the Mini.


But why would you rather have a GPU like the 65W 4870 over the 15-19W 5650 when you only gain 20-80% performance but have to deal with 400% more power consumption? That doesn't make sense to me.

GPUs are at the point where very low power consumption parts still perform very well.

The 9400M can play modern games like Battlefield 2, Arkham Asylum, MW2, Dirt 2. You have to lower settings right down mostly but the games still look ok:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhvphyDJ7Ws

The 320M doubles the performance of the 9400M and the 5650 is another 50% faster again. So 9400M = low quality, 320M = medium-high quality, 5650 = high-enthusiast quality.

The incoming update should be the 320M and next year, AMD will put the a 5xxx series chip into Fusion so that's a possibility for the future.

Manufacture of Light Peak is expected by Intel in late 2010. If it was available it would be faster than even the 6Gb esata since it starts at 10Gb and can scale to 100 eventually.

As far as the Mini's dimensions, it will depend if they are changing the Mini to focus on a better graphic experience or just more storage. We might see a bit of an increase on the sides as well if they were going to go with a discrete video option. A mini with an i5 and discrete video card would be nice. You could still do the graphics switching that way as well. Yes, you don't have to worry about battery drain like you do on a laptop, but running a lower power graphics chip when better isn't needed is still a more green thing to do.

Got the following from Apple today;

Due to an unexpected delay, we are unable to ship the following item(s)
by the date that you were originally quoted:

MC408LL/A, MAC MINI 2.53/2X2G/2X500/NO OD/AP/BT-USA
will now ship on or before
Jun 15, 2010

What is the TDP for the Fusion? Any chance we'll see it in the Mini?

I thought so too, at first, but I changed my mind, because the iPad is such a poor laptop replacement.

The iPad is a peripheral of exactly one regular computer. It shares some files with it. A worthwhile laptop replacement should be able to synchronize with more than one computer. If it did, I could have a computer at home, a computer at work (both desktops) and an iPad. As it is, I am either prevented from putting music files from home on the iPad, so it's not very entertaining on the road, or I'm prevented from loading business documents from work, in which case it's useless for business travel.

Too bad. Makes the iPad useless to me, since I still have to carry a laptop.

A few places are mentioning that date. It makes sense as WWDC goes from the 7th-11th so this Tuesday wouldn't be ideal for placing orders. It's better to leave it until the following Tuesday.


There are two products, Bulldozer and Bobcat. Bobcat is meant to compete with Atom and scale from 1-10W. The APU demo at Computex here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg5mKP5R8B8

was running on Bobcat and showed pretty high performance relatively. The Bulldozer product ranges from 10-100W so it will scale according to needs. It may be the case that notebooks will just bundle multiple bobcat cores and bulldozer is for all desktop models.

According to this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion Bobcat is being aimed at netbooks and mobile phones. Llano would be the notebook part. This article has a bit of info as well: http://arstechnica.com/business/guid...the-laptop.ars

Check out my educated guesses for the Mid-2010 Mac mini!

It's quite easy to sync the iPad with more than one computer, as long as you don't set iTunes to sync the same category on each computer.

ie: Sync podcasts on one machine, music on another, apps and documents on a third.

So it would be: Ontario/Bobcat (netbook), Llano/Phenom 2 (notebook), Scorpius/Bulldozer (desktop)
This could work pretty well in Apple's lineup with the MBA getting bobcat. They could even put a bobcat in the iPad as it scales down to 250mW, not that they would though.

The Phenom 2 in Llano doesn't sound all that good:



4-core may be an improvement over current Intel chips but I have reservations about this holding up well against Intel's Sandy bridge CPU. The biggest advantage would be the graphics part but Intel seem to think their next IGP will be pretty good using some Larrabee developments:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...integrated-gpu

Actually, AMD admit in the article that they don't expect their CPUs to be as fast as Intel's but are banking on the 55xx series GPU being much better and offering a better experience.

It kinda leaves NVidia out in the cold either way.


I think that's probably about right although if it starts at 2.4GHz, I'd rather see it drop to $499 at the entry level. But I guess with 4GB RAM, at least you save money from not having to upgrade.

$599, 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo 2 with 3MB Cache
4GB DDR3 PC8500
250GB SATA II Hard Drive
NVIDIA 320M 256MB DDR3 Shared

$799, 2.66GHz Intel Core Duo 2 with 3MB Cache
4GB DDR3 PC8500
320GB SATA II Hard Drive
NVIDIA 320M 256MB DDR3 Shared

$999, 2.66GHz Intel Core Duo 2 with 3MB Cache
4GB DDR3 PC8500
500GB Dual SATA II Hard Drives
NVIDIA 320M 256MB DDR3 Shared

The latter two options are not that good value as they just jump from 2.53GHz to 2.66GHz and add the 320M. That server option is so not worth $1000 especially considering you're not likely to be using the GPU anyway so you'd actually be far better off just buying a refurb.

You actually get 1TB 9.5mm drives now:

http://en.akihabaranews.com/41019/st...-and-750gb-hdd

750GB is ok too and they'd have more manufacturers to choose from.

There is a 2.8GHz CPU Apple can use but it's $100 more expensive so I reckon the $799 model and $999 model will be either 2.8GHz or they will use single 500GB and dual 750GB respectively. I'd be tempted to buy the second model if it was 2.8GHz over the entry model but not if it's 2.66GHz. Of course a $100 price drop is another option they can consider. It seems to me they are deliberately avoiding having a $500 machine so people don't link it to Jobs' statement about it being a piece of junk. Most people should have forgotten by now so they should drop the price.

Use Dropbox to sync your documents to GoodReader. You can access them from any computer, including the iPad.

Use AirVideo to sync your movies. Accessible from anywhere on the iPad, even on 3G.

Use Subsonic +iSub app to sync your music.

Use Jump Desktop to access your desktop from anywhere.

I currently have access to 2 desktops, 1 laptop, my 100GB music library, and my 2TB video library...all from my iPad.

You actually get 1TB 9.5mm drives now:

http://en.akihabaranews.com/41019/st...-and-750gb-hdd

750GB is ok too and they'd have more manufacturers to choose from.

There is a 2.8GHz CPU Apple can use but it's $100 more expensive so I reckon the $799 model and $999 model will be either 2.8GHz or they will use single 500GB and dual 750GB respectively. I'd be tempted to buy the second model if it was 2.8GHz over the entry model but not if it's 2.66GHz. Of course a $100 price drop is another option they can consider. It seems to me they are deliberately avoiding having a $500 machine so people don't link it to Jobs' statement about it being a piece of junk. Most people should have forgotten by now so they should drop the price.[/QUOTE]

Hey that Toshiba 1TB is still 12.5mm in Height, the 750GB is 9.5mm but its 5400RPM but Seagate has a 750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache with height of 9.5mm. Great.

I really love the Mac Mini, it is my main computer day-to-day. My hopes for the next revision are:

- GeForce 320M
- 4GB RAM standard
- SSD option
- No increase in noise

I didn't read the full article, it seems like we are stuck with 750GB maximum for now in 9.5mm height. Thing is, at least in the server, without having the optical drive, they should have enough space to fit in 12.5mm drives and still allow for cooling.

Dual 750GB isn't too bad though, the iMac only has options to go to 2TB and the Mini server can hold 1.5TB.

You can fit a 12.5mm HDD into the unibody MBPs.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=871145

I remain unimpressed, if this is true. For the price a Mac Mini goes for right now I would expect at least a Core i3 if not a Core i5, with a discreet GPU and switchable graphics a la 15+ inch MBP.