Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin 
I love the new design, especially no need for the damn putty knives, although it still seems over-engineered. Access to the RAM looks very easy but I really wanted better access to the HDD. I'll have to wait for the ifixit guys to get on it to see if it's as simple as unscrewing the visible screws under the rubber base.
I'm disappointed with the price hike, especially with no 7200 rpm drive and still 2GB RAM. If it was even 250GB 7200RPM and 4GB RAM, it would be much better as that's pretty much what the old one cost after upgrading. It's not so much a price hike as just eliminating the lowest model but it still pushes the entry point up and out of some people's reach.
Having to live with another slow Core 2 Duo isn't great either. There's not much they can do as Intel haven't made affordable quad mobile chips and desktop quads like the i5 and i7 need much bigger PSUs than they'd get into a Mini shell but a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo option would have been nice for just $100 more. You can buy a quad i5 2.66GHz PC tower for the same price as the dual 2.4GHz Mini so poor CPU performance per dollar.
At least the 320M makes up for it somewhat and I'm very pleased to see it in the Mini - probably the first time the mini has exceeded the iMac spec. Taking off a USB port wasn't very nice though, I was using that extra port.
It's great they put the PSU inside - hopefully that doesn't heat it up too much - as that external brick went against the Mini's small size.
Overall, I was (as Forstall would put it) blown away by the update but the price hike really put a damper on the whole thing for me. Add in the iPhone price hike too and it's just plain depressing. Ah well, since the only Mini you can buy is so expensive now, maybe I'll get a better price for my old one.
It's just so tiring seeing Apple raising prices in this economy. People have little enough money as it is without raising the entry prices so they have to do without or end up spending more than they can afford and end up struggling to pay off the debt. I could believe that the build costs are higher but they have so much cash reserves right now, is it too much to expect them to cut consumers a little slack?
Even if they sell 3 million Minis in a year, $100 off each one is a measly $300 million. To a company with over $30 billion, it's nothing because they are still growing the profits, just by $300m less but the lower price means more sales and some of that $300m gets made up from the extra sales.
I love the new design, especially no need for the damn putty knives, although it still seems over-engineered. Access to the RAM looks very easy but I really wanted better access to the HDD. I'll have to wait for the ifixit guys to get on it to see if it's as simple as unscrewing the visible screws under the rubber base.
I'm disappointed with the price hike, especially with no 7200 rpm drive and still 2GB RAM. If it was even 250GB 7200RPM and 4GB RAM, it would be much better as that's pretty much what the old one cost after upgrading. It's not so much a price hike as just eliminating the lowest model but it still pushes the entry point up and out of some people's reach.
Having to live with another slow Core 2 Duo isn't great either. There's not much they can do as Intel haven't made affordable quad mobile chips and desktop quads like the i5 and i7 need much bigger PSUs than they'd get into a Mini shell but a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo option would have been nice for just $100 more. You can buy a quad i5 2.66GHz PC tower for the same price as the dual 2.4GHz Mini so poor CPU performance per dollar.
At least the 320M makes up for it somewhat and I'm very pleased to see it in the Mini - probably the first time the mini has exceeded the iMac spec. Taking off a USB port wasn't very nice though, I was using that extra port.
It's great they put the PSU inside - hopefully that doesn't heat it up too much - as that external brick went against the Mini's small size.
Overall, I was (as Forstall would put it) blown away by the update but the price hike really put a damper on the whole thing for me. Add in the iPhone price hike too and it's just plain depressing. Ah well, since the only Mini you can buy is so expensive now, maybe I'll get a better price for my old one.
It's just so tiring seeing Apple raising prices in this economy. People have little enough money as it is without raising the entry prices so they have to do without or end up spending more than they can afford and end up struggling to pay off the debt. I could believe that the build costs are higher but they have so much cash reserves right now, is it too much to expect them to cut consumers a little slack?
Even if they sell 3 million Minis in a year, $100 off each one is a measly $300 million. To a company with over $30 billion, it's nothing because they are still growing the profits, just by $300m less but the lower price means more sales and some of that $300m gets made up from the extra sales.
Marvin, I mentioned this earlier but I would have liked to see Apple adopt those new hybrid drives. For many users that would have resulted in a noticeable performance improvement.
From a cost standpoint they look like a tremendous bang for the buck and are kinda perfect for a machine like the mini, and iMac as well.
