First look: Apple' new unibody Mac mini - Page 3

I agree.

Here they decided to make the Mini wider, and if they had allowed the same or slightly more height, they could have put in a full sizes 3.5 HD. Admittedly, it would draw more power, but not hugely if they picked the right vendor. And the performance would be substantially better. (I know, I replaced my Mac mini 2.5" 5400 with a 2.5" 7200 HD and it is very noticeably snappier )

Apple is unhealthily (word?) obsessed with thinness for no practical value to the end user.

Next gen, The new Mac mini Mini, so small that you can't even plug anything into it. But boy is it THIN!
(he says with some slight sarcasm... )

...just stop with the "adding $100 dollar" silliness already. Apple dropped the low-end Mini, and retained the price for the comparably equipped upgrade version in the new one. So just stop. You are comparing breadfruit and kumquats.

Yes it is sad that they discontinued the "bargain basement" version for the low-budgeted folks, but in reality what percentage of sales were the low-end versions anyway? Anyone? Any idea at all?? I thought not. So again, where the average consumer is concerned - is where Apple targets its decisions. If you are not close to the "golden mean" of that group, your needs are less likely to drive the decision and the pricing.Or anything else. Like features for the iPad. Or the iPhone.

All you armchair CEOs need to think a little harder about what goes into a decision like this and know the market much, much better than you apparently do.

Um, the iMac doesn't use "12-year" old "monitor technology." Show me an IPS monitor from 1998 with the iMac's resolution, contrast and color reproduction. Show me a 2004 CPU and GPU like the iMac has for its price. You mean that the iMac is an old CONCEPT --in which case, you should be logically consistent with your poor argument and prize netbooks above all computers because they are a newer concepts.

I also chuckle at your spiel about how the iMac is a terrible deal "over the long haul," yet in the same post tell us how much more powerful the Mini will be in a few years. Will the new powerful Mini then make this current one a "poor deal" in the "long haul" too?

If you think that in terms of specs, the Mini can even touch a $699 HTPC, then you need to do some research. I am speaking only about the specs like you mentioned, omitting build quality and the premium that OS X should, IMO, demand over PCs.

Not sure why you would need one with the iMac since that is a TV for most people's needs. That's 21" on the low end and 27" on the high. Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes content all play very nicely.

For the Macbook you can buy a Mini Displayport to HDMI cable. Good enough.

My HDTV would make a great display for a Mac Mini. I'd just need a wireless keyboard and a magic mouse. Ah, but there's the problem. The wireless keypad works great on the couch but the magic mouse would be clumsy. Apple needs to create a magic mouse in the form of a remote or some 3rd party can do it. People use their thumbs to control a remote so why not a magic mouse-like remote. It would be the perfect set up and I'd call the Mac Mini a value then. Reason being, I already have the display. I'm sure many others of you would agree then. Who needs the AppleTV then?

Steve Jobs will introduce it by plucking it out of his shirt pocket, like he did with the original Mac 3.5" disk.

Seriously, I'm also on the side of "How thin does a desktop really need to be"?

Engineering is all about trade-offs, but when you're relegating yourself to lower-powered components just so you can shave those few extra millimeters off a desktop computer, you need to step back & reevaluate things.

Why did Apple put el cheapo hardware in the Mini then?

Apple did know how to make a good $499 computer with the original Mini, which was what the Mini was supposed to be: an affordable and capable machine. Now Apple has simply made it a "capable machine."

Yes, the initial price increase is disappointing, but can't wait to buy these second hand to use as servers in a colo. The price per inch and per watt is phenomenal.

Tonight I went to HP and Dell sites and priced their computers with equivalent hardware. It is true that neither company makes a tiny package like the Mini. I'm one who wouldn't use the computer as an HTPC. It would be used for entertainment but it would be for work too. My computers don't need to be tiny.

I can buy the same features for much less money than the Mini or buy a much more capable computer for the same money. I have plenty of room on my desk for a tower.

If Windows 7 is a great copy of Leopard then I'd be happy with it (maybe, since I've never used it). If I didn't like it I'd just put a Linux distribution on it.

I'm glad I didn't immediately put Snow Leopard on my Mac Book. Too many people find it buggy right now. My next computer (other than an iPad to be bought this fall) might be a home build. I've read that the component parts have three year manufacturer warrantees and cost less than when bought as a package in a manufactured computer.

You've been down that road Neo, you know where it leads....

Wheels, first off, 7 is a very solid and FAST OS. I recommend that you give it a go. For some things, like high bit-rate 1080p, Blu-Ray, and many games, it is the only choice.

I have had nothing but pleasant experiences with Snow Leopard. Aside from its being very RAM hungry (I have only 1.2Gb of 4Gb free, 3 days uptime), it is speedy and stable. I used to have lots of problems with flash/hard drive ejections, but SL has fixed many of those issues too.

Major logic fail here Bsrr. Wrong on all counts. You erroneously assume that Apple wants to dominate the market - which they have stated several times, from the mouth of Jobsey himself they do not - not on any platform, period.

They don't want to simply "sell more computers" - that's a Dellism - and you are welcome to it. While your "common-man" approach is gruffly endearing (however briefly), you ignore the very real truth that owning a computer is more than just a hardware purchase - as million of Windows users will wearily inform you. The value of the Mac against your money plays quite nicely, as they tend to last longer, retain their value for resale better, require less operating overhead, and in fact are more enjoyable to use than their competitors, and create more customer loyalty. The numbers of my friends and acquaintances who are Mac owners grows daily and they uniformly report not only enjoying (of all things) their Macs, but their intention of "never going back" to their PC way of life. That figures prominently into the equation as well.

Anecdotally, I was purchasing some odd thing or other at the local Apple Store not too long ago and witnessed something interesting. A young lady (perhaps early twenties) was buying a Macbook laptop, and some of the attendant stuff - One-to-One, AppleCare and some other things. She had, according to her boyfriend, saved up her tips for the last two years waitressing in order to buy her first Mac. She was grinning as she shoveled wads of dollar bills at the stunned Apple Specialist at the POS, and burbling on about her days of hating her computer were over. She was EXCITED about the purchase, and what it meant to her - in spite of the time and effort it took to raise the money she was spending on the device. Why? Because a friend of hers lent her a Mac to help complete some work she was doing (freelance? - that part was not made clear) - and she fell in love with it. Sometimes things are worth the effort to obtain them.

So you are wrong, as wrong as Mr. Wrong failing about in a big pile of wrong can be.

wrong. i've had four mini's over the years. the latest and fastest is always the HTPC, the older ones get handed down for household general use. that is true of many consumers. there are many HTPC Mini people. then there are all the business users too ...

this new generation is a good half step. making it easy to add RAM is great. the new outputs are nice. but ... still not having a 7200 rpm drive is just terrible, a fatal flaw. because it makes a real difference in performance (i set up an external 7200 boot drive, so i know). why?

wait until next year for an even better spec bump. and maybe even blu ray.

Probably not, but I working with standard desktop components, which is the tradeoff Apple gets when going go for thin and efficient as possible. On the other hand, my PC is quite a bit larger.

I can see Apple's angle, but I'd rather have raw power, or at least the option of it, than having the smallest desktop possible.

But honestly, I don't even care anymore, I made the choice to build a new PC, rather than getting a new Mac months ago. I dig OSX, like my current Mini, but I also want a good quad-core, a good GPU, USB 3.0, etc, at an acceptable price. The 'look' isn't my priority, not to mention I simply can't justify spending $700 for a C2D and 2 GB of RAM in 2010.

Interesting how the review doesn't mention the lack of a blu-ray drive. If Apple want this to be a home theatre PC, a Blu-Ray drive is absolutely essential.

I also find it odd how Apple still keep the majority of the HD rentals on the iTunes store as Apple TV exclusives. Surely it would make sense to open these up to everyone?

I WANT THE NEW MAC MINI!

My current one is starting to just look too big. I'm going to shell out an extra $100 over what I paid for my current Mac mini because the new one is 0.6" shorter. My 2" tall model is just too tall compared to the new 1.4" model.

You have no idea how much of a conversation piece the Mac mini is when you have guests over, and you unplug it and have them hold it in their hands! They can't get over it and neither can I! It supplies an endless source of amusement! Now I get to show them an EVEN SMALLER ONE! (I can just picture their reactions! I can't wait! )

Just knowing that invisible and hidden inside the outer casing of the new Mac mini lies a Unibody Construction has me bursting with joy! I'd pay more than $100 extra to get this!

True, I can't see it, but just knowing it's in there makes me just LOVE the computer!

Although I am saddened that it is wider by 1.2" square, if the next Mac mini is even SMALLER, I'll surely buy that one next! I can't wait! A good portion of the enjoyment I'll get out of the machine is just by looking at it for hours, with the power turned off, just marveling about how they could compress so much technology in such a small space! Word to Apple: smaller and smaller! Keep up that goal!

I guess If I want a display that is to mesh with the aesthetics of the machine, I should probably buy Apple's low-end 24" screen for $899. So that's $699+$899=$1598+tax.

The $1,199 iMac! Peh! Its screen will be a whole 2.5" smaller! Imagine! And sure, the iMac comes with 4GB RAM, upgradable to 16GB of RAM, but who would ever in their lifetime need more than 2GB standard, upgradable to 8GB?! Are they nuts?

Frankly, I still agree with Bill Gates when he famously said never would anyone need more than 640K. He's such a visionary! Steve Jobs could learn a thing or two from that man.

With the new Mac mini, when will I EVER max out the 2GB and want to upgrade? It's unimaginable!

And sure you can upgrade the iMac's standard 500GB hard drive to a 2 terabyte drive, but we won't be speaking in "terabytes" for another decade or two! Sounds like some sort of dinosaur or something. I know I don't want anything to do with it anyway.

I'll never, ever max out the new Mac mini's 320GB hard drive such that I'll need to upgrade to the max possible the machine allows, 500GB.

And sure, the iMac's Core Duo processor runs at 3.06GHz, and the new Mac mini's runs at 2.4GHz, but what's 660MHz mean anyway? The Apple // ran at 1MHz! Come on people!

Those extra several hundred megahertz in the iMac require a louder fan, and I won't stand for that! Fans make me hear secret messages in Beatles songs.

So I'll spend an extra $400 for a Mac mini and NOT an iMac -- none of my house guests would be impressed with that mammoth thing. It's a hog!

So I'll be buying the new Mac mini with an Apple 24" display, and the supposedly "more powerful" "more expandable" iMac with its puny screen, migraine-inducing fan and its corpulent size can take a long walk on a short pier for all I care. Good riddance!

And to Apple: as a HUGE Mac mini fan, you may find my input useful. In the next model, make it far thinner and far less wide -- as far as you can go. If some technology has to be ripped out of it to achieve this, that's less important. I need to regularly refresh my conversation piece.

One way is to eliminate the optical drive. I know your efforts are to make the optical disc obsolete like the microfloppy, so why not do away with it altogether? In fact, starting tomorrow, direct all Mac product development teams to eliminate optical drives from ALL future Macs.

Let the optical drive go the way of the microfloppy and Adobe Flash. And Blu-ray or Holographic Versatile Discs? Never gonna catch on. DOA. Don't add Blu-ray drives or Blu-ray drives as BTO options or you'll only be popularizing the technology, and we wouldn't want that.

If someone wants a Blu-ray drive in their Mac bad enough, some pesky third party will offer such a thing and the necessary drivers. But your OS software engineers can sabotage such drivers with some clever, undocumented, hidden, known-only-to-Apple bits in the OS. Do what you need to do to render rogue Blu-ray drives inoperable on Macs. You won't be serving your goal of killing the optical disc if you don't.

If you ever do release a new Mac Pro, get rid of its optical drive also. Or, failing that, get rid of the second optical drive bay because it poses a risk that a Mac Pro owner might be able to get a third party Blu-ray drive in there! God forbid!

Keep up your efforts to kill optical media. And before you know it, Blockbuster will be shutting its doors as will all music stores that sell music on CDs -- OPTICAL DISCS! BLECCCH!

Back to the Mac mini. Apple, you hate the standard hard drive, so I don't get why you're continuing to use it in your computers!?

My suggestion for the next Mac mini is to raise its price another $100, and ditch that 54-year-old Winchester hard drive technology for a 32GB Solid State Drive.

I know that's 1/10th the capacity of the new Mac mini's current 320GB Winchester hard drive that comes standard, but I already asked, When am I ever going to need that much storage space? I mean, really!

I wouldn't be able to sleep at night just knowing there was a Winchester hard drive hidden inside there -- a 54-year-old technology -- slightly older than Unix.

Finally, in the next Mac mini you release, consider dumping Mac OS X for iOS. It is better, more powerful, has more animations and eye candy, and it will force application programmers to discipline themselves into writing apps that occupy no more than 256MB.

App developers have simply had too much freedom, what with mega-gigs of RAM and large, wasteful Winchester hard drives that impose almost no limits on how big an app can be or how much storage the app can use for the content it creates.

In the application programming world, there's anarchy in the streets, and someone needs to impose some order. Programmers need to go back to the days when they would streamline apps for better performance by counting processor cycles.

So:

1.) Make the next Mac mini much smaller.

2.) Kill optical media. Eliminate optical drives from all Mac models. Everything shall be obtained electronically (iTunes).

2.) Kill the mouse.

3.) Kill the hard drive, and use only SSDs. And DON'T design Macs to accommodate hard drives.

4.) Ditch the monolithic Mac OS X that is soooo yesterday for the much nimbler iOS that will finally put a little discipline on these wanton programmers with their limitless RAM and their infinite storage space. It's even more disgraceful than the Beatles' hairstyles when they arrived at Heathrow in 1964. Man, if only Nixon were here.

And thanks one last time, Apple, for the new Mac mini! What more could anyone want in 2010?

defender

I just hope that the others don't copy too much from Apple on that front. I believe that the unibody approach made the products better for mobile use.
But from an environmental point of view I don't believe Apple's arguments. When you think about how much Aluminum has to be produced and recycled because of
the milling process and you take into account that China is producing most of its energy by firing coal I don't believe that this argument can hold its ground.

Next they use this process for a computer that is in no need for this treatment -> making it more expensive to produce. As you already said they over engineered
this one and as Mr. H said they might have taken one step to much but the markets will decide.

I now tried to match the Mini with the cheapest iMac.
CPU in the Mini is 400MHz slower. Same HD capacity, same RAM size, Magic mouse, wireless keyboard. iMac has the 9400M.

Without a monitor the Mini is already 150,- more expensive than the iMac missing 400MHz in CPU speed and a Monitor.

If Apple wants me to buy the iMac why don't they just EOL the Mini?
At the moment I just can't see where Apple wants to go with the Mini???

Then get a mac pro, Two 2.93Ghz Quad core intel xeon, 32 Gb RAM, 8 TB 7200rmp serial ATA 3Gb/s: Massive and has good specs; it sounds like it would suit you.

I haven't read all there is to read about the new mini but here's a question I've yet to see answered (or asked, for that matter):

Is this the first Mac mini that can be booted into OS X 64 bit mode?

I am planning on getting the Mini. I love it's, thinness & functionality. I spend most of my time in my HT room and will be using it 75% there and 25% on my desk with a 24 inch display view monitor.

Different strokes for different folks. But then again, I was always a real fan of the old Duo 230 laptop and dock, so I do not mind moving things around!

Please, provide us with your comparisons.

BTW, You apparently did put Snow Leopard on your Mac Book, even though you know, "Too many people find it buggy right now." That's bright. Much like most of what you say.IMO.

Interesting how that seems to be the only thing you have to say about it, in any thread.

Why? Apple offers a range of computers. They're not expecting to be able to please everyone, but they have iMacs, Mac Pros, a couple of laptops, and the Mini. Expecting each line to meet all of YOUR expectations is foolish.

The Mini is for people who want the smallest, least obtrusive, lowest energy consumption computer possible - and it serves that function very well. The fact that you can't run the CERN super-collider with it is completely irrelevant.


Really? What 'el cheapo' hardware is in the Mini?


Yes, if I were into superfast, high resolution shootem-up games, I'd probably use Windows. That doesn't mean that WIndows is as good as Mac OS X in other respects - it just plain isn't even close.


I agree that there are less expensive (both in terms of dollars and environmental issues) methods than milling from Al blocks. However, Apple doesn't generally build their products around 'less expensive', though. The solid aluminum frame has other advantages, though. It builds a very light, rigid computer with little need for fasteners and minimal assembly time. I am 100% confident that Apple considered what materials to use in its case and decided on the solid block for that reason or some other reason like it.


Obviously because some people are buying it - enough people to make it worth their effort to upgrade it.

The Mini can't be replaced by an iMac. For all sorts of reasons, some people don't want AIO computers. Just one example - I have a beautiful roll-top desk in my office and needed a new computer. An iMac would have been great, but the smallest iMac was too large to fit into the available space, so I bought a Mini and separate monitor. There are plenty of reasons why someone might prefer the Mini over an iMac.

And since Apple is offering both, what are you complaining about? If you're right and the Mini should be EOL'd, then people will stop buying it and it will be dropped. If Apple sells enough of them to justify it, they'll keep it in their product mix. Since you don't have access to their sales figures, I would say that Apple probably has a better idea of whether they should keep it than you do.


Not at all. He'd want it for $399. Most of the people complaining are just cheap. They can't see the value of anything and think that the only things that matter are CPU clock speed and price.

Just get a wireless keyboard with a track pad built in. There are lots of choices out there.

Aftermarket keyboards work with Macs, don't they? Or do you need some kind of unique wireless keyboard for a Mac?

If you can't afford it you are not in Apple's target demographic.

And the el-cheapo hardware doesn't matter so much to that demographic. They won't even ask about the specs, beyond "Is it fast?"

I need a portable projector (form fit as small as possible, low weight, of course, high contrast and partially sun light readable, so it fit in the luggage to Hawaii). a remote control like memory key (don't tell me use iphone app). wake me up when you get the accessory. by the way, nice Mini. sell pre-loaded movie on SD card is a way to go. opps, forgot the 3D glasses, attach that one too as a package please. Thanks in advance,
1st

Even with the slow, tiny hard drive and the anemic CPU? I can see it maybe as a home server, so long as there's some NAS available. But in a setting where performance is a factor?

Really? If you've set things like this up in the past, I'd love to hear all about it. If not, have you considered factors other than size and power consumption?

They cost slightly less. Build a computer for a lot of reasons, but substantial cost savings may not be the best.

You made the right choice. For others, perhaps those who know little or nothing about computers, the Mini is a good choice.

For 3:30 in the AM, you done good. Heck, it would be good if you wrote ti at 3:30 PM!

It's nice to see some of the old trolls back. Things just aren't the same without them.

They need something to sell to people with existing peripherals.

But don't they put anemic video cards in those?

The hard drive, the CPU and the RAM. And the video.

Audio too? Does it include an el-cheapo DAC?

You're confused. None of those components are cheap.

If they had put in a Celeron processor or something from AMD, you could accuse them of using cheap components. The Core2Duo they use is not cheap, even though there are better items available.

Same with the video - while there are better video cards available, none of them would have met the size or power constraints.

RAM? Apple never uses cheap RAM. You could argue that there's not enough of it, but it's certainly not cheap.

You're obviously just another of those "I'd like a system with everything but I don't want to pay enough for it to make sense for the vendor to use quality products" people.

William G is an old tekstud alias.

Wonderful upgrade!

Is the server software somehow tied to the mini hardware? Or could I buy the new mini, put OS X server on my old mini (which currently runs OS X Server 10.5) and use the new mini as a more powerful desktop?

Actually, they do. Historically it's never as good or as small and they charge more for it. This is partially due to extra costs, like Windows, but mostly from the lack of economy of scale to make this sort of product viable over massive unit sales.

Even the MacBook Air, which many call a failure for some reason, was surely a profitable endeavor. Others just aren't going to sell many of those niche products.It also taught Apple about milling cases and miniaturizing components, but that's another story altogether.

The point is, they do follow Apple's lead here. Within months of the MBA hitting the market we heard about OEMs showing off their ultra-light notebooks using a 13" display, the same CULV C2D Apple reportedly asked Intel to put into production. Dell also has an iMac and Mac Mini style PCs along with other vendors.

The good news is these other OEMs also make plenty of other products so you are not stuck with the limited, boutique-like product line up of Apple.

You could buy a new mac mini for your "more powerful desktop" and a copy of 10.6 server for your old mini seperatly.