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Intel Pandora next Mac Mini? (Mac Mini Update Thread)

post #1 of 92
5/27/05 at 5:58pm
Thread Starter 
Why hasn't the Mac Mini been updated?
Why does Apple finally make a product that can sell and hamper it by not advertising it and not updating it?
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post #2 of 92
5/27/05 at 6:07pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
Why hasn't the Mac Mini been updated?
Why does Apple finally make a product that can sell and hamper it by not advertising it and not updating it?

Because it's been less than 6 months. Because they risk canibalizing other sales. Because it's selling well.

That said, if they would bump up the video memory, CPU, and put a faster hard drive in it, I'd buy today (and pay substantially more than $500). Until then, pass.
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post #3 of 92
5/27/05 at 6:13pm
No doubt, the freaking thing is brand new. Lets release it, and update it the next day. What are you thinking? Shouldn't it get old before it gets new again? Or do we just start bumping products every week?
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post #4 of 92
5/27/05 at 6:32pm
When it does get bumped, I hope it's a complete bump like the iMac G5 was just bumped. I'm talking 1.7GHz G4, Radeon 9600 with 128MB RAM (the old one had 64MB right?), Gb ethernet (semi useful for a consumer network, very useful for business), maybe pretty please Firewire 800?
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post #5 of 92
5/27/05 at 6:41pm
Thread Starter 
The Graphics card cant handle Tiger so it should be updated. Pc makers dont have a set time for a product to be updated, when it needs it its done.

The emac was updated to handle Tiger and the Mac Mini should have been also.
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post #6 of 92
5/27/05 at 7:00pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
The Graphics card cant handle Tiger so it should be updated. Pc makers dont have a set time for a product to be updated, when it needs it its done.

The emac was updated to handle Tiger and the Mac Mini should have been also.

But not so fast. It's too new. The eMac had not been upodated in a year.
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post #7 of 92
5/27/05 at 7:04pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by onlooker
But not so fast. It's too new. The eMac had not been upodated in a year.

why would anyone buy it now if it is already outdated? Do you see what I mean?
Would you buy it?
I sure as shit won't

Improve it and I'm there. I don't care if it came out last month, it can't handle the newest OS and that is unacceptable.
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post #8 of 92
5/27/05 at 7:14pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
why would anyone buy it now if it is already outdated? Do you see what I mean?
Would you buy it?
I sure as shit won't

Improve it and I'm there. I don't care if it came out last month, it can't handle the newest OS and that is unacceptable.


Oddly enough it's like the best selling computer in England, and they still sell like crazy here so I'm going to disagree with you on that.
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post #9 of 92
5/27/05 at 7:45pm
Is the mini still selling like hot cakes or have sales cooled quite a bit? I've heard both mentioned.

My wild guess is that the mini will not be updated until the iBook is updated.
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post #10 of 92
5/27/05 at 8:03pm
it is possible though that the mini is a one-time only unit, just to test the waters of the low-end market...a new low end machine might be significantly different and maybe not even be mini...all depends on what teh jobsy is thinkin
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post #11 of 92
5/27/05 at 8:11pm
My Guess for the next update (whenever it comes, I'm guessing no later than paris in september)

$499
1.42 Ghz G4
80Gb HD
512 Mb RAM
64 Mb 9600
combo drive

$599
1.67 Ghz G4
100Gb HD
512 Mb RAM
64Mb 9600
Superdrive

Things I'd like to see that I think we probably won't
1.) 2 RAM slots
2.) easier to open case
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post #12 of 92
5/28/05 at 12:20am
Quote:
Originally posted by Hudson1
Is the mini still selling like hot cakes or have sales cooled quite a bit? I've heard both mentioned.

My wild guess is that the mini will not be updated until the iBook is updated.

On the "top sellers" list at store.apple.com, the mini has dropped to the second from the bottom (click on the "top sellers" link-- it's not on the front page). At amazon, it's 4th place behind three iMac models. Interesting, that-- One would think that a lower priced model would sell better... Kind of suggests that the idea of the market "sweet spot" isn't set in concrete.

IIRC, the mini was at the top of both lists when introduced.
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post #13 of 92
5/28/05 at 5:37am
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
why would anyone buy it now if it is already outdated? Do you see what I mean?
Would you buy it?
I sure as shit won't

Improve it and I'm there. I don't care if it came out last month, it can't handle the newest OS and that is unacceptable.

True, we might not buy it. But most people don't know about the cycles of the apple computers and would I have no idea that an update is coming. They would just buy now and not really think about waiting for another update.
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post #14 of 92
5/28/05 at 7:20am
it needs to be updated whether its new or not. out of the box its junk.
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post #15 of 92
5/28/05 at 8:44am
Quote:
Originally posted by alliancep.s.i
it needs to be updated whether its new or not. out of the box its junk.

Yeah! Whoo! Tell it like it is man!

You fuckwit.
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post #16 of 92
5/28/05 at 9:32am
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
The Graphics card cant handle Tiger so it should be updated. . .

It's mainly that the graphics card does not take advantage of a few performance improvements in Tiger. I agree that Apple should be looking for a low cost replacement that can do core services. It doesn't have to be high performance graphics, however. This is the bottom of the line after all.
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post #17 of 92
5/28/05 at 9:50am
Quote:
Originally posted by Gamblor
. . . At amazon, it's 4th place behind three iMac models. Interesting, that-- One would think that a lower priced model would sell better... Kind of suggests that the idea of the market "sweet spot" isn't set in concrete.


Price wise, I believe this is the market sweet spot, but Apple made this Mac very tiny, a novelty that PC makers will find difficult to copy quickly. It's attention getting, and it will sell because of that. I hope that Apple has plans for a practical low-cost Mac too.

Business may not be too keen on the mini for office computers. Also, folks like me need something just a little bigger and better. I need 2GB of RAM and faster, full-sized hard drives. That's it. What I am doing now is bidding on newer G4 PowerMacs. I'd rather have something new from Apple that is a whole lot smaller than a Power Mac. EDIT: (I am already using a good LCD monitor for this application, otherwise I might have considered an iMac.)

While the above Power Mac is my next purchase, I will eventually replace the beige G3 in my home office. A Mac mini will be okay for that.
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post #18 of 92
5/28/05 at 2:15pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by Flounder
My Guess for the next update (whenever it comes, I'm guessing no later than paris in september)

$499
1.42 Ghz G4
80Gb HD
512 Mb RAM
64 Mb 9600
combo drive


And that would get me to buy one
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post #19 of 92
5/28/05 at 2:15pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by Gamblor
On the "top sellers" list at store.apple.com, the mini has dropped to the second from the bottom (click on the "top sellers" link-- it's not on the front page). At amazon, it's 4th place behind three iMac models. Interesting, that-- One would think that a lower priced model would sell better... Kind of suggests that the idea of the market "sweet spot" isn't set in concrete.

IIRC, the mini was at the top of both lists when introduced.

I think it had more to do with what the Mini lacked-enough RAM especially for one.
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post #20 of 92
5/30/05 at 3:13pm
The mini is a perfectly fine machine as it is. I run Tiger on an iBook w/ 1.2GHz and the same 32mb card as in the Mini. The ONLY thing I notice about the GPU not being core-video compatible, is I don't get the ripple affect with dashboard. Thats it. end of story. If you are going to really take advantage of core video, then you would be unding proffesion products. Proffesionals don't buy $500 budget computers. For the average Joe who checks email, surfs the web, uses iLife, and MS Office, it is a great machine. The $500 model is faster than my iBook, and mine runs great. The 256 RAM standard is the only thing holding it back. I saw a rumor a while ago on macosrumors.com, that Apple was going to ditch the "mystery connector", and that would make room for 256 of built-in RAM, like on the iBooks. This would make upgrading a lot cheaper, and allow you to have up to 1.25gb RAM. The 64mb VRAM would be nice for games, but most people aren;t going to use core video on a $500 Mac.

Also, it is still farelly new. you can;t just release a product and then update it 3 months later. You know how pissed off people would be? Apple can't go making all their customers who just bougth a 3 month old computer mad.

I believe it will be updated around WWDC, but will not be in the keynote. i agree with the specsFlounder posted.
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post #21 of 92
5/30/05 at 3:16pm
Thread Starter 
welp, I ain't buying one until its updated.
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post #22 of 92
5/30/05 at 4:10pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Outsider
When it does get bumped, I hope it's a complete bump like the iMac G5 was just bumped. I'm talking 1.7GHz G4, Radeon 9600 with 128MB RAM (the old one had 64MB right?), Gb ethernet (semi useful for a consumer network, very useful for business), maybe pretty please Firewire 800?

I have several external hard drives that are FW800 equipped and totally agree with you - if the Mini had FW800 and GB ethernet, it would make a great home server. It is the only thing preventing me from buying one.
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post #23 of 92
5/30/05 at 4:19pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
welp, I ain't buying one until its updated.

I agree. This late in the cycle, it is best to wait. But to expect Apple to update it just because they can is silly. If it's still selling strong, they will wait till it dies down, then update it to boost sales.
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post #24 of 92
5/30/05 at 6:38pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by football751
I agree. This late in the cycle, it is best to wait. But to expect Apple to update it just because they can is silly. If it's still selling strong, they will wait till it dies down, then update it to boost sales.

It needs to be updated as soon as the OS requires it, IMHO
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post #25 of 92
5/30/05 at 7:20pm
Quote:
Originally posted by football751
The ONLY thing I notice about the GPU not being core-video compatible, is I don't get the ripple affect with dashboard. Thats it. end of story.

Well, that supposedly won't be the end of the story as soon as Apple flushes out the remaining bugs and offloads more of the more of the display processing to the GPU. It could be as soon as the next Tiger update.
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post #26 of 92
5/30/05 at 7:28pm
New Mini:

1. Drop a PPC 970 into it. The G4 is so 20th century.

2. Two RAM slots, or one RAM slot with a stick soldered to the motherboard.

3. On the low end, a Tiger compatible video chipset, on the high end, an agp/pci x video card slot, with a REAL video card in it

4. Desktop HD, 7200 rpm. Maybe 5400 rpm on low end, maybe.

If the Mini doesn't get these features, I'll never buy one. They're cute and all, but I don't think I've ever based a buying decision on cuteness.

IMO the Cube struck a better balance between size and features. It was overpriced, but surely Apple could build new Cube for about the price of a Mini! Most of the Cube's cost was probably due to the gee-whiz case construction, so if Apple built a new Cube in a plain case like that of the Mini, costs could be kept down.

It's nice that Apple is selling so many Minis, but I worry that they will leave their owners with a lasting bad impression of Macs as being slow, hard to expand, and low-tech compared to Wintels. If Mini buyers are left unsatisfied, it might be a very long time before they consider a Mac again, all because Apple was too cheap to build a Mini with a real HD, a few RAM slots, and a good video chipset. Amazing.
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post #27 of 92
5/30/05 at 7:42pm
I don't think we'll se updated Minis, iBooks, or Powerbooks until the 7448 is ready.
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post #28 of 92
5/30/05 at 10:23pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
...I don't care if it came out last month, it can't handle the newest OS and that is unacceptable.

I run Tiger on my mini with no problems, thanks, though I bumped up the memory. 256MB is ridiculous. Whatever the "ripple effect" is, I don't miss it. Upgrades will come but probably not for a while yet.
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post #29 of 92
5/30/05 at 10:34pm
No kidding. The Mini has better specs than my G4 PowerMac, and that PowerMac G4 runs Tiger better than it ever ran Panther, or Jaguar. Better startups, better app launching, all arround better performance, better everything. I love this OS. Other than dashboard which I presonally think is usless, stupid, and would like the option to remove it. I think It's great! I don't get the ripples in dashboard in this G4 either, but as I said, I dislike the dashboard on all my machines anyway. I would think the mini would handle it pretty well being that it's about double the MHz of this machine.
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post #30 of 92
5/31/05 at 5:52am
Some of you spec-whores are way over the top on the Mini. I bought mine in Feb, full knowing that it would not support the wobble effects in dashboard. Do I regret it? Nope.

I need the machine for surfing, word processing and light Photoshop for business work. Since Adobe won't suport Core* in the forseeable future, I am not losing phothops speed because of the GFX chip. On the other hand, it fully supports Quartz Extreme, so the System UI gets accellerated. And it is silent, small, and cheap enough that I can sell it a year down the road and buy a new revision if I choose to. That would not have been the case with a G5 tower.

If you are looking for fps for gaming, GigE, 128MB gfx memory or a 970, go look at a Powerbook, iMac, or Tower. The Mini is not for you. Stupid enraged refusals to buy will not hurt Apple - those people will end up buying somethin much more expensive. The mini is for those whose sales would otherwise be completely lost.

Next stop for the mini will be a slight speed bump in fall or the 7448 and a more powerful GFX chip in winter.

At least I hope Apple has learned the lesson from the Cube desaster and the way iMac sales have tanked after the move from G3 -> G4 (and the price bump). Bottom line is about compromises.
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post #31 of 92
5/31/05 at 6:19am
Quote:
Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg
...
4. Desktop HD, 7200 rpm. Maybe 5400 rpm on low end, maybe.
...
IMO the Cube struck a better balance between size and features. It was overpriced, but surely Apple could build new Cube for about the price of a Mini! Most of the Cube's cost was probably due to the gee-whiz case construction, so if Apple built a new Cube in a plain case like that of the Mini, costs could be kept down.
...

JYD, I usually agree with you completely, but you haven't seen the insides of a Cube. There's no way that machine could have been made cheaply.

The Mini, with its snap-together plastic case, is the cheapest computer design in history. I suspect Apple could sell them for $199 and still make money. But you're right, the HD needs to be a 3-1/2" drive. I've heard people say that an external FW drive is faster than the internal!

Oh, yes, I have a G4-400 Sawtooth with 8MB Rage which runs Tiger just fine, too.
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post #32 of 92
5/31/05 at 8:29am
it WOULD be nice if the next MacMini had the recently announced ATI MPEG4 H.264 hardware decoding in the graphics chip.

That would open the way to having a REAL Home Media Server and not have to wait 2 years before we see a MacMini capable of decompressing H.264 and HD
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post #33 of 92
5/31/05 at 8:32am
It looks like Intel is about to release some competition. Maybe that could accelerate the sought-after updating of the Mac mini?
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post #34 of 92
5/31/05 at 8:42am
Quote:
Originally posted by Boukman
It looks like Intel is about to release some competition. Maybe that could accelerate the sought-after updating of the Mac mini?

Not likely. Mac minis run OS X this unit runs Windows. Apple will update the mini when they are ready. I'm thinking within the next couple of months.
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post #35 of 92
5/31/05 at 1:18pm
Quote:
Originally posted by hmurchison
Not likely. Mac minis run OS X this unit runs Windows. Apple will update the mini when they are ready. I'm thinking within the next couple of months.

Round about Paris Expo would be a good time in my opinion. Not necessarily on the day of the expo if it is just a speed bump, but perhaps within a few weeks, as they did with the recent PowerBook upgrades.
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post #36 of 92
5/31/05 at 3:05pm
Thread Starter 
welp, at least I'm finding out that people like the Mini.
I still won't buy until an upgrade, but now I'm certain I will buy it, before i was hedging a bit.
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post #37 of 92
5/31/05 at 3:08pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
Why hasn't the Mac Mini been updated?
Why does Apple finally make a product that can sell and hamper it by not advertising it and not updating it?

Apple contracts out its manufacturing. It is very likely that they have to sign up for certain number of units, at a certain rate ( manufacturers have to balance their capacity ). We regularly see Apple try to strike a balance between early demand and ongoing capacity, they even stock pile for weeks before a launch in order to satisfy that initial burst of demand.

The net result is that Apple may have guessed that they are going to sell x minis per month, and committed to, say, 500,000. That commitment will flow all the way through their supply chain, and they wont perform an update until they are clear of that commitment. All depends on the number of machines they are selling, but it certainly wont concide with their OS release schedule. You also wont see a mini out speeding the powerbooks. So Apple may have projected sales out to point where they expect to upgrade the powerbooks, and after that the mini will be able to step up a little.
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post #38 of 92
5/31/05 at 3:21pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
welp, at least I'm finding out that people like the Mini.
I still won't buy until an upgrade, but now I'm certain I will buy it, before i was hedging a bit.


It seems the Mac mini is not too different from something you proposed years ago. Put the guts of an iBook in a small desktop case and sell it cheap. Your idea created an interesting discussion from what I remember.
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post #39 of 92
5/31/05 at 5:35pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by snoopy
It seems the Mac mini is not too different from something you proposed years ago. Put the guts of an iBook in a small desktop case and sell it cheap. Your idea created an interesting discussion from what I remember.

Yes, I remember that.
However, I would have made the case easy to open, 2 RAM slots , and a replaceable graphics card. I also would never have used a slow 4200rpm hard drive.
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post #40 of 92
6/1/05 at 3:34am
Quote:
Originally posted by Smircle
Some of you spec-whores are way over the top on the Mini.
...
If you are looking for fps for gaming, GigE, 128MB gfx memory or a 970, go look at a Powerbook, iMac, or Tower. The Mini is not for you. Stupid enraged refusals to buy will not hurt Apple - those people will end up buying somethin much more expensive. The mini is for those whose sales would otherwise be completely lost.

The only reason people are complaining about the lack of those things in the Mini is that Apple does not offer a machine even remotely like that. Mini is the closest one because it's headless and priced well. If they had an in-between headless model, you would see 90% of that bitching go towards the in-between model (well, assuming there still was anything to bitch about).

Powerbook, iMac and Powermac are *all* woefully lacking in gaming terms, even if we stick to looking at hardware and totally skip the issue of software support.

If they can't make the machine that people really want, they would still have a strong seller in a (top-end) Mini with a faster GPU. But I can't see them putting different GPU's in the Mini lineup at this time (economies of scale), or a 9600 in the whole lineup (it's cheap but probably not cheap enough for Apple), or a bump as small as GF5200. I predict Radeon 9200's for rev B.
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