Video of claimed next-gen Mac Mini surfaces online - Page 4

So you're saying that he somehow got his hands on a top secret computer but not a copy of OS X to run on it.


People do all sorts of things for mischief or just to fool people. Look at the malware coders. You wouldn't believe what the guys at Caltech do on Ditch Day, the lengths they go to and the money they spend.


Do you really think the mini can handle 55 or 65w? Its tiny fan already whines like crazy if you keep the CPU pegged. The current power brick can't handle that, either. I don't think Apple is putting quad core processors in their low-end machine anytime soon.

The AppleTV would be a great place for Atom paired with Nvidia's Ion. The appliance currently has a special Intel 1GHz CPU and poor Intel graphics. By pairing an Atom with Nvidia the appliance could do much better graphics and reduce the cost by using the cheap, mass produced 1.6GHz Atom CPU. There was a story not to long ago stating that Apple was using such a setup, though some people (foolishly IMO) assumed it was for a revised Mac Mini and/or Apple-branded netbook.

I think the Mac Mini will have the MB's main internals and the iMac will have dual-core in the lowest model and those new Intel quad-cores in the other models. This seems to be to pretty a simple guess based on Apple's track record with the Mini and Intel's assertion that the new quads are designed for AIOs.

I don't need the video to consider this plausible. The MacBook-like internals, the move to mDP, all these things are pretty self-evident. And there seem to be a lot of rumblings about desktop updates.

I think the best evidence, actually, is the disappearing 20" monitor. It's going to come back with mDP adapters (the 30" will too as soon as they can source an LED backlight for it at a reasonable price). I would not be surprised at all if the 20" comes back in the mold of the 24" LED display, speakers and "docking station" and all—or you can use the display and speakers that came with your PC. Or, hey, here's the whole thing bundled into one nice little box. We call it the iMac.

The mini initially shipped needing a DVI-VGA adapter to connect to legacy PC monitors, so an mDP -> DVI (-> VGA) adapter would be nothing new. If anything, I'd guess that it allows the salespeople to talk about making the "new" standard talk to your "old" monitor, making it easier to talk them into an upsell. "And see, with this shiny new monitor you don't have all those wires and separate speakers and all that other clutter."

I don't see the Mac Pro getting an update until the 30" gets an update, or possibly vice versa. It might even be possible that they've already discontinued production of the 30" but it's a slow enough seller that they can still have it up in the store.

As for the Cube, I'm not sure what the reason would be to bring it back. Now, I bought one. It's still running. I love its geek-lusty little Star Trek design. But that's what it is. It's difficult to cool, so it doesn't really buy you very much in terms of internal expandability or advanced graphics capability. The "toaster" optical drive is cool when it works and an enormous pain in the ass when it doesn't--but if you lay it horizontal the way the mockup upthread has it, you lose the central convection column that the Cube relied on to stay cool.

If you want expandable graphics, the box has to be big enough to really do it right. If you don't want the size or bulk of a truly expandable box, there's really no reason to make it larger than a mini.

I don't think people expect a Cube, or a cube like desktop from Apple, to return as it was; a polycarbonate encased computer with no active cooling. It's just the idea of a middle of the road desktop between the mini and the Pro. Maybe something the size of the G4 cube isn't right. Maybe something along the lines of a Shuttle. But Apple style.

That's pretty much what I was saying: Either go for a Shuttle style case (although those have overheating and noise issues as well) or go full miniature. A cube shaped case is not a meaningful compromise between the two, however compelling it is as a design object.

Or, just look at the target markets. The only games that require bleeding-edge hardware don't run on the Mac anyway, and wouldn't even if the iMac shipped with some kind of firebreathing GPU. Fallout 3 runs fine on a P4 with an NVidia 9500; by the time an A-list game arrives on the Mac the hardware it runs on is going to be a year old anyway. So in terms of basic practicality there's no incentive to make the compromises necessary to offer the sort of options that PC gamers expect. The market isn't there. And what other profitable market is there for a shuttle style Mac?

There's the sales-oriented argument that you can convince the customer that they have all these options and possibilities down the road, even though at its price point the box has never actually been tested to see how well it handles the latest, hottest internal components. That strikes me as fraudulent. Why not engineer a machine designed for the way people actually do use their computers and sell it on its merits at the time of sale?

So, an extra USB port and a FW800 port.

Where's something really useful like eSata with port multiplier support (or better yet two eSata ports)?

Not going to happen. Apple will push FW over eSATA. eSATA would have to be hugely popular for Apple to adopt it, but it won't ever take off since it doesn't supply power over the interface.

It may not be his machine but one that he has access to. Maybe he doesn't have 45 minutes to install the OS. If he did boot the machine, presumably you'd expect him to show the info panel but that also shows the serial numbers, which he may not know how to blur out in a video. The more he shows, the more ways he gives Apple to find out who he is. If he's only got a glossy screen, there's no way he can do this. This is really why Apple are going glossy and pushing mini-dp. The only Mini-dp compatible screens will be Apple's own glossy screens so anyone showing a leaked video will be rumbled as their reflection is plain to see.


You said the iMac before. The 24" iMac already handles 55W. I don't think they can put a quad in a Mini.


It was supposed to be people at Nvidia who leaked this. They said Apple were using Ion for the Mini and people at AI had asked if it was for ATV and they seemed adamant it was for the Mini. I don't see how they could seriously reach that conclusion because for one thing, Apple would be significantly downgrading their spec and they never do this. Also, the price would have to be so low that it borders on being an ATV itself.

There will be an Nvidia Ion product launched at $299 in June. Apple would never leave the Mini launch until then nor would it be $299. That platform will be used for consumer items like the iphone and ATV as Jobs will get to introduce them.

I think the Mini update is coming tomorrow. If they are having a press event, it won't be until next week at least but if there are no enclosure redesigns and just a spec bump, it will happen without fanfare.


eSATA is too slow. FW800 can go up to 3.2GBps.

eSATA is a one trick pony... for the most part all it can do is connect to an external drive. Firewire and USB can do much more plus carry power. Including eSATA wouldn't remove the need for Firewire for many people based on the multitude of feedback seen in these forums.

You lumped them together in your post.

actually, as this is just a stretched mac mini, it is 6.5 inches in each direction - so, it is very small, and would match current mac mini 3rd party add ons. the original cube was bigger then that (9.8 x 7.7 x 7.7in). also, the point i was making about the mac pro is, if i bought one there would still be 3 empty drive bays, likely 4 empty ram slots, and 3 empty pci card slots - thats a lot of extra space for nothing. whereas, this new mac cube would have no wasted space on expansion, because there would be none (maybe an extra drive bay!? ;-)

i am sure, given the space, they could make a nice mac; maybe just use full size memory, maybe a second drive, maybe internal power, maybe make room for another fan-less design due to massive space for great ram and processor heat sinks - who knows! apple excels at both engineering and industrial design - i am sure they would make this work given the extra 4.5in of height, and work without excessive noise! already i heard the current mini has a fan that runs too much. so, if there were suddenly about 3x more room, perhaps that extra space will improve heat dissipation. i believe!

At this point I'm so sick of waiting for a new mini I'd take a hamster powered mini.

I don't think there is any rush for Apple to get a quad core chip into the mini. The whole point behind the mini is to use entry-grade technology to keep the product at a lower price point. It can work because the capabilities of that technology are substantive enough for the mini to be a useful product anyway. I think that if we see a mini that runs the 9400M GPU with a 2G DP processor out of Intel's mobile line, the machine will be more than enough computer for quite a few customers. It's not much of a leap for Apple to improve specs by upping the base memory to 2 gigs of faster RAM to go with the 9400 M and keep in mind that there will soon be a performance boost coming in the revised OS which is said to be a streamlined package able to take better advantage of multiple cores.

To me it's about how this plays out in absolute terms rather than looking at it in relative terms. By that I mean, if the mini so assembled proves to be a very solid machine able to handle pretty much everything the average consumer throws at it, does it really matter that there are faster systems out there? The mini is already a decent little computer (I'm on my second one) and the rumoured specs upgrades would collectively improve the machine's performance by a substantial amount, certainly very noticeable even for an average customer.

It's all about taking advantage of the advances manufacturers like Intel have made which allow levels of performance from inexpensive components that are comparable to state of the art performance not so long ago. All I ask of the next mini is that it allow me to edit HD video without a lot of anguish. If it's powerful enough to do that, it's powerful enough for me and, I would imagine, most potential customers. The days of having machines make spectacular strides every few months, accompanied by all manner of hype about how much more powerful the latest model is, are long past. The reason for this is that even the most modest computers today have the ability to handle the majority of tasks we throw at them. There is still a longing for the latest and greatest but the reality is that the technology has evolved to the point where it's becoming a minor issue. Today's computers, top to bottom, are that capable.

There was a time when Apple might have worried that making the mini too capable would eat into the sales of their Mac Pro products but that machine is evolving into a niche product anyway. These days the thing to do is opt for a laptop in place of a desktop system. Still, the pro desktop has it's market and the mini has its niche also. The truth is that for the vast majority of us, the expandability and power of the pro range is simply overkill and right now, with so much scary economic news circulating, overkill is something few of us can afford to indulge in.

Hopefully Apple will not, as has been suggested from time to time, pull the plug on the mini. It's a form factor that is ideal for quite a few of us and even just occasional spec upgrades will be enough to keep the machine from falling too far behind the needs of most customers. You don't get to brag to your friends about how spectacular your computer's specs are but you get your tasks done with little fuss. That's a good thing.

I agree. The Mac Pro is already well-differentiated from the rest of Apple's line by using the Xeon, which contains many optimizations for high performance and high throughput computing. It is also a DP system and will likely have MP options once Intel releases the rest of the Nehalem-based Xeons. It's really aimed at people doing complex video compositing (AfterEffects, Shake), editing high resolution images (mostly scientific imaging) or scientific computing; in other words, a very exclusive set of users. I would say the upcoming mini is perfectly capable of handling Photoshop for the average designer.

Making the case all metal and perhaps sligtly bigger to increase heat dissapation would enable the use of much cheaper desktop CPUs. The Core2 5200 cost about 100 dollars and the corresponding mobile cpu 300 dollars. that is 200 dollars for 30W less heat output.

Engadget is reporting that a photo of a printed piece of paper somehow adds weight to the refresh coming soon:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/24/a...packing-imacs/

If they are sticking with Core 2 Duo in the iMac, that is just plain laughable if they are hitting the same price points. Core 2 Duo prices haven't dropped much at all since last time but they can't keep doing this.

Quick search for a PC tower shows you can get the Q8200 quad with 8GB Ram, 500GB HD, DVDRW, Geforce 9500GT w 1GB VRam for under £450. The iMac entry point is £700 usually.

I suspect that the Nvidia 9400M will be on the lowest end model. Perhaps that can bring the price down a bit.

There could be a chance the update will happen today. The silent Macbook refresh came and was reported on Wednesday the 21st January. Maybe Wednesday is the new Tuesday.

If the photo is genuine, then it's of a store sales notice meaning that the refresh should come within 24 hours. But it could of course just be a random printout.

I know how you feel.

The tardiness of the new Mac mini on Apple's part is beyond pathetic

It's baffling, honestly. Something is up their sleeve.

Sadly I don't think they have anything up their sleeve.

They have treated the mini like a cheap whore — trotted her out as an "affordable" Mac; ignored her when they went high-end with the aluminum iMac and the unibody MacBook Pros...

No, I agree, I think this is very plausible. Although I give it about a 50-50 chance that this is an engineering prototype and not a final design.

i think it will run photoshop fine, as well. however, i want to run photoshop, illustrator, and indesign all at the same time, all with files open and switch back and forth rapidly. or, all the web suite apps, depending on the project. i dont want to have to wait for massive memory paging on a small slow drive each time i switch between apps. this hinders productivity, and is massively annoying. especially with safari, mail, calendar, etc also open in the background. this is how a real-world average designer needs to operate. my macbook 2gz doesn't handle this very well, that is why i want a desktop. but, again, a macpro is overkill. i use aftereffects as well. this is 2009, it works okay on my macbook - but, only if most other apps are closed. considering a huge chunk of cost for a new macbook pro is a screen which is closed 30 days out of a 31 day month, it is a waste of money. so, again, a small capable desktop is needed. the current mac mini is not enough.

You can get a 7200 rpm drive for it. Perhaps they will offer a BTO option this time. Once we can be assured of prolonged SSD performance, that's an even better option.


I agree entirely. When you see Apple do things like this and the MobileMe launch as well as the itunes app store launch that was offline for days, it just makes Apple look like a bunch of amateurs.

People say they must have something great to deliver but only because it's unbelievable that they can take so long to refresh their products, not because there's any evidence they are capable of it.

They can't ship their machines with Snow Leopard and risk incompatibilities out of the box. If they were waiting for desktop quads, they are out now.

No updates at MW was pathetic. This is, as you say, beyond pathetic.

That fiasco will not fade from consumer memory quickly, though it looks like Apple has decided to stagger releases more.



Desktop C2Q or Intel's low-power C2Q designed for AIOs?

The low power ones, though they are listed as desktop chips. There was an environmentally friendly version launched yesterday and appears in Intel's processor spec list now.

I just found this on electronista though:

http://www.electronista.com/articles....and.atom.cut/

"The Xeon L3110 clocks in at 3GHz across its dual cores and 6MB of Level 2 cache but consumes a more modest 45W of power, suiting it to very compact workstations and rackmount servers.

All three chips should be ready for use today and carry prices of $224, $369 and $530 in large batches for PC makers."

The higher models have 65W TDPs. Even if Apple went with a single 24" model iMac with a dual 3GHz Xeon at 45W round about the lowest price point, the performance of that should be worth it. Maybe two models like the laptops, one with 9400M.

With these announcements from Intel, the refreshes must be coming soon. I read that some analysts downgraded AAPL suspecting a refresh could come as late as June. That just can't be the case but what we've seen so far of Apple without Jobs is distinctly underwhelming and if they keep going like this, the press is going to have a field day tying Apple's success to Jobs' presence in the company.

If Apple and jobs wants to downplay the importance of his leadership at the company, Apple need to start acting like they can handle the real world on their own.

The mini is not perfectly capable of handling Photoshop use except for the very lightest Photoshop usage. The meager RAM makes it impossible to effectively use Photoshop files >500MB. The mini even chokes on complex and large InDesign and Illustrator files. The Mac pro is very popular at publishing and advertising shops for high end Creative Suite use. Actually the Pro is overkill for this CS3/4 work, I have to admit. And it's the main reason why we are still hanging on to 1st generation G5s; they already have 6GB of RAM; and secondary internal hard drives for scratch disks and such. A Mac Pro would be nice but unnecessarily expensive, especially in this economic climate.

I think the question being raised is not whether the current mini can handle Photoshop but whether the current lineup of MacBooks can handle Photoshop. The presumption has been for a long time that the next mini will keep to pattern and be, for practical purposes, a headless MacBook.

The average mini buyer is not going to be working on 500MB Photoshop files. Even then I have effectively worked on larger photoshop files on lower clocked G5's and G4's with 1 MB of memory. The biggest problem with older versions of PS (CS 3 and earlier?) is that they are not "intel native" and have to run under Rosetta, which slows it down.

If you need to regularly work on 500MB Photoshop files or larger/complex InDesign and Illustrator then you are a fool to buy a mini or even a Macbook for the task. If you are doing this type of computing then you are probably using the computer professionally or as a student studying to become a professional and you need a much more capable computer than a mini. I would go so far as to say that you need at least a mid range iMac or MacBook Pro.

You don't have to use the stock amount of RAM. The mini will take up to 3GB of RAM if you buy third party. For those the Mac Pro and mini are too big or too small, it looks like the iMac is often used as the "goldilocks" computer, the current one will do 4GB, I would expect that the next iMac should work with 6GB or 8GB.

Maybe but it's not out yet. I can't put a non-existent computer in my budget (the one I did at the end of last year). 3GB was not enough then; the mini was never in the running for upgrades. The iMac is not appropriate since we have a color correction workflow that uses Eizo monitors. So the best we can do is upgrade only about a third of all G5s to Pros. Unless there is a better product from Apple that suits our needs. I'm telling you though, the PC IT guy in the department would like to see the creative team go to Windows, but that is a whole other can of worms. Not going to happen.

'Waaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond pathetic.' (To paraphrase Apple's 'Waaaaay beyong the rumour sites...hype...)

Hmm. Nearly 3 months into 09 and NOTHING!

No i7 Mac Pro. They could offer it as a new mid-tower range. But they're hanging onto the Xeons for grim death...so they can offer the 'best' towers, with huge markups with naff gpus as standard.
No i7 based iMac. They could offer this. But I'm guessing they'll offer some weak knee laptop chip and force you to pony a £1700 entry free into Nehalem class performance.
No Mac mini.

Wintel vendors can't be criticised for offering choice, eh?

No innovation on the desktop to give us something inbetween the Mini and complement the iMac. When was the last time Apple innovated on the desktop? Was it the Cube or the 'Flat chin' iMac? In terms of the line up...not since the Cube. I'm not sure I'm going to count the mini as innovation.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Yep. Apple style.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Apple say they can't make 'crap' for x price. What's the mini then? Underpowered piece of spec in a neat biscuit tin design. It's a disgrace.

How is the tower in the above example crap? And you get 8 gigs of ram in it! A gpu with 1 gig of vram you can only dream about in Apple's consumer desktop line up and it's a quad. A figment of imagination for consumer desktop Mac Heads.

Yeesh. What's going on?!

And if the 'new' iMacs are DUO? *Shrugs.

Looks at the sky in disbelief.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Exactly. Thank goodness for the MBP. We have them maxed at 4GB and make great creative machines. For the studio, they prefer some more omph, especially when jobs get down to the wire. The Mac Pros we have work like a dream. I'm not worried about their replacements this year; they are still top of the line machines.
MBP fill in the gaps elsewhere, but they are a pricey gap filler.

A mid-tower. They have it already. The Mac Pro. Just stick an i7 chipset in it. Pass on the price benefit as most Wintel desktop vendors have...and Apple have a 'desktop' line for consumers.

Not that I'd complain if they made a more compact Mac Pro case...

Lemon Bon Bon.

Now we have wait for Intel to get Apple enough supply, so I wouldn't expect any release of a new iMac until mid March.

Apple is in a uniquely poor position due to its explosive popularity (though it's not a bad position for any company to be in). With having so few machine type and few speeds within those types Apple needs a considerable more of these new, high-end CPUs than other vendors. Sure, Dell and HP sell more machines, but they do use AMD and Intel and sell most of their machines with older, easier had components. The other companies do made-to-order for the higher-end machines but Apple needs to have all their stores with these new iMacs and have supply ready to sell in the stores and on their website.

I think they make a supply before they announce it. Plus they produce about 100,000 45nm chips a day from the 4 fabrication plants (not sure if that's each or combined but they run continuously) and Apple only sell about 10 million Macs a year. PCs don't all use the 45nm chips either, a lot are on the 65nm chips. Intel can churn out 10 million of those a month.

In a good quarter, Apple will sell about 2.5 million so Intel only need to give them about 25,000 45nm chips a day and Apple can adjust their shipping times accordingly if the supply isn't there.

You are using a mini with a monitor that costs twice as much as it does? Some decision maker where you work does not know what he is doing, it would be better to keep an old G5 in service and max out the RAM than move to a mini.

Another solution would be to get an iMac and use the Mini-DVI out to hook it up to your high end monitor, that way you have a computer with two monitor's which your designer's can take advantage of for the plethora of pallets on their monitor. They are faster and support more memory and when the updates come out it will still be more bang for your buck than the mini will. It is unrealistic to use a low end consumer computer for high end design work, and the mini will never be up to the task compared to those computer that are designed for it.

Core i7 is not supposed to be a high volume mainstream cpu folks. It's an enthusiast system. This means you shouldn't be asking for a Core i7 iMac. The iMac is a high volume mainstream computing system.

The Mac mini has sadly been neglected but I hope Apple sees the light and keeps the mini dual core and affordable. The roadmap is laid out well for the mini hardwarewise.