The article here about the new 27" display states "Thunderbolt-based Macs with discrete graphics can drive two external displays giving professional users over 7 million additional pixels of display real estate and the ability to daisy chain additional Thunderbolt devices, as well as video and audio capture devices."
My understanding then is, only the mid-range mini has discrete graphics. And only the 2011 15" and 17" (and not the 13") mac books qualify. I would like to see a picture of the ports on the new monitor, won't there have to be TWO thunderbird plugs, to enable the daisy chain?
There are Two Thunderbolt ports. One hardwired to the monitor with connections to all the ports in it and paired with a mag power cable for laptops. Plus one empty TBolt port to daisy chain beyond including to another monitor both Apple as well as third party monitors. We'll have to wait and see if the Mini's AMD graphics processor can drive two Dual Link DVI monitors or not. Used to be 256 MB of dedicated graphics RAM was plenty for two. But who knows? Still 2 months before the Apple Thunderbolt monitor ships.
A Mini with SSD would be a deceptively powerful little computer.
yeah, that kind of pisses me off for two reasons. Granted, I'll add the caveat that it's minor (usage-wise). One, i rip purchased CD's...yes i'm one of those. Two I play games that REQUIRE the dvd to be in a drive while playing. Those are my two reasons why that sucks. I'll add a third: adding the Air super drive defeats the purpose of Mac minimalism. But, that's always been my beef with Mac. The single device looks beautiful by itself, but when you start adding their accessories that are actually useful in everyday computing, they look no different than a PC...ugly cords, granted many are cordless but still...
I had this pipe dream that Apple would finally strike a deal with Movie makers to allow us to rip DVD and BD to iTunes, but now that they dropped the drive from the Mini, that's foolish wishing.
Plus a fourth thing that pisses me off...even after dropping the optical drive, it's still $100 more than it originally was.
I am happy they finally made it as powerful as the MB Pro's and the iMac at the very least. I'm still buying one as my next Desktop, but now I'm less excited about it.
Well, being a die-hard Optical disk and Optical storage user, having no Cd/DVD drive is discouraging.
I'm glad I've got the slightly older mini with Optical. (tho of course, the cpu in it is now way slower in comparison. --- )
The only upside is that without the optical slot in front, there now is no reason not to turn the Mini sideways so that one would at least have some *Hope* of finding the right port hole to plug things into!
You would have thought Apple would have put the SD slot and half of the jacks on the front so they would be easier to use now that they got rid of the optical drive.
As for the Mini no longer being a media centre, they did pretty much exactly what I wanted them to do, which is cut the optical and drop the price by $100 so that you can buy whatever drive you want. You can even buy a Sony Blu-Ray burner for $180:
and you've basically only spent $80 more than the previous model and you get DVD and Blu-Ray playback as well as Blu-Ray burning.
Thanks for that link! But on the feedback tab someone writes that it isn't compatible with OSX. Could that even be true? I mean, it just an optical drive, with a USB plug. Anyone knows if this is the right drive to get in order to create a HTPC with the new Mini? I like the fact that it does BluRay; so I can get rid of my crappy Samsung BD-P1650 player. Love it that OSX remembers playhead position etc. Standalone players don't do this.
You would have thought Apple would have put the SD slot and half of the jacks on the front so they would be easier to use now that they got rid of the optical drive.
Not if you know anything about Apple, you wouldn't.
Thanks for that link! But on the feedback tab someone writes that it isn't compatible with OSX. Could that even be true? I mean, it just an optical drive, with a USB plug. Anyone knows if this is the right drive to get in order to create a HTPC with the new Mini? I like the fact that it does BluRay; so I can get rid of my crappy Samsung BD-P1650 player. Love it that OSX remembers playhead position etc. Standalone players don't do this.
Thanks,
Phil
There is a program from a company called Macgo that is $39.95 and provides blu-ray support in Lion. All you need is the proper software.
Sorry for any confusion I may have caused above. It looks like what will happen is the new TB monitor will have a TB cable coming off it (hey, save $50). And then one TB "out" port to daisy chain onward. And, you can only drive 2 TB monitors off a mac with a discrete graphics chip. (i.e. not the Intel 3000).
Now, with all the above talk about getting better performance by buying the $800 mini then upgrading the CPU, i.e. the $900 mini with a 2.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, lets go a bit further. If you're planning on getting the TB 27" monitor... far better instead to get the 27" iMac... has more or less the same monitor (maybe the same LG panel?) and a quad core i5. In other words, deducting the $999 monitor, for $700, you get a 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 and you get TWO TB outputs. (open question as to if you can run 4 monitors, 2 on each TB chain...) . And you get a Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive with 4x double-layer burning (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW). And a proper 3.5" hard disk which is certainly faster than a 2.5" hard disk. And $200 change in your pocket.
If only these macs had USB 3.0... but I guess Apple is still sore or in denial about the failure of FireWire.
Now, has anyone seen a software hack that turns on TRIM for non apple SSD? (Apple finally got SSD two years late, finally got TRIM a year late, and now seeks to punish those who couldn't wait.)
I will definitely be adding the i7 upgrade to the $799 model and a 7200 rpm drive. I've got a Bulldozer system to build as well.
You can get plus one from OWC for way less money. They even sell 1TB 5400 drives for $120. And a pair of 4GB Ram sticks for the new Mac Mini is only $85. So plus $205 to fully trick it out inside. And since I'm sitting on a new 3TB FW 800 drive, I only need the RAM.
Sorry for any confusion I may have caused above. It looks like what will happen is the new TB monitor will have a TB cable coming off it (hey, save $50). And then one TB "out" port to daisy chain onward. And, you can only drive 2 TB monitors off a mac with a discrete graphics chip. (i.e. not the Intel 3000).
Now, with all the above talk about getting better performance by buying the $800 mini then upgrading the CPU, i.e. the $900 mini with a 2.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, lets go a bit further. If you're planning on getting the TB 27" monitor... far better instead to get the 27" iMac... has more or less the same monitor (maybe the same LG panel?) and a quad core i5. In other words, deducting the $999 monitor, for $700, you get a 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 and you get TWO TB outputs. (open question as to if you can run 4 monitors, 2 on each TB chain...) . And you get a Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive with 4x double-layer burning (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW). And a proper 3.5" hard disk which is certainly faster than a 2.5" hard disk. And $200 change in your pocket.
If only these macs had USB 3.0... but I guess Apple is still sore or in denial about the failure of FireWire.
Now, has anyone seen a software hack that turns on TRIM for non apple SSD? (Apple finally got SSD two years late, finally got TRIM a year late, and now seeks to punish those who couldn't wait.)
I see what you mean. Since I already have two 30" monitors already, it looks a little off-putting to me. And I don't like the iMac concept in the first place. Too hard to change HDs. I have a ton of them and am only adding 3TB each going forward. I guess I'm just looking at the $899 i7 Mac Mini as one heck of a bargain way into Thunderboltness this year if you have all the other parts to go with it. I even already have a new 3TB FW800 external HD still virgin in the box I got for less than $200 last winter. So I guess you could call me predisposed to liking the $998 - including the display port to dual link DVI cable - entry price. \
I have decided to upgrade my old C2D with 1G of RAM,
All I do is download movies from internet/stream from my TC/basic internet surfing
The question I have is it worth it to upgrade from the $599 MM to the $799 MM?
It looks like the biggest difference is the video. If all I am doing is watching movies, does it make a difference for me?
I was at the Apple store yesterday and the guy said it was more for gamers, but I think I value the views of this site more than his.
Thanks in advance.
i'm no graphics expert. So I asked Apple Sales support if the dedicated AMD chip feeds to the HDMI port as well as the Thunderbolt port. He confirmed the AMD graphics goes out BOTH HDMI and Thunderbolt ports. But they think you'll be fine with the entry level model plus $85 to OWC for a pair of 4GB RAM sticks. He also confirmed the Thunderbolt port will support daisy chaining TWO monitors in addition to the HDMI monitor. So 3 monitors are possible he said.
Apple says you only need the $599 except in the case of big action films then you might want the Turbo Boosting Dual Threading Per Core Dual Core 2.7GHz i7 $899 model. I think you might want to wait for benchmarks to decide. Too soon to tell really in the case of big action or a USB BlueRay drive playback.
With that kind of statement I guess Apple should kill off the iMac line. You can get stand alone monitors and external hard drives. Why make all in ones?
I think you're right. Looks like you can't do quad plus discrete graphics. That's too bad because I'd be all over that, but I guess it'd cannibalize iMac sales or something. Maybe it wouldn't physically fit or work, but I'll bet its a business move. Drat! That could've served a lot of purposes for me.
I think it would be to do with heat output. The quad i7s in the MBPs get quite hot. The dual i7 is clocked higher though so you get within 75% of the performance. Next year, they should be able to build one with both quad-core and a discrete GPU.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
Thanks for that link! But on the feedback tab someone writes that it isn't compatible with OSX. Could that even be true?
It was built to be Mac compatible so DVD functions should be fine but some of the Blu-Ray features won't work properly without 3rd-party software. Others reviewers have had success:
To burn Blu-Ray, you'd need software like Toast 11. To watch Blu-Ray movies, you use MakeMKV and then stream the video into VLC. I imagine you'd probably want to rip the Blu-Ray discs to storage though to save you having to even use the discs. If you create 5-10GB rips, you'd fit over 50 1080p movies on it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacTac
With that kind of statement I guess Apple should kill off the iMac line. You can get stand alone monitors and external hard drives. Why make all in ones?
The difference I'd say is that people tend to use their screen more than once a month whereas optical discs really have little purpose for regular use.
I've got this great idea that I want to retire the trusty Mac Pro and go for a new Mini. The MP is the original 2006 model and has 2x3GHz dual-core Xeons in it and 8GBs RAM. The video is nothing spectacular: ATI Radeon HD 2600 with 256MBs VRAM.
I'm really tempted by the server model, mostly due to the CPU, but unsure about the integrated graphics.
Will the quad i7 be much of an upgrade over my Mac Pro's Xeons? Will the integrated graphics be super slow?
I do mostly "web" work, so crazy video or rendering or anything like that. Most of my work is done in text editors and browsers. I already have a beefy 256GB SSD that I'll be swapping over, too.
I would like the Mini to "feel" at least as fast and powerful as my mac Pro does, and hopefully even faster. Is the server Mini going to do it for me, or should I get the dual-core i7 model with discrete graphics?
i'm no graphics expert. So I asked Apple Sales support if the dedicated AMD chip feeds to the HDMI port as well as the Thunderbolt port. He confirmed the AMD graphics goes out BOTH HDMI and Thunderbolt ports. But they think you'll be fine with the entry level model plus $85 to OWC for a pair of 4GB RAM sticks. He also confirmed the Thunderbolt port will support daisy chaining TWO monitors in addition to the HDMI monitor. So 3 monitors are possible he said.
Apple says you only need the $599 except in the case of big action films then you might want the Turbo Boosting Dual Threading Per Core Dual Core 2.7GHz i7 $899 model. I think you might want to wait for benchmarks to decide. Too soon to tell really in the case of big action or a USB BlueRay drive playback.
Thanks.
Thats aboutthe same thing they told me. Everythink looks good on the MM I have now, and this seems a lot faster so I think it should be plenty for my needs.
Comments
The article here about the new 27" display states "Thunderbolt-based Macs with discrete graphics can drive two external displays giving professional users over 7 million additional pixels of display real estate and the ability to daisy chain additional Thunderbolt devices, as well as video and audio capture devices."
My understanding then is, only the mid-range mini has discrete graphics. And only the 2011 15" and 17" (and not the 13") mac books qualify. I would like to see a picture of the ports on the new monitor, won't there have to be TWO thunderbird plugs, to enable the daisy chain?
There are Two Thunderbolt ports. One hardwired to the monitor with connections to all the ports in it and paired with a mag power cable for laptops. Plus one empty TBolt port to daisy chain beyond including to another monitor both Apple as well as third party monitors. We'll have to wait and see if the Mini's AMD graphics processor can drive two Dual Link DVI monitors or not. Used to be 256 MB of dedicated graphics RAM was plenty for two. But who knows? Still 2 months before the Apple Thunderbolt monitor ships.
Wow, no optical drive on any model.
A Mini with SSD would be a deceptively powerful little computer.
yeah, that kind of pisses me off for two reasons. Granted, I'll add the caveat that it's minor (usage-wise). One, i rip purchased CD's...yes i'm one of those. Two I play games that REQUIRE the dvd to be in a drive while playing. Those are my two reasons why that sucks. I'll add a third: adding the Air super drive defeats the purpose of Mac minimalism. But, that's always been my beef with Mac. The single device looks beautiful by itself, but when you start adding their accessories that are actually useful in everyday computing, they look no different than a PC...ugly cords, granted many are cordless but still...
I had this pipe dream that Apple would finally strike a deal with Movie makers to allow us to rip DVD and BD to iTunes, but now that they dropped the drive from the Mini, that's foolish wishing.
Plus a fourth thing that pisses me off...even after dropping the optical drive, it's still $100 more than it originally was.
I am happy they finally made it as powerful as the MB Pro's and the iMac at the very least. I'm still buying one as my next Desktop, but now I'm less excited about it.
Well, being a die-hard Optical disk and Optical storage user, having no Cd/DVD drive is discouraging.
I'm glad I've got the slightly older mini with Optical. (tho of course, the cpu in it is now way slower in comparison.
The only upside is that without the optical slot in front, there now is no reason not to turn the Mini sideways so that one would at least have some *Hope* of finding the right port hole to plug things into!
You would have thought Apple would have put the SD slot and half of the jacks on the front so they would be easier to use now that they got rid of the optical drive.
Well, being a die-hard Optical disk and Optical storage user, having no Cd/DVD drive is discouraging.
You can get external optical drives.
As for the Mini no longer being a media centre, they did pretty much exactly what I wanted them to do, which is cut the optical and drop the price by $100 so that you can buy whatever drive you want. You can even buy a Sony Blu-Ray burner for $180:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...8048&Tpk=s500u
and you've basically only spent $80 more than the previous model and you get DVD and Blu-Ray playback as well as Blu-Ray burning.
Thanks for that link! But on the feedback tab someone writes that it isn't compatible with OSX. Could that even be true? I mean, it just an optical drive, with a USB plug. Anyone knows if this is the right drive to get in order to create a HTPC with the new Mini? I like the fact that it does BluRay; so I can get rid of my crappy Samsung BD-P1650 player. Love it that OSX remembers playhead position etc. Standalone players don't do this.
Thanks,
Phil
You would have thought Apple would have put the SD slot and half of the jacks on the front so they would be easier to use now that they got rid of the optical drive.
Not if you know anything about Apple, you wouldn't.
Thanks for that link! But on the feedback tab someone writes that it isn't compatible with OSX. Could that even be true? I mean, it just an optical drive, with a USB plug. Anyone knows if this is the right drive to get in order to create a HTPC with the new Mini? I like the fact that it does BluRay; so I can get rid of my crappy Samsung BD-P1650 player. Love it that OSX remembers playhead position etc. Standalone players don't do this.
Thanks,
Phil
There is a program from a company called Macgo that is $39.95 and provides blu-ray support in Lion. All you need is the proper software.
There is a program from a company called Macgo that is $39.95 and provides blu-ray support in Lion. All you need is the proper software.
You mean proper hardware?
But this isn't reliable in any way, anyway.
Just use MakeMKV and VLC to play straight from discs, no hacked-together licensing software required.
Now, with all the above talk about getting better performance by buying the $800 mini then upgrading the CPU, i.e. the $900 mini with a 2.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, lets go a bit further. If you're planning on getting the TB 27" monitor... far better instead to get the 27" iMac... has more or less the same monitor (maybe the same LG panel?) and a quad core i5. In other words, deducting the $999 monitor, for $700, you get a 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 and you get TWO TB outputs. (open question as to if you can run 4 monitors, 2 on each TB chain...) . And you get a Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive with 4x double-layer burning (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW). And a proper 3.5" hard disk which is certainly faster than a 2.5" hard disk. And $200 change in your pocket.
If only these macs had USB 3.0... but I guess Apple is still sore or in denial about the failure of FireWire.
Now, has anyone seen a software hack that turns on TRIM for non apple SSD? (Apple finally got SSD two years late, finally got TRIM a year late, and now seeks to punish those who couldn't wait.)
I will definitely be adding the i7 upgrade to the $799 model and a 7200 rpm drive. I've got a Bulldozer system to build as well.
You can get plus one from OWC for way less money. They even sell 1TB 5400 drives for $120. And a pair of 4GB Ram sticks for the new Mac Mini is only $85. So plus $205 to fully trick it out inside. And since I'm sitting on a new 3TB FW 800 drive, I only need the RAM.
You can get plus one from OWC for way less money. They even sell 1TB 5400 drives fir $120.
Exactly. Never buy RAM or HDDs from Apple.
Sorry for any confusion I may have caused above. It looks like what will happen is the new TB monitor will have a TB cable coming off it (hey, save $50). And then one TB "out" port to daisy chain onward. And, you can only drive 2 TB monitors off a mac with a discrete graphics chip. (i.e. not the Intel 3000).
Now, with all the above talk about getting better performance by buying the $800 mini then upgrading the CPU, i.e. the $900 mini with a 2.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, lets go a bit further. If you're planning on getting the TB 27" monitor... far better instead to get the 27" iMac... has more or less the same monitor (maybe the same LG panel?) and a quad core i5. In other words, deducting the $999 monitor, for $700, you get a 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 and you get TWO TB outputs. (open question as to if you can run 4 monitors, 2 on each TB chain...) . And you get a Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive with 4x double-layer burning (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW). And a proper 3.5" hard disk which is certainly faster than a 2.5" hard disk. And $200 change in your pocket.
If only these macs had USB 3.0... but I guess Apple is still sore or in denial about the failure of FireWire.
Now, has anyone seen a software hack that turns on TRIM for non apple SSD? (Apple finally got SSD two years late, finally got TRIM a year late, and now seeks to punish those who couldn't wait.)
I see what you mean. Since I already have two 30" monitors already, it looks a little off-putting to me. And I don't like the iMac concept in the first place. Too hard to change HDs. I have a ton of them and am only adding 3TB each going forward. I guess I'm just looking at the $899 i7 Mac Mini as one heck of a bargain way into Thunderboltness this year if you have all the other parts to go with it. I even already have a new 3TB FW800 external HD still virgin in the box I got for less than $200 last winter. So I guess you could call me predisposed to liking the $998 - including the display port to dual link DVI cable - entry price.
All I do is download movies from internet/stream from my TC/basic internet surfing
The question I have is it worth it to upgrade from the $599 MM to the $799 MM?
It looks like the biggest difference is the video. If all I am doing is watching movies, does it make a difference for me?
I was at the Apple store yesterday and the guy said it was more for gamers, but I think I value the views of this site more than his.
Thanks in advance.
I have decided to upgrade my old C2D with 1G of RAM,
All I do is download movies from internet/stream from my TC/basic internet surfing
The question I have is it worth it to upgrade from the $599 MM to the $799 MM?
It looks like the biggest difference is the video. If all I am doing is watching movies, does it make a difference for me?
I was at the Apple store yesterday and the guy said it was more for gamers, but I think I value the views of this site more than his.
Thanks in advance.
i'm no graphics expert. So I asked Apple Sales support if the dedicated AMD chip feeds to the HDMI port as well as the Thunderbolt port. He confirmed the AMD graphics goes out BOTH HDMI and Thunderbolt ports. But they think you'll be fine with the entry level model plus $85 to OWC for a pair of 4GB RAM sticks. He also confirmed the Thunderbolt port will support daisy chaining TWO monitors in addition to the HDMI monitor. So 3 monitors are possible he said.
Apple says you only need the $599 except in the case of big action films then you might want the Turbo Boosting Dual Threading Per Core Dual Core 2.7GHz i7 $899 model. I think you might want to wait for benchmarks to decide. Too soon to tell really in the case of big action or a USB BlueRay drive playback.
You can get external optical drives.
With that kind of statement I guess Apple should kill off the iMac line. You can get stand alone monitors and external hard drives. Why make all in ones?
I think you're right. Looks like you can't do quad plus discrete graphics. That's too bad because I'd be all over that, but I guess it'd cannibalize iMac sales or something. Maybe it wouldn't physically fit or work, but I'll bet its a business move. Drat! That could've served a lot of purposes for me.
I think it would be to do with heat output. The quad i7s in the MBPs get quite hot. The dual i7 is clocked higher though so you get within 75% of the performance. Next year, they should be able to build one with both quad-core and a discrete GPU.
Thanks for that link! But on the feedback tab someone writes that it isn't compatible with OSX. Could that even be true?
It was built to be Mac compatible so DVD functions should be fine but some of the Blu-Ray features won't work properly without 3rd-party software. Others reviewers have had success:
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Blu-ray-E...1278975&sr=8-1
To burn Blu-Ray, you'd need software like Toast 11. To watch Blu-Ray movies, you use MakeMKV and then stream the video into VLC. I imagine you'd probably want to rip the Blu-Ray discs to storage though to save you having to even use the discs. If you create 5-10GB rips, you'd fit over 50 1080p movies on it.
With that kind of statement I guess Apple should kill off the iMac line. You can get stand alone monitors and external hard drives. Why make all in ones?
The difference I'd say is that people tend to use their screen more than once a month whereas optical discs really have little purpose for regular use.
I'm really tempted by the server model, mostly due to the CPU, but unsure about the integrated graphics.
Will the quad i7 be much of an upgrade over my Mac Pro's Xeons? Will the integrated graphics be super slow?
I do mostly "web" work, so crazy video or rendering or anything like that. Most of my work is done in text editors and browsers. I already have a beefy 256GB SSD that I'll be swapping over, too.
I would like the Mini to "feel" at least as fast and powerful as my mac Pro does, and hopefully even faster. Is the server Mini going to do it for me, or should I get the dual-core i7 model with discrete graphics?
Thanks!
i'm no graphics expert. So I asked Apple Sales support if the dedicated AMD chip feeds to the HDMI port as well as the Thunderbolt port. He confirmed the AMD graphics goes out BOTH HDMI and Thunderbolt ports. But they think you'll be fine with the entry level model plus $85 to OWC for a pair of 4GB RAM sticks. He also confirmed the Thunderbolt port will support daisy chaining TWO monitors in addition to the HDMI monitor. So 3 monitors are possible he said.
Apple says you only need the $599 except in the case of big action films then you might want the Turbo Boosting Dual Threading Per Core Dual Core 2.7GHz i7 $899 model. I think you might want to wait for benchmarks to decide. Too soon to tell really in the case of big action or a USB BlueRay drive playback.
Thanks.
Thats aboutthe same thing they told me. Everythink looks good on the MM I have now, and this seems a lot faster so I think it should be plenty for my needs.