Agreed that you couldn't swap out the optical drive for a 3.5" hard drive because the optical drive is half-height. But you could fit a 3.5" drive in an enclosure with the same footprint as the current mini.
With the speculation about a new case anything is possible. Even if the case remains the same a rearraingement of the internal components space might be had. It all depends on how much they can shrink the internal hardware.
Quote:
In fact, several manufacturers sell external hard drives and enclosures for 3.5" drives which are designed to stack with the mini. You'd either have to drop the optical drive altogether or make the enclosure a little taller, but you could replace the current 2.5" drive with a 3.5" and keep it within the same footprint.
Which is what the rumor is about. ????
Quote:
Either way, I'd need far more capacity than they'd ever get inside a mini, so what's internal isn't as important to me. But a bump in capacity and an option for a 7200 rpm drive is long overdue.
First you say internal storage isn't important then in the very next statement you go about indicating that the internal hardware needs an update. Either it is or isn't important.
Internal storage is always important and I hope they offer up a fast SSD as a choice.
Quote:
The rest would be external, which is the reason I think Firewire is important. USB would perform poorly with multiple drives connected, and as far as I can tell, you can't daisy-chain eSATA drives (??).
Yep if Apple dumps FireWire they will have made a big mistake. It will be a lesser mistake if they don't offer a faster FireWire port.
Quote:
I don't see a quad-core in the mini until it's been in the iMac for at least a year or so.
I disagree. It looks like intel just released a quad that would be ideal price wise for a higher end Mini. It is only two GHz but for some uses that would be better than a moderately faster Duo CPUs.
How about bringing together the Mini, AppleTV, TimeCapsule and AirportExtreme into a single footprint design and all running OSX? Then make them configurable by adding layers...
eewwwww.
That just doesn't fit into Apple's minimalist design theory.
It would take up MUCH more space than an equivalent computer in a single casing. A complete case for each "component" plus all the additional bussing it would require would take up quite a bit of space.
It IS an interesting idea, I just don't think it has any chance of being an idea Apple would use.
Agreed that you couldn't swap out the optical drive for a 3.5" hard drive because the optical drive is half-height. But you could fit a 3.5" drive in an enclosure with the same footprint as the current mini. In fact, several manufacturers sell external hard drives and enclosures for 3.5" drives which are designed to stack with the mini. You'd either have to drop the optical drive altogether or make the enclosure a little taller, but you could replace the current 2.5" drive with a 3.5" and keep it within the same footprint.
Either way, I'd need far more capacity than they'd ever get inside a mini, so what's internal isn't as important to me. But a bump in capacity and an option for a 7200 rpm drive is long overdue. The rest would be external, which is the reason I think Firewire is important. USB would perform poorly with multiple drives connected, and as far as I can tell, you can't daisy-chain eSATA drives (??).
I don't see a quad-core in the mini until it's been in the iMac for at least a year or so.
The height might not change by more than a quarter inch, or so, but it would also need a slightly larger footprint IMHO. A 3.5" bare drive is ~5.75" in length, there's a lot more stuff in the Mac mini then there is in a single 3.5" HD enclosure. But I guess if anyone could do it, then that would be Apple.
If the 4 GB RAM rumor is correct, it means at least the Santa Rosa chipset, so I'd also be very curious as to the FSB, 1066 Mhz (2x2GB, DDR2 CAS5) would be sweet.
If they don't have a quad-core, then I would prefer Socket P, as those chips only use 35W maximum. The flip side is of course the chip price, as I believe LGA 775 CPU's are cheaper than the Socket P's at the same clock, but then again these new LGA 775's at 65W are likely to be more expensive than their 95W counterparts currently shipping. Talking quad-core. For Core Duo it's already at 65W, and those chips are really cheap, even at 3 Ghz (1333 FSB, 6 MB L2). Sweet.
As to eSATA, it's cool if you have PM as you can attach (usually) 5 drives and possibly do RAID 0/1/5/JBOD depending on what Apple does on the hardware side. Like I stated earlier though, I'll be surprised if the Mac mini has even a single eSATA port. IMHO eSATA is the future of external storage, if it isn't already.
Now if someone would come out with an eSATA five drive enclosure for 2.5" HD's (HD's stacked vertically for natural convection purposes) that would be sweet. It would kind of look like a small brick on it's side. I'll have to go back to the SonnetTech website and see what they have, as they are getting into eSATA RAID for portables in a big way.
The fastest part of the HD is adjacent to the spindle, thus a 5,400 RPM 2.5" drive will have better performance then a 7,200 RPM 3.5" drive over the last outer fractional inch difference between these two drives (theoretically speaking based on geometry alone)).
Dear Sir,
run that by me again? The fastest part of a spinning disk is nearest the spindle? I'd say it'd be on the perimeter of the disk not toward the centre.
The fastest part of the HD is adjacent to the spindle, thus a 5,400 RPM 2.5" drive will have better performance then a 7,200 RPM 3.5" drive over the last outer fractional inch difference between these two drives (theoretically speaking based on geometry alone)).
I think people here made a good point about the iMac staying with a 2.5" drive. As much as I'd like the mini to go 3.5" the point that it would easily use the new SSD drives coming out makes it a foregone conclusion that it will continue to take the 2.5" drive. I have a hunch that apple will increase the footprint a bit if only to accommodate a larger motherboard, improve cooling for faster chips, and maybe make room for one of those new mobile quads.
I think people here made a good point about the iMac staying with a 2.5" drive. As much as I'd like the mini to go 3.5" the point that it would easily use the new SSD drives coming out makes it a foregone conclusion that it will continue to take the 2.5" drive.
It all depends on Apples willingness to meet user demand for more storage. From my perspective that is the biggest issue with magnetic laptop drives. Even as a flash drive the 3.5" form offers more space for storage.
In either case though flash has two problems with these form factors. One is the wasted space because the only thing you are housing is the PC board with chips. The second issue is that SATA is way to slow for modern flash drives.
I'd actually like to see Apple set an industry standard here and adopt one of the PCI Express board standards as it's basis for solid state storage. There are already PCI Express cards in the normal PC format doing 750 MB/sec across the PCI Express interface - that is very fast storage. Not only are the transfers fast but you eliminate a whole level of useless SATA electronics this reducing latency. SATA & ESATA are, in my mind, stop gap measures that barely meet the demands of second generation SSD!
Quote:
I have a hunch that apple will increase the footprint a bit if only to accommodate a larger motherboard, improve cooling for faster chips, and maybe make room for one of those new mobile quads.
As to the motherboard it might actually end up having fewer chips on board. That depends upon what is built into the 9400M and what gets dropped. For example they still could drop FireWire. In anyevent the one thing that was impressive with the new MacBooks is just how clean the Motherboards are. Also it appears that the 9400M is a cool running chip. All this adds up to opportunities for flexibility in board layout so maybe the board actially shrinks! .
One could hope that would happen but I think the board will grow for other reasons. One would be the switch to desk top RAM to more economically support 8GB of RAM. That would be a small tweak that would lead to big payoffs in machine acceptance, knowning Apple though they will have an artificial 4GB limit. I could also see Apple actually using a descrete GPU with the 9400M, this to give them MBP like capabilities. The extra GPU also frees up the 9400M for OpenCL use. The potential is there for dual GPUs and frankly ought to offer up nice performance in the little package if better laptop parts are used.
The onset of OpenCL also will bring with it some interesting questions for new buyers to confront. For example let's say they go the MBP route and give us dual GPUs, that could imply at least a few of those GPU processors always being free for OpenCL programs. So one question that buyers will have to answer for themselves is which is faster four slower Intel CPUs or two faster CPUs. Mind you the machine might have sixteen vector processors free to execute what code they can. I predict a wide range of results especially as software matures.
I'd also guess that they'd stick wtih 2.5" drives (but I also think they'd be able to get a 3.5" drive in the current footprint by making it a little taller). In any event, 2.5" drives are readily available in 500 GB capacities. The current 160 GB limit is pathetic. 500 GB might not be sufficient for server use, but would be fine for normal desktop use. I'd also like to see an option for a 7200 rpm drive.
I love the idea of an SSD for the OS, but if the new Mini is intended to be a small office Server, I would think eSATA would be much better than FireWire800. External SATA in a RAID-1 array for data, along with some FW800 drives for offsite backup, and the 10 seat Leopard Server could be a great small office setup.
One could hope that would happen but I think the board will grow for other reasons. One would be the switch to desk top RAM to more economically support 8GB of RAM. That would be a small tweak that would lead to big payoffs in machine acceptance, knowning Apple though they will have an artificial 4GB limit. I could also see Apple actually using a descrete GPU with the 9400M, this to give them MBP like capabilities. The extra GPU also frees up the 9400M for OpenCL use. The potential is there for dual GPUs and frankly ought to offer up nice performance in the little package if better laptop parts are used.
The onset of OpenCL also will bring with it some interesting questions for new buyers to confront. For example let's say they go the MBP route and give us dual GPUs, that could imply at least a few of those GPU processors always being free for OpenCL programs. So one question that buyers will have to answer for themselves is which is faster four slower Intel CPUs or two faster CPUs. Mind you the machine might have sixteen vector processors free to execute what code they can. I predict a wide range of results especially as software matures.
In any event we have like four days left.
Dave
I actually thought of the idea that a larger footprint motherboard would be able to house some full sized DIMM slots. A discrete GPU would also be another route they could go, maybe even paired with the 9800M chip.
I actually thought of the idea that a larger footprint motherboard would be able to house some full sized DIMM slots. A discrete GPU would also be another route they could go, maybe even paired with the 9800M chip.
The original PowerPC mini had one full-size DIMM slot.
I think people here made a good point about the iMac staying with a 2.5" drive. As much as I'd like the mini to go 3.5" the point that it would easily use the new SSD drives coming out makes it a foregone conclusion that it will continue to take the 2.5" drive. I have a hunch that apple will increase the footprint a bit if only to accommodate a larger motherboard, improve cooling for faster chips, and maybe make room for one of those new mobile quads.
The original PowerPC mini had one full-size DIMM slot.
I remember I guess they made the decision to put in 2 slots instead of one big one for some reason....
Check out this mini-ITX mobo:
It's got a mini sized footprint, but would require a lot more headroom Well this one has 2 slots and even a PCIe 1x slot. With a larger area motherboard you could potentially use those full sized DIMM slots that lay flat or angled, or have enough room for a flattened cooling system.
I remember I guess they made the decision to put in 2 slots instead of one big one for some reason....
Check out this mini-ITX mobo:
It's got a mini sized footprint, but would require a lot more headroom Well this one has 2 slots and even a PCIe 1x slot. With a larger area motherboard you could potentially use those full sized DIMM slots that lay flat or angled, or have enough room for a flattened cooling system.
I remember I guess they made the decision to put in 2 slots instead of one big one for some reason....
Check out this mini-ITX mobo:
It's got a mini sized footprint, but would require a lot more headroom Well this one has 2 slots and even a PCIe 1x slot. With a larger area motherboard you could potentially use those full sized DIMM slots that lay flat or angled, or have enough room for a flattened cooling system.
A company like Apple, that custom-builds everything, has a lot of options for odd layouts. They could, for example, put the DIMM slots on the bottom of the board, accessible through a door on the bottom of the case.
In fact, to use the old PPC mini for another example, its Radeon 9200 chip was on the bottom of its mobo (in thermal contact through a heat pad with the metal case).
Comments
Where's the link to the AI story that declared that the Mac Mini is absolutely dead?
Well... if they call it something other than "Mac Mini," such as "XServe Home" that post might technically be correct
Agreed that you couldn't swap out the optical drive for a 3.5" hard drive because the optical drive is half-height. But you could fit a 3.5" drive in an enclosure with the same footprint as the current mini.
With the speculation about a new case anything is possible. Even if the case remains the same a rearraingement of the internal components space might be had. It all depends on how much they can shrink the internal hardware.
In fact, several manufacturers sell external hard drives and enclosures for 3.5" drives which are designed to stack with the mini. You'd either have to drop the optical drive altogether or make the enclosure a little taller, but you could replace the current 2.5" drive with a 3.5" and keep it within the same footprint.
Which is what the rumor is about. ????
Either way, I'd need far more capacity than they'd ever get inside a mini, so what's internal isn't as important to me. But a bump in capacity and an option for a 7200 rpm drive is long overdue.
First you say internal storage isn't important then in the very next statement you go about indicating that the internal hardware needs an update. Either it is or isn't important.
Internal storage is always important and I hope they offer up a fast SSD as a choice.
The rest would be external, which is the reason I think Firewire is important. USB would perform poorly with multiple drives connected, and as far as I can tell, you can't daisy-chain eSATA drives (??).
Yep if Apple dumps FireWire they will have made a big mistake. It will be a lesser mistake if they don't offer a faster FireWire port.
I don't see a quad-core in the mini until it's been in the iMac for at least a year or so.
I disagree. It looks like intel just released a quad that would be ideal price wise for a higher end Mini. It is only two GHz but for some uses that would be better than a moderately faster Duo CPUs.
Dave.
How about bringing together the Mini, AppleTV, TimeCapsule and AirportExtreme into a single footprint design and all running OSX? Then make them configurable by adding layers...
eewwwww.
That just doesn't fit into Apple's minimalist design theory.
It would take up MUCH more space than an equivalent computer in a single casing. A complete case for each "component" plus all the additional bussing it would require would take up quite a bit of space.
It IS an interesting idea, I just don't think it has any chance of being an idea Apple would use.
Agreed that you couldn't swap out the optical drive for a 3.5" hard drive because the optical drive is half-height. But you could fit a 3.5" drive in an enclosure with the same footprint as the current mini. In fact, several manufacturers sell external hard drives and enclosures for 3.5" drives which are designed to stack with the mini. You'd either have to drop the optical drive altogether or make the enclosure a little taller, but you could replace the current 2.5" drive with a 3.5" and keep it within the same footprint.
Either way, I'd need far more capacity than they'd ever get inside a mini, so what's internal isn't as important to me. But a bump in capacity and an option for a 7200 rpm drive is long overdue. The rest would be external, which is the reason I think Firewire is important. USB would perform poorly with multiple drives connected, and as far as I can tell, you can't daisy-chain eSATA drives (??).
I don't see a quad-core in the mini until it's been in the iMac for at least a year or so.
The height might not change by more than a quarter inch, or so, but it would also need a slightly larger footprint IMHO. A 3.5" bare drive is ~5.75" in length, there's a lot more stuff in the Mac mini then there is in a single 3.5" HD enclosure. But I guess if anyone could do it, then that would be Apple.
If the 4 GB RAM rumor is correct, it means at least the Santa Rosa chipset, so I'd also be very curious as to the FSB, 1066 Mhz (2x2GB, DDR2 CAS5) would be sweet.
If they don't have a quad-core, then I would prefer Socket P, as those chips only use 35W maximum. The flip side is of course the chip price, as I believe LGA 775 CPU's are cheaper than the Socket P's at the same clock, but then again these new LGA 775's at 65W are likely to be more expensive than their 95W counterparts currently shipping. Talking quad-core. For Core Duo it's already at 65W, and those chips are really cheap, even at 3 Ghz (1333 FSB, 6 MB L2). Sweet.
As to eSATA, it's cool if you have PM as you can attach (usually) 5 drives and possibly do RAID 0/1/5/JBOD depending on what Apple does on the hardware side. Like I stated earlier though, I'll be surprised if the Mac mini has even a single eSATA port. IMHO eSATA is the future of external storage, if it isn't already.
Now if someone would come out with an eSATA five drive enclosure for 2.5" HD's (HD's stacked vertically for natural convection purposes) that would be sweet. It would kind of look like a small brick on it's side. I'll have to go back to the SonnetTech website and see what they have, as they are getting into eSATA RAID for portables in a big way.
I'm so close to going out and building a Vista Home Premium 64bit Direct X10 gaming machine. With an Nvidia 9800GT.
I want to play Left 4 Bad (from Valve) so badly. And Crysis Warhead, Dead Space. PS3, tried it, I just don't like the PS3 or the PS3 controls.
The fastest part of the HD is adjacent to the spindle, thus a 5,400 RPM 2.5" drive will have better performance then a 7,200 RPM 3.5" drive over the last outer fractional inch difference between these two drives (theoretically speaking based on geometry alone)).
Dear Sir,
run that by me again? The fastest part of a spinning disk is nearest the spindle? I'd say it'd be on the perimeter of the disk not toward the centre.
All the best,
Fluffy
Dear Sir,
run that by me again? The fastest part of a spinning disk is nearest the spindle? I'd say it'd be on the perimeter of the disk not toward the centre.
All the best,
Fluffy
Oops, my bad.
The fastest part of the HD is adjacent to the spindle, thus a 5,400 RPM 2.5" drive will have better performance then a 7,200 RPM 3.5" drive over the last outer fractional inch difference between these two drives (theoretically speaking based on geometry alone)).
Love to know how you came to that "fact".
Love to know how you came to that "fact".
You got me. It didn't exactly make sense to me as I was writing it, for some reason I had DVD's in mind. Even then, it still doesn't make sense.
So basically I had it bass ackwards.
I'm going to wager that Apple won't announce anything at this expo. Perhaps some simple upgrades to existing lines if anything.
Improving the mac mini would be an upgrade to an existing line.
as would new graphics and the display port in the imacs (which personally I think is a given)
improving the apple tv etc.
that said, I"m holding all hissing and applause until the actual event. too many rumors from sketchy sources to fret over in my book.
I think people here made a good point about the iMac staying with a 2.5" drive. As much as I'd like the mini to go 3.5" the point that it would easily use the new SSD drives coming out makes it a foregone conclusion that it will continue to take the 2.5" drive.
It all depends on Apples willingness to meet user demand for more storage. From my perspective that is the biggest issue with magnetic laptop drives. Even as a flash drive the 3.5" form offers more space for storage.
In either case though flash has two problems with these form factors. One is the wasted space because the only thing you are housing is the PC board with chips. The second issue is that SATA is way to slow for modern flash drives.
I'd actually like to see Apple set an industry standard here and adopt one of the PCI Express board standards as it's basis for solid state storage. There are already PCI Express cards in the normal PC format doing 750 MB/sec across the PCI Express interface - that is very fast storage. Not only are the transfers fast but you eliminate a whole level of useless SATA electronics this reducing latency. SATA & ESATA are, in my mind, stop gap measures that barely meet the demands of second generation SSD!
I have a hunch that apple will increase the footprint a bit if only to accommodate a larger motherboard, improve cooling for faster chips, and maybe make room for one of those new mobile quads.
As to the motherboard it might actually end up having fewer chips on board. That depends upon what is built into the 9400M and what gets dropped. For example they still could drop FireWire. In anyevent the one thing that was impressive with the new MacBooks is just how clean the Motherboards are. Also it appears that the 9400M is a cool running chip. All this adds up to opportunities for flexibility in board layout so maybe the board actially shrinks!
One could hope that would happen but I think the board will grow for other reasons. One would be the switch to desk top RAM to more economically support 8GB of RAM. That would be a small tweak that would lead to big payoffs in machine acceptance, knowning Apple though they will have an artificial 4GB limit. I could also see Apple actually using a descrete GPU with the 9400M, this to give them MBP like capabilities. The extra GPU also frees up the 9400M for OpenCL use. The potential is there for dual GPUs and frankly ought to offer up nice performance in the little package if better laptop parts are used.
The onset of OpenCL also will bring with it some interesting questions for new buyers to confront. For example let's say they go the MBP route and give us dual GPUs, that could imply at least a few of those GPU processors always being free for OpenCL programs. So one question that buyers will have to answer for themselves is which is faster four slower Intel CPUs or two faster CPUs. Mind you the machine might have sixteen vector processors free to execute what code they can. I predict a wide range of results especially as software matures.
In any event we have like four days left.
Dave
I'd also guess that they'd stick wtih 2.5" drives (but I also think they'd be able to get a 3.5" drive in the current footprint by making it a little taller). In any event, 2.5" drives are readily available in 500 GB capacities. The current 160 GB limit is pathetic. 500 GB might not be sufficient for server use, but would be fine for normal desktop use. I'd also like to see an option for a 7200 rpm drive.
I love the idea of an SSD for the OS, but if the new Mini is intended to be a small office Server, I would think eSATA would be much better than FireWire800. External SATA in a RAID-1 array for data, along with some FW800 drives for offsite backup, and the 10 seat Leopard Server could be a great small office setup.
Gordon
One could hope that would happen but I think the board will grow for other reasons. One would be the switch to desk top RAM to more economically support 8GB of RAM. That would be a small tweak that would lead to big payoffs in machine acceptance, knowning Apple though they will have an artificial 4GB limit. I could also see Apple actually using a descrete GPU with the 9400M, this to give them MBP like capabilities. The extra GPU also frees up the 9400M for OpenCL use. The potential is there for dual GPUs and frankly ought to offer up nice performance in the little package if better laptop parts are used.
The onset of OpenCL also will bring with it some interesting questions for new buyers to confront. For example let's say they go the MBP route and give us dual GPUs, that could imply at least a few of those GPU processors always being free for OpenCL programs. So one question that buyers will have to answer for themselves is which is faster four slower Intel CPUs or two faster CPUs. Mind you the machine might have sixteen vector processors free to execute what code they can. I predict a wide range of results especially as software matures.
In any event we have like four days left.
Dave
I actually thought of the idea that a larger footprint motherboard would be able to house some full sized DIMM slots. A discrete GPU would also be another route they could go, maybe even paired with the 9800M chip.
I actually thought of the idea that a larger footprint motherboard would be able to house some full sized DIMM slots. A discrete GPU would also be another route they could go, maybe even paired with the 9800M chip.
The original PowerPC mini had one full-size DIMM slot.
I think people here made a good point about the iMac staying with a 2.5" drive. As much as I'd like the mini to go 3.5" the point that it would easily use the new SSD drives coming out makes it a foregone conclusion that it will continue to take the 2.5" drive. I have a hunch that apple will increase the footprint a bit if only to accommodate a larger motherboard, improve cooling for faster chips, and maybe make room for one of those new mobile quads.
iMacs use 3.5 Hard Drives - http://www.flickr.com/photos/smalldo...74110/sizes/o/
iMacs use 3.5 Hard Drives - http://www.flickr.com/photos/smalldo...74110/sizes/o/
I made a mistakein my post. I was talking about the subject of this thread; the mini. Sorry.
The original PowerPC mini had one full-size DIMM slot.
I remember
Check out this mini-ITX mobo:
It's got a mini sized footprint, but would require a lot more headroom
I remember
Check out this mini-ITX mobo:
It's got a mini sized footprint, but would require a lot more headroom
add pci-e x16 to it and firewire
I remember
Check out this mini-ITX mobo:
It's got a mini sized footprint, but would require a lot more headroom
A company like Apple, that custom-builds everything, has a lot of options for odd layouts. They could, for example, put the DIMM slots on the bottom of the board, accessible through a door on the bottom of the case.
In fact, to use the old PPC mini for another example, its Radeon 9200 chip was on the bottom of its mobo (in thermal contact through a heat pad with the metal case).