New (?) Mini mac pics

[Waccoon]

Wayne:  If Hyperion or the MorphOS guys want to survive, they'd better get on board..

*Quietly seethes*

Wayne:  If you need more than a 9200 video card will offer, you really wouldn't be looking at a $499 mac in the first place.

Yeah, it's designed for day-to-day stuff.  What part of "budget" don't people get?

I still think it's dumb that the machine doesn't come with a keyboard and mouse.  PC keyboards are not identical to Mac keyboards, so most people will probably buy an Apple keyboard, anyway.  I'm sure Apple plans on that.

Heh.  I remember when the official Apple Desktop Mouse and keyboards were $80 each.  :-)

DonnyEMU:   As much as I like the fact that Apple is yet again tempting into the low-end market, my point is there is a certain level of graphics standard that most current even value pc's keep to functionality.  My point is, you can get a much nicer "value" pc at that price..

Yeah, but still not as small.  It's always tough to make a GPU choice, too, as it has to be soldered on the board and offering alternate, more powerful choices is difficult.

Still, Apple is infamous for underpowered graphics and charging WAY too much for GPU upgrades.  I remember when the Geforce3 first came out.  The PC version was just under $300, but Apple was chargine $350 *extra*, which means on top of the built-in graphics that came with the machine (much like how auto manufacturers sell automatic transmissions).  Total cost?  Way too freakin' much.

Wayne is right.  Apple is counting on people buying this and buying more Macs later.  That's the whole principle of proprietary hardware:  don't upgrade... replace the whole damn machine.  That's why I really dispise Macs.  Even the high-end tower computers can't be upgraded much or have the motherboards replaced.

With a trap-door and a PC-Card slot, even the A1200 is more expandable than the iMac.  That's progress.

Wayne:  Why would anyone (other than a system integrator like Tivo) buy a $700 motherboard when they can just buy a mini-mac and put the guts in their own case for $500 (probably much less in qty, or later as the hype settles).

This is the very reason I was mad when the AmigaOne was announced.  People think the only way to sell software is bundled with proprietary hardware, or retail.  Selling pre-built systems using off-the-shelf components is how all low-volume equipment resellers function.  Why can't Amiga do that, too?  The AmigaOne Micro is a real dog compared to this Mac Mini, and not even as small.

DonnyEMU:  The smartest thing they could ever do is just SELL OS/4 to Mac users.. Even mini-mac users..

Why do people keep suggesting this?  Apple wouldn't cooperate in the slightest.  Linux gets a chance because Apple would reap hell for stifling open-source developers (on which even Apple depends), but commercial companies like Amiga would be in for trouble.  Forget it.

HopperJF:  If that is the price of hope for a more diverse computer industry then it is ok with me for I am sick of it being nearly 100% x86/Windows.

Do you believe the reason why that is so is because of Microsoft's anti-monopolization tactics, or the fact practically the whole industry is too stupid to make something better than Windows and MacOS?  Given that Linux runs more than half the Internet but has less than 1% desktop share, I vote for that latter.

minator:  You can probably get a faster PC if you build it yourself but other big brands just offer Celerons sometimes at *higher* prices. Some of the PCs I looked at were actually lower specced.

Thank you.  What people fail to remember about cheap PCs is that you build them yourself.  You don't get the convenience of a prebuilt machine, a warantee, an OS, a software bundle, tech support, etc.

I build machines myself and think that's the best way to go, so Macs are not for me.  But for a pre-built system that someone isn't going to upgrade every year, Apple is getting much better and more competitive than they used to be.

I still wish they were more upgradable, though.  iMacs should come with at LEAST one expansion slot.

minator:  The PCs had graphics so exciting they completely failed to list them (i.e. probably built-in Intel stuff which make even low end ATI or Nvidia kit look like stellar performers).

That annoys you too, huh?  They never tell you what chipset the machine uses, or what graphics card.  "ATI 32 Megabyte" is not exactly a good indicator, other than it probably sucks.

minator:  What I find quite amazing is that this machine is priced *below* what the A500 was at at the height of it's popularity.

True, but the Amiga came with a keyboard and mouse, and didn't need a seperate box to plug into a TV.  I tried to get a price for the TV box, but Apple didn't have it listed in the store.  :-)

DonnyEMU:  PS And you don't think people will use it for games?

To be perfectly honest, I expect people will spend a lot of time playing on the web with Flash and Java games.  I repair other peoples' computers on a regular basis, and very, very few people actually have any serious 3D games on their machines -- they have lots of IE plugins, weather tickers, and other little bits of junk, instead.  Weird.

dslcc:  What are the advantages of AOS/4 over OSX? Why would a mac user want that?

Good point.  People buy Macs to run MacOS.  So much for the "BeOS died because Microsoft controls the bootloader" theory.

Ilwrath:  It's still a small non-expandable motherboard wedged into a case that looks like it may be a ventilation nightmare

Yeah, just like all the PlayStations with choppy video problems.  The PPC is cool but not THAT cool.  I recall Apple had huge problems with Cubes overheating because the hard drive was too close to the CPU/GPU or something.  Even a 1000 RPM fan would be completely silent.

Floid:  Don't forget, that's before the student discount.

Well, lots of companies offer K12 discounts, too.

[Waccoon]

Hammer:  The games mentioned don’t quite stress the modern DX9 PC systems e.g. UT2003's boxed requirements 733Mhz Athlon or 1Ghz Pentium III, 32MB Video Card and 256MB of RAM. My down clocked A64 @800Mhz (via forced PowerNow) plays those games pretty well (when not searching for crazy FPS and resolutions). They are hardly the next generation DX9c class games.

The point to a good 3D engine is to make it versitile.  I've yet to come across ANY game that runs poorly on a GeForce3 -- with all the detail turned off.  It's not a matter of framerates, or at least it shouldn't be.  It's a matter of how good you want it to look.

I get annoyed when people talk about graphics.  3DMark 2004 gives me about 5 FPS on my Radeon 9800 Pro, which is still a damned fast card, and I don't think that demo looks anywhere near good enough to be getting framerates like that.  That shows the enormous inflexibility of their 3D engine in favor of detail.  "Real" engines, like the one in Doom3, are perfectly happy running on four-year-old hardware at full speed.  The game logic accounts for only a fraction of the total power needed to run the game, so any graphics card will work.

And, no, Mac Mini people will not expect to run Doom3.  Although if they do, it will still work fine.  :-)

Hammer:  One could repackage it as iBOX...

Just as a side note, I think it's interesting that the Mini uses a flat memory model for its graphics, just like the XBOX.

...or did I hear that wrong?

[Waccoon]

Floid:  I was thinking of the college discount; fewer companies offer that, it's more obfuscated from the PC vendors that do, and by that point, students are usually making their own purchasing decisions.

Well, I assume Apple relies more on K12 than other companies.  My college required me to buy Machintoshes for our newspaper office because they had a "discount" deal with Apple.  I really wanted to convert the office to the PC, instead.  I must point out that this was back in '96, before OSX existed and Macs crashed every 15 minutes when running Photoshop and Quark Express.  God, I hated those Macs.  Today I wouldn't object so much.

Dan:  I don´t see much difference in terms of memory usage?

Me neither.  I have 512MB in my system, and my Win2000 system idles at 200MB usage.  I'm running Apache, MySQL, and Norton Antivirus (Apache uses about 7MB, the other two use 25MB each).  Firefox uses between 10MB to 100MB of memory, and I've seen it use 310MB, once.

Holley:  The same kind of costly and jam happy mechanism thats been working fault free in my car stereo for the last 5 years?

More room in the car dash.  I assume the disc loaders in the iMac and Mac Mini use smaller laptop-quality components.

At any rate, I think it's dumb.  I flipped out when I saw the ultra-flimsy laptop CD drive in the iMac, so I don't have high expectations for whatever is in the Mini.

HopperJF:   Excuse me sir, but what makes you think a button will make much difference?

Well, eject buttons don't work like they used to.  Today they're all software controlled, and the drive / OS can "lock" the button if they feel like it.  It's really fun when you reboot the computer, try to take the CD out, and the drive closes automatically, crushing the disc.

Things like this are why I refuse to drive an automatic transmission or use the "auto" setting on my car's climate control system.  I don't like gizmoes.  I like buttons that do what I tell them to do.  :-)

HopperJF:  ...being a tray load there was no way to pull it out.

I've never seen a tray-load that didn't have an emergency eject that can be pushes with a straightened paperclip.  Auto-loading CDs, however, don't have that.  I would never willingly purchase such a drive.

Stormlord:  the QUALITY tool cost twice than a cheap tool but is CHEAPER because it works most of the times for more than twice holes than the cheap one.

Indeed.  But, try explaining that to a marketeer or a manager.

Two things to consider when designing a product:  the people who buy a product are often not the people who use the product, and you can't logically explain quality control to a manager.  :-)

Stormlord:  ...can you find something for a P3 now without changing the ENTIRE computer (including the power supply!!!)

Of course you can.  But, it's so cheap to buy stuff you can afford to replace everything.  Years ago, the best thing you could do to improve an old PC's speed was to put in a fast hard drive and leave the CPU alone.  If I want a new ATA100 hard drive controller for an old PC, I can spend $25.  If I want one for an old Mac, it will run just shy of $200.

It helps if you CAN replace only what you want.  A PC allows you to replace the motherboard, power supply, and case.  A Mac allows you to replace the whole damn machine complete with built-in monitor, including parts that don't need to be replaced often, like the CD drive.  Even pre-built PCs with proprietary cases often use standard ATX motherboards and graphics on a card.

Ilwrath:  Tray loads are easy to fix. Stick a paperclip in the hole and rip the tray out. If that fails, it's a cheap commodity part to replace. A big negatory on both counts there for the Mac, though.

Yeah, but I must still applaude Apple's decision to use SerialATA for the DVD.  I wish PC vendors would wake up and banish all these damned ATA cables!  Internal USB floppies that don't cost $55 would be nice, too.

Then again, being able to boot of a flash card would be excellent.  Most PC BIOSes don't support that, though.

Adolescent:  Apple has never been known for it's quality

I back this up 100%.  At least if you get screwed over by one bad PC vendor, you have dozens of others to choose.

Adolescent:  The only reasons that Macs cost more than equivilent PC are: 1) people are willing to pay, 2) Apple has a hardware monopoly, and 3) Apple uses illegal price fixing strategies to eliminate dealer competition.

1. - Yup.  People have more control than they realize, but they never boycott -- they always suck it up and pay.  I believe the same rules apply to Microsoft's product activation and copy protection on games and DVDs.

2. - Yup.  But then, so did Atari and Commodore, so we should talk.  BTW, those two went out of business.  :-)

3. - That "illegal" price fixing is not so unusual.  Many electronics companies do that.  For example, if you try to sell a Canon camera or Sony Camcorder below their fixed price, you will lose your license to sell their products.  I used to work in a small camera store, and trust me, they tell you EXACTLY how to run your store.  It's pitiful.

[Waccoon]

Despite it's apparently limited expandability INSIDE THE BOX, the Linux geeks interested in running PPC-based Linux would run YDL on the Mac Mini before they'd go out of their way to spend MUCH more on pretty much an identically specced motherboard.

I'm curious about this.  My impression is that a platform is made by its software, so what's the point of buying a Mac Mini and putting on PPC Linux, instead of buying one of those other MiniITX systems and putting on x86 Linux?  It's the same thing, just a different CPU -- and maybe an attractive case.

I don't see the Mac Mini as a cheap computer, I see it as a cheap Mac.  The hardware itself is basicly a laptop without a screen, keyboard, and touchpad.

Dan:  Studio Display a TV? Really, most tvs is still CRTs around here. Only real geeks and rich snobs go for lcd and plasma.

Still, you're hard pressed to find CRTs in stores these days.  People like the idea of trading bulky size for inferior picture quality and wonky colors.  :-)

I worked in a photo store, and nearly flipped when my boss started replacing all the monitors with LCDs.  Color accuracy is impossible!!!

Danamania:  It's cables galore there, which is something I'm not used to seeing on a mac

Whoa...  even my PC is cleaner than that because I've got all my input devices plugged into a hub under my monitor.

HopperJF:  "defend x86, destroy Mac"

Yeah, that ticks me off, too.  It's not x86 vs Mac, it's Microsoft vs Mac!  Almost everybody screws this up, and it's why Amiga has restricted themselves to "Anti-x86" hardware even after the announcement of the architecture-independent "DE."

Dan:  There's no indication anywhere that the CPU in the mac mini ISN'T socketed.

I think the internal photos show a BGA chip as the CPU.  My guess is that the two CPU choices are pin-compatible and irreplaceable.

Dan:  1GB is *#£$€&€# expensive.

What else is new?  Apple makes money on hardware, not software.  $65 for a wired keyboard and mouse?

the_leander:  (admittedly I've not got Doom 3 or Half Life 2, but I suspect that a slightly lower frame rate and medium detail settings would suffice).

Interesting how medium detail will work, and not low.  That's fine for the moms-and-pops Wayne mentioned.  :-)

the_leander:  This system, with 512Mb of ram will fly playing all but the most recent big name games if my own experiences with similarly powerful systems in the x86 world are anything to go by.

Wow.  512MB in a mom-and-pop machine.  Who knew Macs were so efficient with memory?  ;-)

[Waccoon]

Adolescent:  The pics I've seen show the CPU directly mounted on the board. They just make two motherboards. It's much more cost effective, reliable, and space concience this way.

That makes more marketting sense.  Why make a budget machine upgradable?

Now, an iMac without expansion slots is less forgiveable.

[Waccoon]

512Mb is pretty much a necessety if you plan on playing modern 3D games on any computer these days, do try to keep up 007

Now, be nice.  I just get tired of everyone bashing Windows for using so much memory, while all the other Operating Systems out there use the same amount.

Of course, a good OS will always have a high memory usage at idle.  If you've got it, you should use it, and they use it mostly for caching, which is all disposable.  There's no telling how much memory an OS "actually" uses, save for the typical marketting boloney.

[Waccoon]

I have to disagree... Apple would be gone if it were not for Jobs. The Mac Cone makers probably would have developed cheaper/better compatible PPC hardware and BeOS would have ruled a very active PPC market.

I agree.  Apple did this because they didn't know what else to do to stop hemhorraging money.  If not for Jobs, Apple would likely have gone into bankruptcy.  Not like that makes me like or respect him any more, mind you.  ;-)

Today, Apple's business plan is the opposite of Microsoft.  They make little money on software (at least OSX), and make it all on hardware.  Bear in mind more and more PC magazines are recommending Apple displays for use on PCs.

This also happened before the release of OSX, or even the GUI freshening of OS8.  Be was making many plans to appeal to Mac users, and would probably have walked all over Apple in the long run (if they had acquired any sense of interface design, that is).

Would clones have helped the Mac market?  Well, Apple customers weren't used to that marketting model, and they didn't like it very much.  Apple could've lost a LOT of loyal customers who thought the Mac was just going to turn into another loosely-standardized PC.  The same would have happened if Apple had gone x86.  That would surely have killed them, even if it would have improved the overall quality of the hardware, as the clones certainly did.

Well, Apple's Mac-Mini is manufactured by Foxconn

I'm not sure why you're pointing this out as a response to the_leander (no offense).  It is noteworthy that most major companies outsource their work.  No sense making it yourself when you can get a company that has a HUGE amount of experience to do all the low-level stuff for you.  A part of me is glad that the original AmigaOne is just a Teron reference board.  Who knows what it would've been if Amiga had tried to actually design and manufacture it themselves?