Slashdot Mirror
Mac mini Review At Macworld
lemonylimey writes "Macworld has the first hands-on review of the new Mac mini along with nicely illustrated step-by-step dissection.
It looks like the mini comes apart easily and (unsuprisingly) uses standard notebook components: a Panasonic DVD-R drive on 'SuperDrive' equipped models, Seagate Momentus 2.5" notebook ATA-100 hard drive and a single, nicely accessible 184 pin DDR DIMM socket. Upgrade options aside, it might not have the clock-for-clock power of the equivalent $499 PC, but you have to ask yourself - If you put them both on a shelf and ask your Mom* to pick one, which one is it going to be? (Yes, I'm sure your Mom is a Doctor of Mathematics and wouldn't buy anything she couldn't run Debian on. You know what I meant.)"
A beowulf cluster of these.
::zombie::
No no, seriously! You could have a little stack of them. You could even built a little pyramid of them, right on your desk! Am I the only one obsessed with this idea!?
Must... purchase... stack of Mac minis...
And here's a bunch of performance benchmarks pitting the Mac mini against a range of other current Macs--not just abstract numbers but real-world tasks (think "17 Meg file"). I wonder how PCs stack up, particularly with Cinebench and the iTunes rip test...
OK, this is just wrong.
1. Linus is not the _only_ person who looks at submitted code for Linux ... there are many people, and i've met some of them. This is just disingenuous to suggest.
2. The kernel source is not available because it's the least complex part of the OS -- it's available partly because it's one of the more complex pieces, and a lot of really smart people who know their stuff in kernel space look at / debug / suggest additions for it.
3. Come on -- on a Linux box, if you don't want to compile from source, use apt or rpm or dselect or whatever.
Hey, I love my Macs (1.33ghz 12" PowerBook, 450mhz Cube, dual 1.25ghz g4) but your points are deceptive -- there are harder methods of doing things on OSX, and easier methods of doing things on Linux. You choose the best method for the desired outcome.
Regards,
John
Falling You - beautiful
Had a nice conversation with the project lead for the mac mini this morning at the apple store in the Westfield mall. He said first day sales blew away any computer apple's ever made, by a sizable margin, although the shuffle blew the mini away for first day sales of any apple product ever. He said he was asked, can you make it this small? (10" square)... yes. Can you make it this small? (8" square)... yes. Can you make it this small? (7" square)... maybe. Can you make it this small? (6 1/2" square)... no. Okay, that's the size then.... oh crap! :)
My question is this. What PCs are currently on the market to compete with this? When my wife asks for the "cute little MAC", what real computer can I buy instead?
Personally, I don't think your "wife" really cares what you buy, as long as you keep her properly inflated.
A) I am making this post from a TiBook running Debian. Debian has one of the best PPC ports out there. I think the Mini will most likely run Debian very nicely.
B) Everyone is sick of the stupid clock speed per dollar argument. It's lame. Quit assuming that everyone out there cares about raw CPU power first and foremost, or shut up.
From the article: "As I stated in my previous column, 'machines like the mini or the cheap Dell desktop are underpowered for advanced users, but both will suffice for their target market.'"
Underpowered? What does an "average advanced user" do to need more than a one gigahertz processor? I'm currently running a PII/350, which is a bit slow for my needs (some movies skip a bit and the browsing is not as smooth as I wish it would be), but I'll be quite happy with, let's say, 800 MHz PIII.
I do some programming, some typesetting, edit some sound samples, why should I need more than 1,2 GHz Mac Mini?
Allright, editing half a GB photographs in Photoshop would probably suck on the machine, but that's not "advanced user", thats "professional" in my terms...
I wouldn't be as negative on Linux as you are - surely it should be admitted that the "kids", in the long term, have created a high-quality product that works well for a large variety of applications, especially for knowledgeable users.
In my mind, though, it just doesn't match up well to a bunch of user interface obsessives over at Apple Computer. Can you imagine the meetings, with Steve obsessing on the exact shade of aqua blue to use for the default button on a form? I can imagine hours of bone-grinding tedium for the other folks on the team, while Steve pushes and shoves and demands as close to absolute perfection as we can get on this planet.
I don't see Open Souce folks doing that. They're too nice. They don't really care about the shade of aqua blue on their buttons at all. And none of them have much tolerence for ten hour meetings. They'll just use the same ugly shade Windows does and go on with their lives.
That's why Open Source software is never going to win on the cool factor when pitted against Steve Jobs and pals.
I don't think I'd enjoy working for Steve. But from the outside, the polished perfection he gives his products is second to none. that's the first thing I love about the Apple platform.
The second thing is that it gives you a near-perfect blend of Open Source software for web development, and commercial software for video editing, animation and word processing. So far, the commercial programs for those purposes are superior to their open source alternatives. So you can use open source for what it's great for, and proprietary software for what it's great for.
Neither of those advantages exist in Linux, and they are, broadly speaking, why I'm a Mac user nowadays and not a Linux user. So I join your puzzlement; I don't understand why someone buying into Apple hardware would not want their sofware as well.
So I'd certainly be interested in hearing peoples' responses to this question, and hopefully this less inflammatory post will help get reasonable people out of the woodwork.
D
The first thing I noticed was lack of an analog monitor connection. This automatically drives up the price for most would be buyers looking to replace their PCs. Most users would rather spend $500 on a new PC and use their existing montior, thna be forced to buy a DVI compliant (read: flat screen) monitor.
True. That why the Mini comes with a DVI-to-VGA adaptor, genius.
In talking to PC users about this, I think what it comes down to is that a lot of PC users primarily stick with PCs because they are familiar with it. They don't Macs because they are unfamiliar, do things differently, and the people wear too damn many black turtlenecks. (Well, honestly, I see nothing wrong with this last reason.) More than that, they see the Mac as a toy.
But when it comes down to it, most PC users I have met who talk about how silly Apple computers are either haven't really even used a Mac, or have only used it for a few days or a week. Most of them don't seem to even realize that Mac OS supports multi-button mice and scroll wheels. Oftentimes, the criticisms aren't researched (I know this because they are wrong). Other times, the criticisms seem to be based on the idea that everyone should have a l33t0 gaming machine or a weather modeling workstation. I am always amused by people who complain about the lack of games available for OS X when the only two games they own are The Sims and Civ3
I suppose it's popular among Mac users to offer a complete psychological breakdown as to why PC users like to rip on Macs so much, but I won't bother. I'll just say that it seems that while I have met a few people who have seriously considered and tried both and ended up choosing Windows because they just prefer the platform (people who need to play Half-Life 2 aside), it was definitely just a few of them.
On the other hand, I know it's not too uncommon for PC users to wonder at how devoted Mac users are to their platform - a column on it shows up in some PC magazine a couple times every year. Here's a hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with SPEC benchmarks, application support, shooting demons with shotguns, or even aesthetics.
I bought my Mac mini this morning (waited in line in the 18 degree temps outside the Apple store in Kansas City so I could be fifth in line!) and have been working with it all day. Of the more interesting things I've noticed: System Profiler indicates that I have 256MB of PC3200 RAM installed... and I thought these things came with PC2700! I am going to buy myself a putty knife and will get back later with info and a picture or two of what I find inside...
For you PC (ab)users (I'm now in recovery on this point!) who are sitting on the fence wanting to get one of these but don't want to loose the functionality of all your Windows software, have no fear. Just go download the Windows Remote Desktop Connector and get cooking. Among the neat features, you can map the drives on your Mac to the remote PC allowing you to move files back and forth between the PC and the Mac with the utmost of ease! :-)
- actually 1GB memory can be had for $85.
l
Overall mini is pretty good, but the disk is roughly like iBook, that is half the speed of eMac, (BTW eMac is a gem, it beats new iMAC G5 in most tests). Going FireWire or USB2 on mini is no solution, they are half as slow as internal even with fast drives (thus 4 times as slow as latest eMac). They have 60Gb/7200 internal on order so check them later to see if this solves disk problem.
http://www.pricewatch.com/h/prc.aspx?i=33&a=4922
- macintouch has a decent performance review. http://www.macintouch.com/perfpack/comparison.htm
You are the one who is confused. That is one of the reasons why it is so cheap.
According to Apple the $499 Mac mini comes with:
- Mac OS X Panther
- iLife '05 (GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD*, iPhoto, iTunes)
- Quicken 2005
- and two games Nanosaur 2 and Marble Blast Gold
* previously, Apple has not included iDVD on systems that do not have a Super Drive, and therefore, no DVD authoring capability.
Thanks for the FUD.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Ps2 keyboards / mice have never been used by macs, so it does require a USB/Keyboard and mouse, Apple just dropped the price of its keyboard/mouse from $49 to $29 because of the mac mini. The Apple keyboard also gives you two USB ports so you dont lose any ports when you hook up a keyboard and a mouse. Most people will need to get a new keyboard and mouse but most people wouldnt complain because its not that expensive.
Also the Dvi to Vga adapter comes with the computer so ANY monitor will work, vga or dvi.. Hell Im going to hook it up to my HDTV..
And Apple is just trying to convert PC users that are scared to give up their new $80 dollar wireless usb keyboard and mouse combo they just bought.
Also with the Mac Mini Coming with a free Printer http://apple.com/promo they are going to sell a shit load of these babies.
keanmarine.com