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Price Drops For Mac mini Upgrades
RustNeverSleeps writes "Apple has just lowered prices on certain build-to-order options on the Mac mini. The combination Bluetooth and AirPort Express option has gone down to $99 from $129, 1 GB RAM upgrades have been reduced to $325 from $475 and the price of an upgrade from a 40 GB hard drive to an 80 GB hard drive has been reduced to $50 from $90. Also, the original 4x SuperDrive has been upgraded to an 8x drive for the same price. Interesting that they dropped prices so soon after release. Perhaps Apple actually listened to people complaining about overpriced upgrades."
Amazing - Apple seems to have finally realized that when you market something high quality and feature rich at low cost, people will flock to your stores. There may be hope yet for mass market acceptance of the Mac platform.
The Mac Mini - Greatly Insane!
A question: can a Mac mouse/keyboard from an old G3 system be used with the Mini?
Even if you consider the lowering of prices, the fact remains that you could spend $400-$500 to bring the Mac Mini up to a reasonable configuration by today's standards. IMHO, this doesn't go against their business model.
RAM is one thing that I don't scrimp on. High quality RAM made by reputable companies is very important. The last thing you want it to have to troubleshoot problems caused by bad RAM.
"Why can't the better (from an engineering point of view) instruction set architecture (i.e. PowerPC) win in the desktop market?"
Because the desktop market would not be best served by having Apple take the lead. Half of everything Apple does would be considered "anticompetitive" if they were in Microsoft's position. And talk about vendor lock-in! Apple doesn't even allow clones any more.
Apple would need to make a *lot* of changes to become dominant, and would need to take some big chances.
What do you need the PCI slot for?
TV Tuner. I know you can get a USB tuner, but that kind of defeats the whole form factor thing.
I'm not complaining though - this is going to be one really sweet DVD/DivX/MP3 player machine. I picked up a Remote Wonder control today, and now I can comfortably select and play movies from the couch.
If Apple were to release a version of the mini with 6-channel sound, a TV tuner, PVR software, and a good looking remote Windows Media Center wouldn't stand a chance. It would be the iPod of the living room.
READY.
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Okay, fed up with everyone saying "1GB of RAM is sooooo expensive". Yes, it is. Bad Apple.
However, why do you want 1GB of RAM? I use a PowerBook with a 1.5Ghz CPU and 512MB as my desktop replacement at work, and have no problems. I've currently got Thunderbird, Adium (IM), iTunes, Firefox, Azureus and X11 open, with no noticable slowdown or disk swapping.
Unless you're going to be doing something you know is memory intensive (Photoshop), you probably won't use anything more than 512MB. If you're that worried, and live anywhere near an Apple store, see if you can try one of these out, open half a dozen applications and see what performance you get.
So the added cost of AppleCare (3yr extended warranty I believe) made you reconsider because it became too expensive. And yet when all the Apple-bashers talk about how cheap a beige box is, they NEVER buy extended warranties.
Speaking of boxes, let me get on my soapbox and address all the bashers.
I can't believe so many people can't figure it out. Sure it costs more than your x86 box. But you wanna know something? You are paying for industrial design AND the computing experience (software). Bitch and whine all you want about how the harddrive, cpu, video card are slower than your custom built beige gamer box, but in the end it's not about FPS, read times and floating point instructions per second, what counts is how well the computer allows you to do what you want to do. IMNSHO, Apple software along with the design of it's computers makes my life easier and that is worth a price premium. All you turd-fuckers can't figure that out and only cry about the price/performance based on hardware merits. Last time I checked, you weren't pushing and popping bits onto the processor, the most critical thing you are seeing/using is the software. Hardware has become a commodity. The value is in the software. Don't believe me? I think the entire OSS movement has made you delusional. Just cuz it's free doesn't mean it has no value. There is a difference between good software and bad. Ignore the entire hardware argument, sit down and ask yourself how much you think OS X and iLife are worth. Honestly, don't fool yourself...give it a fair estimate. Compare it to other similar software and come up with a dollar value. You can tell me that Windows comes preinstalled or Linux is free blah blah blah...but if I offered you the choice for free, which of those 3 OS'es would you run (ignore all technical limitations such as OS X won't run on x86, etc...this is just for argument sake)? OS X right? There, that tells you that you place more value in OS X than the other two. Now then...that $499 seem so bad?
How about the software that comes preinstalled, allowing you to literally open the box, power it up and actually be able to use it? Put that in contrast with the Windows or Linux experience, how much time do you need to spend installing and customizing those boxes before they are actually useable? Even assuming that the stuff you install afterwards is all free, it's still time saved. Ok fry-boy, maybe your time is cheap but mine isn't.
If you bashers insist on comparing it on hardware alone, then move on because there's nothing for you here. You will never think Apple products are affordable. It's funny how many of you bitch that their memory upgrades are a rip-off, so you're not going to make the switch. If you were going into a restaurant to eat a burger but they had an overpriced salad on the menu, would it stop you from eating the burger? The choice is yours. if the overpriced ram is stopping you from buying an Apple, you're lying to yourself because you are only looking for an excuse, you were never going to buy one to begin with.