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Intel Flaunts Mac mini Knock-off
Rollie Hawk writes "Remember how the Mac mini was designed by Apple to steal PC customers? Now Intel wants to steal them back. Adopting a shockingly similar lunch box shape and light-weight design, Intel's upcoming Mini PC features all the sleekness and portability (physical, that is) of the Mac mini with none of the Mac benefits. Well, at least it will probably have a faster processor. Now if only someone would make a Cobalt Qube knock-off for me."
If Intel is truly the industrial leader (true)and innovator (questionable), then they should come up with a radically different concept PC to compete with Mac mini, and yet can target the same audience. Having a carbon-copy of Mac mini is the same as saying :
their design is superior, the only thing special about ours....we use a x86 cpu!!
Reminds me of Creative Zen looking awfully similar to the iPod mini, but much uglier colors.
Why is it so hard to make a decent-looking case that doesn't look like someone riced it up with stupid lights or clear plastic? I just ordered the parts to build a PC, and the hardest part was finding a case that didn't look like crap. I wasn't successful.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
The whole poing of the Mac Mini is that it's a small affordable system that comes preinstalled with; an OS, a Photo Editor, Movie Editor, Music Player, DVD/VCD designer, and Music Composition software. Additionally most Macs comes pre-installed with Apple Works and World Book Encyclopedia.
Not to mention the splendor of no Adware or a major risk of viruses.
This is really interesting. Since I've seen (and eventually bought
Same with desktops. Why can't somebody come up with a decent design? And why are the Apple guys able to just get it right? And not just once, but most of their stuff looks really amazing. It's not like there aren't any designers out there
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Mention that the next time someone talks about how outrageously expensive Macs are. Design costs money. Designers cost money.
Heh, I think you hit on the biggest linux security threat there is: People who believe Linux's security to be infallible and thus do nothing to protect their machine. I wonder what it will take to knock the complacency out of people.
Monstar L
is that the maketing position for the Mac Mini is to convert Windows iPod users who are sold on the Apple brand but think even the iMacs are too expensive.
Who, exactly, is the target market for the x86 Mini? PC's are already dirt cheap, and we know that shrinking down the form factor like that will only raise the price over existing desktop PC's. They aren't going to convert Mac users, because Mac users a) don't buy on price alone, and b) already have a Mac option in that category, so they will buy the Mac Mini.
Logically, for Intel to compete against the Mac Mini, they need to develop an iPod killer, not another desktop system.
Because the Mac mini shipped. It's why Doom 3 shipping is news, while the milestone of Duke Nukem Forever is not.
Mini ITX boards have been around for years; Mac minis are 1/3 the volume and 1/2 the size. Nano ITX has been announced many months before the Mac mini, but hasn't shipped yet, while the mini has. Even still, when someone took a prototype nano-itx board and tried to fit it into a Mac mini, it was discovered it didn't fit; they hat to saw down the heatsink AND they had to remove the optical drive, so the Mac mini is STILL smaller than nano-itx.
There's nothing revolutionary about the mini, other than it's size AND price; the only similar PC is the Cappuccino PCs, which are slightly smaller, but nearly twice as expensive. Even Shuttle based boxes, which can hold almost 3 Mac minis inside them, cost more.
GPL Deconstructed
Equivalent in what way? A PC is more than its processor speed.
...
I think you'd have to also consider usability, security, size, noise, longevity, style, included software, included hardware
Macs usually lose on the included hardware aspect, whilst winning on everything else. However most people seem to judge a computer solely by the included hardware, and those people are fucking retards because of it.
Right - buy a Mac Mini for 500 bucks and you get XCode included for free. Buy a PC and you have to shell out a thousand more just for a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio. That makes a Mac FAR cheaper for me, as a C++ developer.
How much does design cost? Pulling a few numbers out of my ass, let's say that this took a team of 20 people to design, test, fabricate, etc. this design. Let's say it took them a year, at $100k. (Engineers make more, secretaries make less). That's two million bucks.
According to some news sources, Apple plans to sell around a million of the things. The cost of the design comes out to two bucks a unit.
Supposing I'm off by an order of magnitude, we're still talking about $20 per unit paid to the designers. So I really don't think that it's the design driving the price of the units.
I think that the price of Apple computers is generally driven by basic economics: how much are people willing to pay for them? If that number is greater than the cost to manufacture (including the $2 to $20 for the fancy design), then they do it; otherwise, they don't. The manufacturing cost only sets a lower limit on the price, but it doesn't set it.
People are willing to pay more for Apples, because they like the design and reliability. Some of that comes from spending more on designers; some comes from more expensive components (Apple for years insisted on using pricey SCSI before finally joining the rest of the world in IDE, for example).
A lot of it comes from the price of alternatives; Apple almost certainly looks at the price of a Dell marketed to the same audience and adds 20% or so. People are willing to pay a premium because they're getting a better piece of equipment. Apple has a tendency to tell people that they want a better computer than the one Dell is marketing to them.
Dell will happily sell you the cheapest machine they think you'll buy; Apple would rather sell you a computer that would make you happy. That gives them only a portion of the market, but it's a very cheerful market segment.
Design is the reason they can charge more, but it's not to pay the designers. Designers are cheap compared to the rest of the process. There might be some room for a competitor to Dell to arise with the same philosophy in the Wintel platform, but they'll be stuck with the same small market share Apple gets from seeking the high end, and they'll still be stuck with Windows as the OS, which will limit how much users like the product no matter how spiffy the physical design.
And here's why normal people don't claim a win after the first basket:
You spec'd out XP Home, an intentionally limited "discount" and "lite" version of the OS. So, let's just replace that with the real version of the OS: XP Pro, $153.95 from New Egg. $60 more, and you've already lost, 'cause you're over $500 now.
But, I'll continue.
Good find on the CD-RW drive. Now, what do you do when you want to play a DVD?
Right, the Mac Mini comes with a combo drive. The cheapest one on New Egg (a Rosewill? Who the hell are they?) is $31, so add another 8 dollars.
Nice giant case, too. Look at the comments in the reviews on New Egg - they say it would be nice if it could be quieter... and that's with the 1 fan in the side. You really think that one fan, plus the one on the power supply, is gonna keep that AMD 64 cool? So, toss in $20 for some more fans, plus another $20-50 for sound dampeners, fan controllers, etc. to try to get it down to the 22 dBA of the Mac Mini. And then fail to do so.
So, now that you've got all that, what are you going to run on this system of yours? Notepad? Solitare?
So, add in a copy of Office to compete with Appleworks ($250), a copy of Acid to compete with Garageband ($100), a licensed copy of Acrobat Distiller so that you can create PDFs (it's built in on the Mac), a copy of Adobe Premiere Express to compete with iMovie ($200), a copy of something that can handle full-screen video conferencing (any ideas?), plus a copy of Quicken for your taxes ($30). Oh, and 'cause you're running a Windows box, don't forget the Anti-virus software ($20).
So, for over $1000, you've got a box that's 10 times larger, 10 times noisier, has discount components (that combo drive) with questionable lifespans, and yes, has a 64-bit processor in it.
Now you just have to wait for a 64-bit version of Windows.
-T
I'm a life-long Windows (since v. 1) user that switched to an iMac recently (Feb). I can tell you right now that I'm sold, and not going back to the PC!
To me, your rant sounds like you were looking for an imitation of Windows on the Mac.
The reason I like the Mac so much is because they did _not_ imitate Windows! Instead, they designed the OS from (almost) the ground and created something that was created with usability in mind, instead of creating something that need to be backwards compatible with MS-DOS.
For the past four weeks, I haven't booted in Windows once at home, and I now find Windows a pain to use at work.
My $0.02