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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."
I've wanted a media PC for the living room for a long time - this looks like the right form factor for me, and it has the inherent OS flexibility of a PC platform.
Small form factor computers where NOT invented by Apple, I know the mac zealots like to attribute everything worth using in the computing world to Lord Jobs - but guess what - small computers aren't new guys!!
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That's what makes it cool.
Coming soon: the Mac'apult - a high power catapult designed to accommodate any version of the Mac to help you get the thing as far away from your production environment as possible.
Why doesn't anyone else see this? This is what Apple users look for in their computers -- how good looking the chassis is, how cute the icons are, how pretty the drop-shadows look... And then the advanced, leet, expert mac users nitpick on things like how the file-browser's side-pane displays folders containing 34 image files and a link. I've never seen any Mac/OSX user give any *conrete* reason why Macs are good (let alone better than PCs). I wonder if it's because there aren't any or because the users are too stupid to figure them out.
It seems that most Mac users are the hopelessly trendy, excessively vocal type.
You know the type, they want to make sure the entire world knows what they're thinking at the moment, they have a lame blog, they dress like a metrosexual and wear fruity clothes to get attention, etc.
This crowd seems to have a total lack of logic and thinks with raw emotion instead. When you try to show them that a faster PC sells for cheaper than a slower Mac, these users cannot admit reality and instead play the funny numbers game, trying to add up things that make it seem like the Mac is a better value. These people will try to claim that OSX adds $200 to the value of the system, while conveniently refusing to recognize Windows XP as having any value at all. They'll say the utilities the Mac ships with adds hundreds of dollars of value, while again ignoring all the software the PC ships with. What they're trying to do is compare the hardware-only price of the PC to the hardware+software price of the Mac in an effort to make it look competitive.
But the only one they're fooling are themselves. Apple has a scant few percent of the market for a good reason.
Apple has become a religion to these idiots. Trying to convince them that a PC actually is faster is like trying to convince a Christian that a ghost can't get someone pregnant.
It's also hard to build a mini-PC that's optimized for low power usage and low noise. Every Shuttle (and Shuttle clone) box that I've looked at is trying to be a gamer's "pocket rocket".
I don't need extreme performance in a mini-pc, my needs are: something small and quiet with low power draw, something that can run 24/7 and not drive up the power bill, and not burn the house down because a fan got stuck or because the water cooling system developed a leak. I've looked for such a case/motherboard, and have had no luck at all. Except in the Mac Mini.
Thermaltake's line of cases are awesome. I built a system using the XaserIII early last year, and it has been awesome for me. The case ships with 7 case fans and I now have a total of 12 fans running inside it. For those of you concerned about loudness, the loudest one is the fan on my northbridge (which is not that loud). The case has plenty of room for expansion. It is also built extremely durably. It has shipped back and forth from college to home twice (two round trips) and is still in perfect condition. If Thermaltake's styles don't catch you, look to Antec. They have some amazing cases as well.
day-to-day Linux on the desktop (even on powerpc) is for people with a helluva lot of time on their hands. I have work to do.
Yes, Apple was famously ahead of the curve with it's pre-emptive, multithreaded operating system in 2001. Nobody had one of those!
It's funny how the Mac drones all try SO hard to be individual, that they end up all looking the same.
Apple has less than 2% marketshare for a reason. I've tried Macs, but I've found that I don't like the software, I don't like their marketing, I don't like their designs, and I don't like their users. I feel like I'm in an art class surrounded by fags.
Sorry, it's not for me.
At my local Sam's Club, I can already buy Intel-based Windows PCs in the mini configuration. TigerDirect has had them for a long while now. There's been industrial strength minis for even longer. This is new in what way?
Sorry, Apple copied the PC when it comes to mini personal computers. And the iMac was a rounded and stylish copy of the original Mac concept which was a copy of the Lisa concept which was a veritable copy of portable suitcase PCs (ala the ones from Compaq, et al, ad nauseam).
All in one PCs whether Intel or Apple are nothing new and so I... yawn.
(And didn't Apple copy their stuff from Xerox PARC research to an astounding extent?)
Wake me when someone copies Don Adams' Get Smart shoe phone in an updated 3G fashion.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
"tasks" and "applications" are used interchangably in this context. There is no confusion.
Currently running applications are found in the taskbar in windows. You can also put icons for frequently run applications there via quicklaunch. You don't have the trash can but that's a stupid place for it anyway and the dock doesn't really have anything similar to the start menu in it. Yeah, sure you can add that if you like...
The dock is not any simpler or more intuitive than the windows taskbar, in fact it's basically the same except for the gross way it groups running instances into the program icon like the original poster pointed out. It takes up too much space, has gaudy animations and causes the trashcan to disappear when you hide it. It's a MacOS abomination just like the menu at the top of the screen.
How come when I close an application in OS X the menu for that application continues to exist until I focus on another window? How stupid is that?