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Mac mini's New Friend
Thijs van As writes "The miniMate, MicroNet's new external disk drive and port replicator, is created specifically to complement Apple's new Mac mini. With available storage up to 400GB, 4 USB 2.0 ports and 3 FireWire ports, the miniMate extends the capabilities of the Mac mini. Looks impressive if you ask me."
Cute, but can you also connect it to a PC given the right formatting?
A daisy-chain of these! (note: not a beowulf cluster) It would be similar to a Navi brick system. I still want some sort of expandable bus standard. It sure would be great to add a video card by pluggin in an expansion brick. Unfortunately the RFI involved in external cables and the shielding required make this difficult.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
Apple might have a case that the MiniMate infringes on the trademark it has established with the Mac mini on the grounds that it has copied its trade dress.
Looking at the front of the machine, there are no markings on the Mac mini to let you know that it is an Apple product, whereas Micronet is emblazoned on the front of its MiniMate. If the Mac Mini is covered on top by the MiniMate or the pair are stacked in a rack/cabinet/cubbyhole, one might think that both boxes are made by Micronet, effectively causing a likelihood of confusion "or to deceive as to the...origin...of the goods." (this last language is taken straight out of Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act.)
I know most /.'ers won't have this problem of confusion but I believe that the standard is according to some "reasonable person of the community" standard, and whether they would be confused by the trade dress...
I think Apple went after a Chinese (or Taiwanese?) company a few years ago for its bondi blue iMac lookalike....but they seem to have a more favorable view of add-ons like this one that resemble the original product without performing the same functions (the huge iPod accessory market is further proof of their leniency to accessories that piggy-back off their designs without directly competing with them).
I was thinking the same thing.
I wonder how long it'll be until somebody offers a replacement case for the Mini thats big enough to accommodate a desktop size hard drive and maybe even an optical drive too (so you can utilize cheaper and faster, albeit noisier, 3.5" and 5.25" drives.) It won't be as mini as the Mini itself, but it might be cool! Heck, if they make it roomy enough, maybe it could fit the Mini's power brick inside too.
Now, for even more fun, don't worry so much about the ports, and have a chain of USB-only Mini Mates, and a second chain of FireWire-only Mini Mates.
Each FireWire-only Mini Mate can have two further Mini Mates plugged into it, up to the FireWire hub limit.
And each USB-only Mini Mate can have three further Mini Mates plugged into it, up to the USB 2.0 hub limit.
Say you go 3 levels deep on each; so you'll have 27 open USB 2.0 ports (not counting the second one on the Mini itself), 8 open FireWire ports, and a total of 20 Mini Mates... giving you 1.6 TB to 8.0 TB of additional storage. (This was a bit more than I can count on my fingers, so I could be off a bit....)
If you really want a bunch of FireWire or USB ports, you might want to think about just getting one or two Mini Mates and a couple of hubs...
What the Mini really needs add-ons can't provide: a FASTER external bus type (FireWire800), not more ports. I like the Mini, but I just don't understand why Apple saddled a machine designed for external expansion with FireWire400. Unfortunately, USB 2.0 is woefully inadequate for mass storage.
they did this because they don't figure people are going to do any of that. they did this to compete with low priced pc's. my guess is that many mac mini purchases will be replacing pc's. my dad bought an emac only beacuse he wanted replace his 5 year old imac, and didn't want to buy a monitor too. if you have a montitor, then "switching" is easy. it'll also work great as a second mac at home, something to ssh/vnc into. remember, it has a laptop hard drive, so it's not a power machine. if you need that, you'll buy an imac, or power mac. people who buy minis won't need FW800 and people who need FW800 won't buy minis. it's the ibook/powerbook difference.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Mac OS X can boot from any FW HD, so connect your mammoth HD using Firewire, use http://http//www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html Carbon Copy Cloner to move your System folder over, and watch your Mini guzzle NOX.
Also, its a shame that they don't offer a bare-bones setup with no HD. I'd rather just pull the 160 giger out of my windows box and have the mini take over file serving. Alas.
It's also worth asking if the pricing makes a lot of sense. Pay $500 for the mini, then another $99 for a ram upgrade, plus $150 or so for the hub. As cool as it is, it's not the most economical venture. And I'm taking for granted a spare USB Keyboard and mouse.
I think what the Mac Mini really needs is a KVM ability.
It would be great if I could plop a new MacMini next to my existing PC, plug my current Keyboard,Video,Mouse in the MacMini, and then connect the MacMini to my existing PC. Then I could press the switch on the MacMini and toggle between the two machines.
I could then have the best of my old and new systems at the same time.
Maybe you are right, but this is the first device I see that integrates an USB hub and a Firewire hub (to be honest, I didn't know that it could be done) in a external hard disk enclosure. I live in Mexico, the price for these things are:
-USB hub: US$ 15 -38
-160 HD: US$ 90-120
-FireWire Hub: never seen one here
-External HD enclosure: US$ 60-100
Really, the price of this unit is low, if the quality of the enclosure is similar to the case of the Mac mini, then it is cheap.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
It's just "ho hum, another external hard-drive that isn't worth it". A dollar per gig?! Even with a 10 dollars worth of USB/FW hubs? It's a fucking travesty.
Actually, as somebody who just bought a Firewire hub for his mini (The EyeTV 500 is a terrific gadget for turning the mini into an HDTV PVR, but it doesn't play nice on a Firewire daisy-chain at all!), I would have almost considered buying this thing a couple months ago. I currently have two external drives (a 250 and a 300), both in el-Cheapo Firewire+USB2 enclosures, and while I came in under $1 per Gig (counting the enclosures, but not counting the hub), the 400GB drives I was looking at did not.
So $400 for 400GB + a Firewire port replicator is a way I might have seriously considered at the time.
I'm kind of glad I didn't, though. If the time comes when I want to add another half-TB to my storage, I'll probably just RAID everything in a single box instead, and then I can sell off the old enclosures to friends of mine. That would be a tougher sell had I bought something this specialized.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
... the more things change, the more they stay the same ... http://members.aol.com/suprdave/classiccmp/512_hd2 0.htm
I think their name on the front isn't very attractive. Would be nice to find a way to get rid of it.
If I bought the item, why do they need to continue to advertise to me?
Doesn't stacking the mini impede the airflow? http://www.macintouch.com/macmini05.html
The costs we're talking about here are consumer costs -- what the consumer bears as she buys items one piece at a time, all with their own warranty terms, packaging, shipping blah blah blah. Those costs are inflated to make profit. Bulk purchasers enjoy a reduced cost per unit (vendors often sell bulk at a reduced rate because they in turn enjoy an efficiency). The manufacture should be buying [components] in bulk. I can't believe I'm explaining this.
A manufacturer, or a systems integrator makes money by packaging his know-how and leveraging his ability to work at scales the consumer can't into a desirable product. Economies of scale is like 7th grade education. If you made it out of high school, why are we having this discussion?
So, to directly answer your question: How do I expect the manufacturer to make any money off this [mac mini external drive]? I expect them to be able to buy hard-drives cheaper than I can, I expect them to be able to manufacture or purchase enclosures cheaper than I can, I expect them to get usb and firewire hubs cheaper than I can. So, If I can buy the components for the same cost as the manufacture and build it for the same cost it takes them to ship it to me then wtf am I buying? Where is the value? Finally, given that bulk ISVs/manufacturer CAN and DO enjoy economies of scale, I expect them to be making LOTS of "money off this thing", because they aren't passing a dime of that economy on to me.
HTH, cheers.
(p.s. when the GP was talking about 30 for the enclosure, that price is reduced by combining the enclosures fw / usb electronics with the hubs' electronics, they are saving even more money, i.e. making even more profit... so, not to keep ranting, the manufacturer saves on electronics, materials, power conversion, and media, and yet somehow, the cost is the same as all of these components seperately. Why not pay more for less?)
All of this is a long way to say the same damn thing I said hours ago: This device is overpriced and is therefore not news.
"News flash: neat component for excellent price!"
is much more interesting than
"News flash: barely novel component at mediocre price."
Again sorry to rant. Nothing personal.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
The MacMini is an incredibly cute and inviting little accessory, and I'd love to set one atop my desk. However, like most potential Mac converts, my desk surface is already dominated by a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, all connected to the ubiquitous Wintel desktop (or, alright, Linux if you prefer.)
Nobody is simply going to discard, or even unhook, their existing PC system simply to "try out" a MacMini as an alternative platform. Since two of the MacMini's chief selling points are:
Indeed, many home desktops are "shared" workspaces, and it may well be that between the husband, the wife, and the kids, some users decide to "switch" sooner than others. For compatibility reasons, it may never be an option to "permanently" unhook the PC. For all these reasons and more, I think the MacMini is a nifty idea, held back by the absence of the one critical peripheral it needs to thrive: an A/B switching port replicator.
(If one of these already exists with support for one-switch flipping of at least two USB devices and one VGA monitor, lemme know and I'll gladly recant and buy me a Mini :-)
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Do that math:
$500 - Mac mini (w/40GB)
$75 - additional 512MB RAM
$25 - bluetooth
$500 - Minimate with 400 GB
-----------
$1100 + S&H for 440GB G4 w/ bluetooth
So for about $1100 you get a great home media server that is SMALL but has a ton of room for audio and enough for some video until it can be off loaded onto optical media
or for $200 more ($1300) the iMac G5 with an 80 GB drive. Sure it has a terrific screen, faster processor, but even the yet-to-be-released version is rumored to have 512MB RAM, less than the mini configured above. And the HD is too small to store a large music library or more than a few movies.
The needs addressed are totally different. For the home entertainment server, the Macmini/Minimate combo is the way to go. You don't need a beautiful 17" flatscreen or the G5 processing power. The G4 is totally capable and the extra drive space is copious. Not to mention if you are interested in the asthetic, having a beautiful and small home server in the stereo rack will draw plenty of oogling eyes.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.