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."

Comments

Trademark infringement?

[stereotree]

As a law student, I see this in terms of how Apple's legal dept. might view this new "accessory" as infringing on their trademark in the Mac mini.

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).

Re:Trademark infringement?

[peragrin]

What your forgetting is that Apple promotes third party additions. With the special requirements of the Apple crowd(style, form, function, design) third party toys are a tough sell.

Take a good look around ipod accessories. Heck even Radio Shack has them now. With such a name they probably didn't get Apple's approval, but if it match's Apple style closely enough Apple doesn't care.

Re:Pricing

[greed]

Yup; there is a limit to the number of hubs you can have in either a USB or a FireWire chain, so you'd want to connect, say, 1 Mini Mate right to the computer, then 2 more Mini Mates to the first Mini Mate.

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...

Re:Mildly OT, since no one else has said it yet ..

[Kyusaku Natsume]

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.

HTML overview: IE required(!)

[bach37]

When trying to load the HTML presentation, I get this:

This presentation contains content that your browser may not be able to show properly. This presentation was optimized for more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
If you would like to proceed anyway, click here.

Re:Useful port replication: share PC peripherals

[topham]

I have a KVM switch which is USB based.

It supports 2 VGA monitors, and has 4 USB ports on the console.

I have my wireless keyboard/mouse from Logitech plugged into it.

It is hooked up to a Windows XP machine and a PowerMac G5.

It works well, EXCEPT I dislike the delay when switching from one computer to the other. For general use I run a program called Synergy (available on sourceforge) which allows you to drag the mouse from one computer to the other, with keyboard focus following the mouse.

Cut & paste of plain text works reasonably well and it makes having a Mac, and PC on the same desk a dream to work with.

If all that's holding you back from buying a MacMini is the thought of adding a second keyboard and mouse, forget it, go out and buy one. USB based KVM switches are readily available.

(If you need one with PS/2, and USB support you might have to look harder).

I recommend both a switch box for those circumstances when synergy doesn't work, and synergy for all other times.

Dragging a mouse from a PC running Windows XP to a machine running Mac OS X is sure to impress your friends, and you can throw a linux box into the mix too!