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Apple Upgrades Mac mini, Doesn't Tell Anybody
echomancer writes "Think Secret is reporting that Apple has released a slightly updated version of the Mac mini, but has failed to tell anyone. Some Mac minis may now include a 1.5GHz processor, 64MB of VRAM, and an updated 8x superdrive but these new machines are being shipped in boxes reflecting the original specs. 'The motivation behind this is to help clear current inventory without lowering prices. Essentially, customers are promised that the Mac mini they purchase will have specifications at least equal to the label, but that their system may exceed those.'"
Just like on my Cheerios box: "..., though some settling of contents normally occurs during shipping and loading".
I guess as long as the consumer gets at least what they're advertised to get I don't see this as any controversy, but maybe a decent approach by a seemingly decent company (don't know for sure, haven't done any real research into Apple). And as for any consumers of the "lower grade" Minis, again, I can't see there'd be any problem as long as they got what they paid for and was advertised.
On the other hand, there are lots of examples where companies advertise one way but deliver less. I recently purchases a washer/dryer set -- won't name the company, but it sears in my memory. Anyway, in the picture in the Sunday circular, they were pictured side-by-side, doors open. The dryer's inside light neatly illuminated the clothing inside, exactly one of my criteria. When I got mine, no light. Whaaaaah? I looked inside, no problem, there's the recess where the light should be, it must be burned out, annoying but fixable. The more I pried around and tried to find where the socket was the more confused I became. There wasn't ANYPLACE to install a light bulb. I called the company for an explanation. Their explanation: "the pictures in the ads don't necessarily reflect what the actual product looks like". No apology, no offer to fix it. Guess what, I'll remember this experience for a long long time. (The inside light was one of my primary criteria in dryers as I shopped.... sigh.)
If there are original spec minis still available, I would be pretty pissed if I ended up with one of them instead of the better ones. If thats the case Apple was probably just hoping no one would notice.
You actually mean that I could get more than what I agreed to pay for?! Those bastards, how dare they do such a thing! Honestly, people, it's not a bad thing.
Because the 9200 is good enough for what the Mac Mini is intended for, and it's what they're tooled to produce, and it's what fits on their motherboard. To use a different video chipset they'd likely have to re-design the motherboard, re-do several layers of PCB mask, and re-program several robots. To add 32MB Vram they just have to put different chips in one slot. Similar changes apply for the faster CPU and drive.
Simple... Upgrading the video processor in the Mac Mini to a Radeon 9600 would make this $500-$700 computer dangerously close in performance to a $1,300 low-end G5 iMac. Apple probably doesn't want to risk cannabilizing their existing higher-end desktops with an upgraded entry level system.
First, it's better to surprise a customer with something better than expected.
CNET News has a good point about this though, in that new owners hearing of this and being among the "unlucky" may complain about it, since they know there are betters setups out there, of the same model. And even if they don't, they certainly won't belong to the positively surprised crowd. I'm not sure singling out users on random with computers even using the same part number to confuse the retailers is such a good idea, especially when done silently from Apple's part.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
A similar thing happened when I bought my Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 near its end of life. They ran out of the buggy PXA250 processors and started shipping the last units with the improved PXA255. It was even marked on the box, but since most people mail-ordered the units it was a crap-shoot what you got. I got the old unit, and was a bit disappointed even though I did get what I paid for. I suspect Mac Mini buyers who don't get the lucky upgrade will feel the same way. They may even return their units and try again.
It's perfectly legal. I bought two boxes of cereal at the store, both claiming that there may be a prize inside. I open one box, dig around, and find my prize. I open the second box, dig around, and find no prize. Can I really get mad at the manufacturer? You can always create a "Component Reviewer's Lobby" and get funds to have such a law legislated... but I just can't fathom that.
are you retarded?! this is a way of bloating the price of old models. how is that ethical?
dont look at it as "hey, im paying for a 1.4ghz box and i got a 1.5ghz box!"
look at it as "hey i could have had the option of buying this 1.4ghz box for 100 bucks less or paying the $699 for a 1.5ghz box"
by your logic apple can continue selling mac minis for $699 in 10 years advertised as a 1.4ghz machine and you dont know whether you are getting a 3ghz box or a 20ghz box.
You mean as opposed to how it's unethical to be selling people older products at the same price as the newer ones, on the off chance you MIGHT pick up the newer model?
Yeah, perfectly reasonable. Sleezy bastards.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
the close window control is supposed to close a window, and not shut down the application. you may be used to windows, where closing the last open window also shuts down the app, but many ux peeps will tell you this is not a good assumption to make: if you close the last window of a database server (say, a query window), do you want the database to shut down? if you close the last window to your mail app, do you want all mail services to shut down (i like still being able to see when ive got incoming mail)? the apple ux teams position on these things and others are well known (try google)
If I close the last window of my database, mail, or any client, I want the client to close. The server is a separate application, and shouldn't be affected whatsoever by the client quitting, I don't know why you are mixing these two applications up. When I close my web browser, I don't want Slashdot, or my local, web server to go down. They are completely unrelated applications, and should be treated as such.
A mail client for instance, say you use Thunderbird, has absolutely nothing to do with an SMTP server, such as Sendmail. It's not even made by the same people...
Not the server - background email checking continues when you close the mail client window on a Mac.
It's a very good idea - an open window has nothing to do with a program actually being running. It takes a bit of getting used to if you're coming from Windoze, but imagine that the close button is just sending the app to the systray - which is not an unheard of Windoze behavior.
With most apps, if you want them to quit, you have to explicitly tell them to quit. The strange behavior is the few that do quit, including a few where Apple needs to read their own guidelines.
This method allows them to ethically clear unused inventory and provide additional value to the customer
I know vocal Apple users have a hard time really understanding that what is good for Apple might not be good for youself but I'll post this anyway and take the hit.
A lot of people attempt to keep up or do a little asking around and research before buying a product. In fact, it is really not hard for a lot of products because companies and sales folks will advertise up and coming products days, weeks, and maybe even months ahead of time. I would be not be the happiest person in the world or get a good feeling about buying a $500 product and find out 2 days later a new version was on the market. Add to the fact that the company is doing everything within its power to prevent me from knowing a better one was just around the corner and about to be released, including the very unusal step of keeping it quite after the fact and packaging the product in the old box. I know this is only a step upgrade and not a platform change like the difference between a Sony PS2 and a PS3 but it is not a small trivial change either.
Mod as you wish but no one needs waste time explaining Apples position on why they did this. It is a simple to understand reason and already mentioned many times in other threads. My point is, there are two ways to introduce a new or improved product. As a person like many others who is actually buying the products, Apples method is not in my best interest and probably not in many others.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Yeah, this news is ridiculously old. Saw it on digg.com a long time ago.
/. for the aftermath commentary.
I go to places like digg.com for news, I come to
You got what the box says it contains. Why should you have the right to complain? If you've heard there are boxes out there with beter specs, you also know that the others don't have the extra's.
The same happens with CPU overclocking. If you get a specimen that cannot be overclocked enough, do you go complaining? Still, another CPU of the same type might be perfectly qualified for higher speeds, but dumped in the lower frequency "bucket" because of shortage.
You could go complaining if you got the upgraded model and it turns out it consumes more electricity. If that would be the case, however, I'm sure you could easily find people who are willing to go and trade it in *for* you.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I want the one with better specs.
Get out your wallet and buy something better. Do your research and get the best model, like you said. If a 1.42GHz mini is not what you need/want, then go buy a G5 or whatever. Or wait until Apple is willing to guarantee you a 1.5GHz unit.
I can't believe you'd complain because there's a chance you might get more than you paid for. Do you get annoyed when you see those "20% More Cheez Doodles!" packages in the supermarket two days after you bought a regular-sized bag?
It seems just about every fairly recent piece of software released for Windows does this as well, leaving an "agent" running in the background.. quite annoying actually... I don't need my video player, soundcard driver or any other similar app to continue running after I specifically told it to shut down.
It's a very good idea - an open window has nothing to do with a program actually being running. It takes a bit of getting used to if you're coming from Windoze, but imagine that the close button is just sending the app to the systray - which is not an unheard of Windoze behavior.
And of course something that is also becoming more common with windows is an "agent" running without being visible, only appearing now and again to annoy you with various alerts about more expensive version of them being available.
That said, I can see why you'd want your mail app to keep running in the background, but for most apps this kind of behaviour is totally unwarranted and just drains resources (it's not uncommon for these little "agents" to each consume 2-5MB of RAM, not a lot if you've only got one or two running, but when you've got Maya and Photoshop running at the same time you don't want to waste 50MB of your precious RAM on little helper apps that do nothing (did I mention I also turn off the "automatic/realtime/whatever scanning" in anti-virus software because it seems to be completely random and really messes with performance?)).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
At a guess, I'd say the Mac mini motherboard is more size-sensitive than the IBM laptop motherboard, so the IBM designers have more latitude to leave 'enough' space for whatever video solution is to be used. I expect the Mac mini motherboard is jam packed so tight that 'just' swapping the video chipset is a non-trivial task.
the close window control is supposed to close a window, and not shut down the application. you may be used to windows, where closing the last open window also shuts down the app, but many ux peeps will tell you this is not a good assumption to make:
... It is annoying that Apple chose to make single dialog apps behave different in this respect.
Yet iPhoto closes when you close the window
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Upgrading the video processor in the Mac Mini to a Radeon 9600 would make this $500-$700 computer dangerously close in performance to a $1,300 low-end G5 iMac.
So the $700-$900 eMac with the Radeon 9600 is "dangerously close" in performance to the iMac G5? How about the $1000 iBook 12"?
It probably would be, if they'd stuck with the G4 long enough they could start shipping low end Macs with the MPC8641, but the 166 MHz CPU bus on the 74xx series G4s is just too slow.
Certainly I do run into shareware items that seem absurdly overpriced for what they do; those I don't buy.
But overall, I'm pretty okay with the idea of contributing modest sums to small developers making handy little tools. It doesn't take a whole lot for a thingy to make my life twenty bucks better. And if giving those twenty bucks to some developer returns the favor, and makes him more likely to write the next life-enriching thingy, I'm all in favor of it. I have a mild preference for open-source development models just for communal bugfixing, but in practice I find that closed-source development produces at least as much of the software that I actually find good and useful.
As to the relative costs of small shareware and big commercial titles... Well, the economics of software is wacky. That $50 game will sell five million copies, whereas the $40 shareware tool will sell a few dozen or hundred, probably amounting to much less money per person behind it. And I've found that if I have problems with or suggestions for that $40 piece of shareware, I can send mail to the developer and most likely get a meaningful response--not something that's as likely with that $50 game.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!