They weren't wrong when they said that either. The new mini is not a very good game system.
The real question is, why do you keep posting this exact same quote on every single Mac mini story? Are you just trying to get more hits for the "free mini" pyramid scam in your sig file?
You must not think it's that bad of a computer if you are willing to turn yourself into a total whore to get your hands on one.
Wish I could. It seems to be everybody's "only problem" with the machine. It would be a sweet little media unit if they even managed to slap in fair-to-middlin' 128 MB video card.
As it is, it's an awesome li'l feller for a lot of headless tasks (as an example, my old G4 mini has been rack-mounted as an audio processor, and is only accessed via VNC on the Airport card), but it still falls just barely short of being a media center "dream system."
Lucky for me, with my projector at the back of the room and a re-arranged coat closet next to it, I have plenty of space for a dual-G5 tower... but I feel a little sympathy for mac-heads who need something small and unobtrusive in their living-room TV cabinets, yet still want full HDTV resolutions and maybe the occasional 3D gaming experience. The new mini seems to come about 90% of the way to meeting their needs.
Well, to be fair, that's the +/- 3 db rating, which isn't all that far off from a lot of other low-end systems out there. It's not like it clips over everything above 16KHz.
(Although AAC pretty much does exactly that, IIRC, so people listening to stuff downloaded from iTMS probably won't miss out on a thing by using this system.)
My beef with it is that it doesn't know if it wants to be a high-quality living room system or a portable boom box to throw in the back of your truck... and because of that it fails to be either.
The audio performance isn't really good enough for extended indoor listening, and the price and design of it make it very ill-suited to bring along to the places you would normally bring a portable system to.
Have you listened to one yet? Have you *seen* one yet? The three drivers inside the Hi-Fi don't appear to be the paper-cone Bose style drivers. This isn't a multi-hyper-extended chamber design, like the Bose.
This is exactly what critics of it have been saying about it: It's just like a Bose.
To an actual "hi-fi" enthusiast, that's the same thing as saying "it's an overpriced chunk of shit."
Go listen to it yourself. If you the flaws in its sound don't become obvious to you just as quickly, we've got nothing further to discuss, because it would mean that you clearly can't hear the difference between high fidelity sound and garbage.
Which for the low-fi input device being used...an iPod...is about perfect.
The iPod plays uncompressed or lossless-compressed audio which sounds just as good (and in some cases, far better) than just about any CD player on the market. WTF are you talking about?
If you are going to listen to AAC or MP3 files, you might as well use a MUCH cheaper room system than the "iPod Hi-Fi"
That's only a problem because this particular "portable" system does nothing to protect the iPod connected to it.
If the Hi-Fi was a bit cheaper, a bit more rugged, and designed so the iPod was secured somewhere INSIDE the system, I'd feel a lot better about taking it to the park, or anywhere else where it might get banged around a bit.
If you think PS3 fans are touchy, try making a wise-crack about the Revolution somtime, particularilly it's lack of HDTV support. Then you'll really see the bitchslapping!
As I said elsewhere, they sound a lot like the compact Bose offerings.
In other words: Fancy use of fake imaging, exaggerated bass boost with no real bottom end, and overall unsettlingly nothing like true high fidelity.
In other words, it's designed with the intention to dazzle the casual observer long enough to run their credit card through the register, not to faithfully reproduce music.
After listening to it, I'm convinced that they are targeting the Bose market, because only people who mistake Bose gear for high fidelity audio will like how this thing sounds.
The new mini kicks all kinds of ass, but the iPod Hi-Fi is a dud.
(Not that they won't sell a ton of them... I'm just saying that I'm not impressed by it.)
An iPod ghetto blaster? Kinda goes against the whole portable movement, doesn't it?
Not really. It runs on d-cells just like any other portable boom-box.
That said, it has several strikes against it:
1. It costs to much to take it with you while tubing down the Apple river or to a tailgate party at a St. Paul Saints game. For the kind of places one usually hauls a boom box, you want to bring something that won't make you break down in tears if it gets run over by a car or smashed against rocks.
2. It's called a "Hi-Fi" in spite of sounding like a piece of turd fished out of the Bose washroom. Seriously. Go listen to it, then go to your mall's Bose outlet and compare. Same goofy sound; different branding.
3. The iPod rests gingerly on top of it instead of loading into a nice, sturdy enclosure.
4. There's no top handle, so carrying it around with one hand is kind of awkward.
"We're already making bucketloads of cash from an installed user base of 6 million just being a PC title.
Correction: It's a PC/Mac title.
Furthermore, if it already runs on PPC Macs, it would be rather trivial to "port" it to the X-Box, which uses very similar chips.
X-Box Live's lock-down, coupled with lack of an included keyboard/mouse, are the only real technical hurdles. It's not as if they would just say "no" to a little extra money if MS were to open up their Live network to them.
p.s. my step-father's family's last name is your nickname. any relation?:-)
Sorry, no.
"Golias" was the made-up patron Saint of the goliards (The goliards were travelling monks who studied music in churches while paying for their transportation and lodging by entertaining in taverns. A lot of the favorite drinking songs of the Dark Ages were parodies of sacred music. Read the translations of the songs in the Carmina Burana, and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about.)
Since I'm a musician who is a bit religious but also a bit of a pub-crawler, I've used "Golias" as my gaming and on-line handle for about 15 years now, give or take.
I just followed your link. Your version requires the secrecy of backstage staff, which is just has hard to maintain as the secrecy of on-stage staff (shills), and my way is easier to pull off.
and second of all, you obviously haven't heard one yet.
I have heard one. I stand by my statement that it's "crappy."
The immediate impact of hearing it was, "it sounds kind of like that Bose Acoustic Wave Radio" horse shit. Very floaty stereo imaging, and extremely fake-sounding bass reproduction. It was the audio equivelant of watching a cartoon vs. a live-action movie. If you think there's anything "hi-fi" about the "Hi-Fi", then you clearly have never set foot in a real audio store.
I have the same problem with the locked-down nature of AAC files.
AAC files are not "locked-down." AAC is just the audio layer of the MPEG-4 format. It's every bit as standard and open as MP3, it's just that some companies have been slow to adopt it, opting instead to use formats that really are "locked-down", such as ATRAC and WMA.
It's becoming a meaningless debate, though. Hard drives are getting to be cheap enough per GB that we will all soon be leaving everything either completely uncompressed, or compressed using lossless codecs.
But did you not notice the tremendous number of output options geared to TV output and receiver output? And Front Row included?
No. I did not notice that as I was hooking up a mini to my TV last year. Nor did I notice that when replacing it with my G5 tower six months ago, with the TOSLink output allowing me to scrap the M-Audio USB box my mini needed.
Thanks for the totally new information. If I go back in time a year and a half, I can tell myself all about it and be astounded.
Sony isn't the best at anything, and is overpriced at everything, but if you don't feel like doing any market research, buy a Sony and you will do okay.
- The Sony Cybershot is a pretty good camera. - The Sony Receivers are feature-rich, support lots of inputs, and sound good. - The Sony DVD player is a pretty good unit for $100 which plays most formats. - The Sony car stereos work well, are reasonably powerful, and sound nice. - The Sony laptops are slick little units which do a pretty good job of staving off "iBook envy" among Windows bigots. - The Sony ear buds are actually a small step up from the iPod's offerings for only ten bucks. - The Sony phase-cancelling headphones are a much better choice than the Bose ones you see pushed in most stores. - The Sony cabinet speakers... are total crap, sure, but they're not really in the high-end speaker market.
The grandparent post is right. They've got a reputation for being "pretty good" in almost every market where they have a presense, and an easy brand to look for if you're a busy yuppy with no desire to study reviews and compare prices all day.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does the word "astroturf" slowly creep into my waking mind as I read more and more about this bogus contest.
They weren't wrong when they said that either. The new mini is not a very good game system.
The real question is, why do you keep posting this exact same quote on every single Mac mini story? Are you just trying to get more hits for the "free mini" pyramid scam in your sig file?
You must not think it's that bad of a computer if you are willing to turn yourself into a total whore to get your hands on one.
Someone convince me I am wrong...
Wish I could. It seems to be everybody's "only problem" with the machine. It would be a sweet little media unit if they even managed to slap in fair-to-middlin' 128 MB video card.
As it is, it's an awesome li'l feller for a lot of headless tasks (as an example, my old G4 mini has been rack-mounted as an audio processor, and is only accessed via VNC on the Airport card), but it still falls just barely short of being a media center "dream system."
Lucky for me, with my projector at the back of the room and a re-arranged coat closet next to it, I have plenty of space for a dual-G5 tower... but I feel a little sympathy for mac-heads who need something small and unobtrusive in their living-room TV cabinets, yet still want full HDTV resolutions and maybe the occasional 3D gaming experience. The new mini seems to come about 90% of the way to meeting their needs.
Well, to be fair, that's the +/- 3 db rating, which isn't all that far off from a lot of other low-end systems out there. It's not like it clips over everything above 16KHz.
(Although AAC pretty much does exactly that, IIRC, so people listening to stuff downloaded from iTMS probably won't miss out on a thing by using this system.)
My beef with it is that it doesn't know if it wants to be a high-quality living room system or a portable boom box to throw in the back of your truck... and because of that it fails to be either.
The audio performance isn't really good enough for extended indoor listening, and the price and design of it make it very ill-suited to bring along to the places you would normally bring a portable system to.
Have you listened to one yet? Have you *seen* one yet? The three drivers inside the Hi-Fi don't appear to be the paper-cone Bose style drivers. This isn't a multi-hyper-extended chamber design, like the Bose.
This is exactly what critics of it have been saying about it: It's just like a Bose.
To an actual "hi-fi" enthusiast, that's the same thing as saying "it's an overpriced chunk of shit."
Oh, by the way, I have heard it, since then, for longer stretches.
Oddly, it did not suddenly and magically start sounding good.
You can pick on me for snap-judgements after you've heard how bad it sounds for yourself, not before.
Go listen to it yourself. If you the flaws in its sound don't become obvious to you just as quickly, we've got nothing further to discuss, because it would mean that you clearly can't hear the difference between high fidelity sound and garbage.
Which for the low-fi input device being used...an iPod...is about perfect.
The iPod plays uncompressed or lossless-compressed audio which sounds just as good (and in some cases, far better) than just about any CD player on the market. WTF are you talking about?
If you are going to listen to AAC or MP3 files, you might as well use a MUCH cheaper room system than the "iPod Hi-Fi"
That's only a problem because this particular "portable" system does nothing to protect the iPod connected to it.
If the Hi-Fi was a bit cheaper, a bit more rugged, and designed so the iPod was secured somewhere INSIDE the system, I'd feel a lot better about taking it to the park, or anywhere else where it might get banged around a bit.
-1, Off-topic... I guess I should have belittled the person I was correcting. That got the guy right after me modded up as Insightful. :/
If you think PS3 fans are touchy, try making a wise-crack about the Revolution somtime, particularilly it's lack of HDTV support. Then you'll really see the bitchslapping!
Yes, they are already in the Apple Stores.
As I said elsewhere, they sound a lot like the compact Bose offerings.
In other words: Fancy use of fake imaging, exaggerated bass boost with no real bottom end, and overall unsettlingly nothing like true high fidelity.
In other words, it's designed with the intention to dazzle the casual observer long enough to run their credit card through the register, not to faithfully reproduce music.
After listening to it, I'm convinced that they are targeting the Bose market, because only people who mistake Bose gear for high fidelity audio will like how this thing sounds.
The new mini kicks all kinds of ass, but the iPod Hi-Fi is a dud.
(Not that they won't sell a ton of them... I'm just saying that I'm not impressed by it.)
An iPod ghetto blaster? Kinda goes against the whole portable movement, doesn't it?
Not really. It runs on d-cells just like any other portable boom-box.
That said, it has several strikes against it:
1. It costs to much to take it with you while tubing down the Apple river or to a tailgate party at a St. Paul Saints game. For the kind of places one usually hauls a boom box, you want to bring something that won't make you break down in tears if it gets run over by a car or smashed against rocks.
2. It's called a "Hi-Fi" in spite of sounding like a piece of turd fished out of the Bose washroom. Seriously. Go listen to it, then go to your mall's Bose outlet and compare. Same goofy sound; different branding.
3. The iPod rests gingerly on top of it instead of loading into a nice, sturdy enclosure.
4. There's no top handle, so carrying it around with one hand is kind of awkward.
Both spellings are correct.
Don't take my word for it. Look at line 1 of the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor
"We're already making bucketloads of cash from an installed user base of 6 million just being a PC title.
Correction: It's a PC/Mac title.
Furthermore, if it already runs on PPC Macs, it would be rather trivial to "port" it to the X-Box, which uses very similar chips.
X-Box Live's lock-down, coupled with lack of an included keyboard/mouse, are the only real technical hurdles. It's not as if they would just say "no" to a little extra money if MS were to open up their Live network to them.
p.s. my step-father's family's last name is your nickname. any relation? :-)
Sorry, no.
"Golias" was the made-up patron Saint of the goliards (The goliards were travelling monks who studied music in churches while paying for their transportation and lodging by entertaining in taverns. A lot of the favorite drinking songs of the Dark Ages were parodies of sacred music. Read the translations of the songs in the Carmina Burana, and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about.)
Since I'm a musician who is a bit religious but also a bit of a pub-crawler, I've used "Golias" as my gaming and on-line handle for about 15 years now, give or take.
I just followed your link. Your version requires the secrecy of backstage staff, which is just has hard to maintain as the secrecy of on-stage staff (shills), and my way is easier to pull off.
Penn and Teller are famous for revealing how they do most of their tricks, and the freely admitted to using shills for some of them.
The solution to most magic tricks are "too obvious" once you know them.
and second of all, you obviously haven't heard one yet.
I have heard one. I stand by my statement that it's "crappy."
The immediate impact of hearing it was, "it sounds kind of like that Bose Acoustic Wave Radio" horse shit. Very floaty stereo imaging, and extremely fake-sounding bass reproduction. It was the audio equivelant of watching a cartoon vs. a live-action movie. If you think there's anything "hi-fi" about the "Hi-Fi", then you clearly have never set foot in a real audio store.
I have the same problem with the locked-down nature of AAC files.
AAC files are not "locked-down." AAC is just the audio layer of the MPEG-4 format. It's every bit as standard and open as MP3, it's just that some companies have been slow to adopt it, opting instead to use formats that really are "locked-down", such as ATRAC and WMA.
It's becoming a meaningless debate, though. Hard drives are getting to be cheap enough per GB that we will all soon be leaving everything either completely uncompressed, or compressed using lossless codecs.
There are two kinds of companies - companies with supply chain problems, and companies that Best Buy and Wal Mart let in the stores.
That's odd. I could swear I saw a big X-Box 360 demo station last time I was at Best Buy...
*sigh* yet another person on slashdot who needs a joke carefully spelled out for them...
a st_and_Central_Asia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition#Middle_E
But did you not notice the tremendous number of output options geared to TV output and receiver output? And Front Row included?
No. I did not notice that as I was hooking up a mini to my TV last year. Nor did I notice that when replacing it with my G5 tower six months ago, with the TOSLink output allowing me to scrap the M-Audio USB box my mini needed.
Thanks for the totally new information. If I go back in time a year and a half, I can tell myself all about it and be astounded.
Why not anymore?
Sony isn't the best at anything, and is overpriced at everything, but if you don't feel like doing any market research, buy a Sony and you will do okay.
- The Sony Cybershot is a pretty good camera.
- The Sony Receivers are feature-rich, support lots of inputs, and sound good.
- The Sony DVD player is a pretty good unit for $100 which plays most formats.
- The Sony car stereos work well, are reasonably powerful, and sound nice.
- The Sony laptops are slick little units which do a pretty good job of staving off "iBook envy" among Windows bigots.
- The Sony ear buds are actually a small step up from the iPod's offerings for only ten bucks.
- The Sony phase-cancelling headphones are a much better choice than the Bose ones you see pushed in most stores.
- The Sony cabinet speakers... are total crap, sure, but they're not really in the high-end speaker market.
The grandparent post is right. They've got a reputation for being "pretty good" in almost every market where they have a presense, and an easy brand to look for if you're a busy yuppy with no desire to study reviews and compare prices all day.