I'm not complaining about what they make, I'm pointing out that compared to functionally comparable PCs they cost more. I'm not even complaining *that* they cost more: I'm getting a premium OS for the premium cost. But Apple *does* have a 40% profit margin in a business where 5% is more typical - that's how they pay for the R&D that produces the software that makes it WORTH 40% more - and they don't get that profit margin out of thin air: they get it by charging more for their hardware.
Well you can't discount the fact that small form factor computers do draw a premium.
I rather think I can, actually.
They require a premium price to be cost-effective, but that doesn't mean that many people consider them worth that premium. There is a size, one that's well over the size of the Mac mini, where people are in general not willing to pay the premium to get the computer that small. There have been small desktop computers, some in the same ballpark as the Mac mini, but they don't sell all that well and they don't stay in production for long. The reason the mini sells well is because it's the cheapest computer running OS X, not because teh size is inherently valuable to a significant percentage of the users.
Look at all of the subnotebooks out there.
Notebooks are a different market with different demands, where extremely small size provides a clear benefit. Desktop computers are not portables, and a small size doesn't have a corresponding benefit.
A better keyboard? WTF are you smoking? Dell laptop keyboards are the worst things I've ever used.
Really? Dell keyboards are nothing special, they're not all that good, but they're not horrible. The worst keyboards I've used in the last 10 years have all been made by Apple. Apple laptop keyboards are the worst... my Macbook Pro keyboard... I can't use it for more than 10 or 15 minutes without pain.
Comparing a mini at its time of release to a tower of the same price doesn't make any sense.
If Apple had a tower of the same price, I wouldn't have considered the mini for a second. Hardly anyone would.
My analogy makes perfect sense. Dahon doesn't make non-folding bikes.
Other companies make bikes that are functionally equivalent, other than folding. Nobody but Apple makes computer that are functionally equivalent to Macs, folding or otherwise, because you can't run OS X on any other kind fo computer (not legally, anyway).
If Dahon was the only company that made bikes, then if I wanted a non-folding bike I'd have to weld it together the way you describe, and your analogy would be reasonable.
If you bought the mini right after release then you paid for the form factor.
You're getting really desperate now.
No, I bought it because I had been keeping my old Beige G3 alive for too many years with upgrades, and I was damned if I was going to buy an all-in-one. If the Mac mini had been as big as my Beige G3 I'd still have bought it the month it came out... in fact I'd have been happier about it.
The only way you can make Macs come out "as cheap as" comparable PCs is by requiring that every last feature of the Mac is included in the PC, and discounting every feature of the PC that the Mac doesn't have... and I'll bet the "comparable Dell" had features the MBP doesn't, like a docking station port, a better keyboard, a user-serviceable hard drive. What, you don't want those things? You don't want to count them? Then quit demanding I count the annoying form factor of the Mac mini as a "benefit", or add the price difference between a Dell dock and a "Bookends" dock for your MBP, and a Logitech diNovo keyboard, and something to cover the extra cost of getting the hard drive replaced without Applecare over slapping a new drive into your Dell.
What? That's ludicrous? Then why isn't your demand just as silly?
The USB spec only requires a USB port to provide 100mA at 5V. It is normal for computers (even laptops) to provide at least 500mA at 5V, which supports an unpowered USB hub and 4 devices (the most an unpowered hub is allowed to support), and many devices draw more than 100mA... particularly when charging. Depending on the model, a Mac mini may only provide 300 mA for both ports. This satisfies the USB specs, but it means that once you have a mouse and a keyboard plugged in you're pushing the edge. It definitely can't handle an unpowered hub, and it can't handle an iPod shuffle.
There are a couple of companies that make an "unpowered" hub for the Mac mini that pull extra power from the Firewire port to make up the difference. I bought one of those and used it for a while, but eventually broke down and bought a powered hub.
The MacMini provides standard USB ports with full spec power.
The USB spec for power is very lax, and in fact that's one place where Firewire (which was one of Apple's initiatives) is far superior: a device can satisfy the USB spec without providing enough power for anything but the absolute lowest power devices. Even an iPod Shuffle requires more than USB standard minimum requirements.
A machine that hides in your living room, silent, and smaller than your DVD player is of hugely more value than a bigger machine.
The Mac mini is not silent. The fan is definitely audible from a couple of feet away when it kicks in to "high", and it does that when playing DVDs. It's quiet enough for a living room, yes, but so are any number of similarly low performance low profile desktops.
"Hides in your living room"? Well, I guess, if you hide it.
"Smaller than your DVD player"? There's dozens of DVD players smaller than the Mac mini that list for under $100.
The small size of the Mac mini is hugely overblown. It would be a better product if it was 4x the volume. It would be more silent, too, since it would have more room for airflow (most of the volume of stereo gear is air, if they packed the components as tightly as they could they'd need to add fans to them too) and if you have even one other piece of home entertainment gear you no longer "need" to hide it.
Almost exactly the same as the Macbook... other than having a much better keyboard and a matte black case instead of a shiny white one it was pretty much identical in every significant spec. In fact, where the parts were identified, almost all of them were the exact same parts as the Macbook. I suspect that OSX86 would boot on it and already have all the right drivers.
The Macbook Pro I eventually decided on is significantly heavier than either.
You put together a MacMini for 50% of the price? There's only two companies out there I'm aware of that offer similar sized machines.
I specced a functionally equivalent machine, and even gave Apple a break by not including the cost of the external hard drive case, external powered USB hub, and power strip that made the total size of the Mac mini solution pretty much the same as the low profile desktop, but I *did* count the firewire card in the cost of the PC!
I am not counting "styling" (including the size of the Mac mini, the smooth white case on the Macbook, etc). Just function. Styling too often has negative value (eg, the Mac mini doesn't even provide enough power from USB to charge an iPod Shuffle).
Go ahead and spec out a similar machine from Dell, HP, or Lenovo.
Last time I did that I was able to put together a machine comparable to a Mac Mini for about 50% of the price, and a Macbook for about 70% of the price. On average, the "Mac Tax" seems to be about 40% of the list price of a Mac.
I still bought the Mac mini and the Macbook Pro (thought that was tough, I could have gotten everything I actually wanted (hardware-wise) from a Macbook Pro for about the same price as the Macbook). When the choice is Windows vs UNIX-with-actual-applications, the Mac Tax is worth it. But it's still real.
Those are no more "iPhone clones" than the all-in-one Windows boxes that came out for a while after the iMac came out were "iMac clones". There's a difference between a clone and a lookalike.
Few people have any illusions that Apple is "not evil" in some sense that makes them different from any other company.
But this case has nothing to do with being evil or being good.
Apple and Microsoft have a completely different set of business models. It's not just that they're smaller, the whole revenue model is radically different: Apple makes their money from hardware sales. This is probably the biggest reason that Apple's still in business: they're not fighting Microsoft on Microsoft's playing field.
Anyway, they have to sell hardware to do that. So they license the software in a way that drives hardware sales. So they kind of don't have an alternative: go up against Microsoft when death is on the line, or sue someone who's blatantly violating your license.
Google announced they were changing their policy to only store anonymized tokens after some period of time a year ago. Unfortunately the Viacom lawsuit was filed about a year ago, so they would have to have retained those logs anyway.
They're talking about hyperthreading, like the Pentium 4. If one thread is waiting on a cache miss another thread that already has everything in cache will get to run.
Soekris devices are really nifty. I have a friend who swears by them. They always seem to be out of stock of everything I'm interested in, though, whenever I look.:)
I wonder if that was the one that was on display at Apple's only distributor in Sydney when I used to go in (damn, I can almost remember the bus lines I took) and write game programs on the display models in the back. They didn't have much software back then so they let kids write stuff and leave it running as an early "attract mode". There was an Apple I in a display case... it was never powered on when I was there.
Wouldn't it be ironic if Apple sues this guy for copyright infringement and pushing the DMCA instead of being thankful that he recovered this piece of history?
It would be extremely unlikely. Apple has to respond promptly to schemes that bypass controls that they are are contractually obligated to provide. They have not, so far as I know (and I've used Apple computers almost as long as there have BEEN Apple computers) ever shown any interest in chasing after people over ancient legacy stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not complaining about what they make, I'm pointing out that compared to functionally comparable PCs they cost more. I'm not even complaining *that* they cost more: I'm getting a premium OS for the premium cost. But Apple *does* have a 40% profit margin in a business where 5% is more typical - that's how they pay for the R&D that produces the software that makes it WORTH 40% more - and they don't get that profit margin out of thin air: they get it by charging more for their hardware.
This isn't magic, it's business.
Well you can't discount the fact that small form factor computers do draw a premium.
I rather think I can, actually.
They require a premium price to be cost-effective, but that doesn't mean that many people consider them worth that premium. There is a size, one that's well over the size of the Mac mini, where people are in general not willing to pay the premium to get the computer that small. There have been small desktop computers, some in the same ballpark as the Mac mini, but they don't sell all that well and they don't stay in production for long. The reason the mini sells well is because it's the cheapest computer running OS X, not because teh size is inherently valuable to a significant percentage of the users.
Look at all of the subnotebooks out there.
Notebooks are a different market with different demands, where extremely small size provides a clear benefit. Desktop computers are not portables, and a small size doesn't have a corresponding benefit.
A better keyboard? WTF are you smoking? Dell laptop keyboards are the worst things I've ever used.
Really? Dell keyboards are nothing special, they're not all that good, but they're not horrible. The worst keyboards I've used in the last 10 years have all been made by Apple. Apple laptop keyboards are the worst... my Macbook Pro keyboard... I can't use it for more than 10 or 15 minutes without pain.
Comparing a mini at its time of release to a tower of the same price doesn't make any sense.
If Apple had a tower of the same price, I wouldn't have considered the mini for a second. Hardly anyone would.
My analogy makes perfect sense. Dahon doesn't make non-folding bikes.
Other companies make bikes that are functionally equivalent, other than folding. Nobody but Apple makes computer that are functionally equivalent to Macs, folding or otherwise, because you can't run OS X on any other kind fo computer (not legally, anyway).
If Dahon was the only company that made bikes, then if I wanted a non-folding bike I'd have to weld it together the way you describe, and your analogy would be reasonable.
If Apple made a "non folding" desktop Mac, your analogy might actually make some sense.
If you bought the mini right after release then you paid for the form factor.
You're getting really desperate now.
No, I bought it because I had been keeping my old Beige G3 alive for too many years with upgrades, and I was damned if I was going to buy an all-in-one. If the Mac mini had been as big as my Beige G3 I'd still have bought it the month it came out... in fact I'd have been happier about it.
The only way you can make Macs come out "as cheap as" comparable PCs is by requiring that every last feature of the Mac is included in the PC, and discounting every feature of the PC that the Mac doesn't have... and I'll bet the "comparable Dell" had features the MBP doesn't, like a docking station port, a better keyboard, a user-serviceable hard drive. What, you don't want those things? You don't want to count them? Then quit demanding I count the annoying form factor of the Mac mini as a "benefit", or add the price difference between a Dell dock and a "Bookends" dock for your MBP, and a Logitech diNovo keyboard, and something to cover the extra cost of getting the hard drive replaced without Applecare over slapping a new drive into your Dell.
What? That's ludicrous? Then why isn't your demand just as silly?
You bumped into the 'wait for refresh' time.
I bought the Mac mini the month it came out. Try again.
The USB spec only requires a USB port to provide 100mA at 5V. It is normal for computers (even laptops) to provide at least 500mA at 5V, which supports an unpowered USB hub and 4 devices (the most an unpowered hub is allowed to support), and many devices draw more than 100mA... particularly when charging. Depending on the model, a Mac mini may only provide 300 mA for both ports. This satisfies the USB specs, but it means that once you have a mouse and a keyboard plugged in you're pushing the edge. It definitely can't handle an unpowered hub, and it can't handle an iPod shuffle.
There are a couple of companies that make an "unpowered" hub for the Mac mini that pull extra power from the Firewire port to make up the difference. I bought one of those and used it for a while, but eventually broke down and bought a powered hub.
Mac mini can't power a keyboard, mouse, and thumb drive: http://www.123macmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18710
The MacMini provides standard USB ports with full spec power.
The USB spec for power is very lax, and in fact that's one place where Firewire (which was one of Apple's initiatives) is far superior: a device can satisfy the USB spec without providing enough power for anything but the absolute lowest power devices. Even an iPod Shuffle requires more than USB standard minimum requirements.
A machine that hides in your living room, silent, and smaller than your DVD player is of hugely more value than a bigger machine.
The Mac mini is not silent. The fan is definitely audible from a couple of feet away when it kicks in to "high", and it does that when playing DVDs. It's quiet enough for a living room, yes, but so are any number of similarly low performance low profile desktops.
"Hides in your living room"? Well, I guess, if you hide it.
"Smaller than your DVD player"? There's dozens of DVD players smaller than the Mac mini that list for under $100.
The small size of the Mac mini is hugely overblown. It would be a better product if it was 4x the volume. It would be more silent, too, since it would have more room for airflow (most of the volume of stereo gear is air, if they packed the components as tightly as they could they'd need to add fans to them too) and if you have even one other piece of home entertainment gear you no longer "need" to hide it.
"Mac Tax" sounds better. It's more stylish. And compact. Its a very "Apple" kind of phrase, donchaknow?
How heavy was the laptop?
Almost exactly the same as the Macbook... other than having a much better keyboard and a matte black case instead of a shiny white one it was pretty much identical in every significant spec. In fact, where the parts were identified, almost all of them were the exact same parts as the Macbook. I suspect that OSX86 would boot on it and already have all the right drivers.
The Macbook Pro I eventually decided on is significantly heavier than either.
You put together a MacMini for 50% of the price? There's only two companies out there I'm aware of that offer similar sized machines.
I specced a functionally equivalent machine, and even gave Apple a break by not including the cost of the external hard drive case, external powered USB hub, and power strip that made the total size of the Mac mini solution pretty much the same as the low profile desktop, but I *did* count the firewire card in the cost of the PC!
I am not counting "styling" (including the size of the Mac mini, the smooth white case on the Macbook, etc). Just function. Styling too often has negative value (eg, the Mac mini doesn't even provide enough power from USB to charge an iPod Shuffle).
Go ahead and spec out a similar machine from Dell, HP, or Lenovo.
Last time I did that I was able to put together a machine comparable to a Mac Mini for about 50% of the price, and a Macbook for about 70% of the price. On average, the "Mac Tax" seems to be about 40% of the list price of a Mac.
I still bought the Mac mini and the Macbook Pro (thought that was tough, I could have gotten everything I actually wanted (hardware-wise) from a Macbook Pro for about the same price as the Macbook). When the choice is Windows vs UNIX-with-actual-applications, the Mac Tax is worth it. But it's still real.
Those are no more "iPhone clones" than the all-in-one Windows boxes that came out for a while after the iMac came out were "iMac clones". There's a difference between a clone and a lookalike.
Wake up to what?
Few people have any illusions that Apple is "not evil" in some sense that makes them different from any other company.
But this case has nothing to do with being evil or being good.
Apple and Microsoft have a completely different set of business models. It's not just that they're smaller, the whole revenue model is radically different: Apple makes their money from hardware sales. This is probably the biggest reason that Apple's still in business: they're not fighting Microsoft on Microsoft's playing field.
Anyway, they have to sell hardware to do that. So they license the software in a way that drives hardware sales. So they kind of don't have an alternative: go up against Microsoft when death is on the line, or sue someone who's blatantly violating your license.
But there are other small lifters, if launching something the size of the shuttle is wasteful. Some aren't even Russian!
Of course launching something the size of the shuttle is the only current option, isn't it?
Thank you, Viacom, for taking a reasonable approach and accepting anonymized logs.
Google announced they were changing their policy to only store anonymized tokens after some period of time a year ago. Unfortunately the Viacom lawsuit was filed about a year ago, so they would have to have retained those logs anyway.
Who saw this and felt a moment of relief?
Absolutely. I totally don't want people to know I watch 'otters holding hands' over and over again because it's so sweet and cute...
I mean, really. That's a hell of a big package of baloney to win from a single word.
They're talking about hyperthreading, like the Pentium 4. If one thread is waiting on a cache miss another thread that already has everything in cache will get to run.
I think it's pretty obvious that this guy was just trying to maintain his livelyhood through a misguided attempt at job security.
Nuking your career is hardly "job security".
Soekris devices are really nifty. I have a friend who swears by them. They always seem to be out of stock of everything I'm interested in, though, whenever I look. :)
You shot first, Han Solo.
I wonder if that was the one that was on display at Apple's only distributor in Sydney when I used to go in (damn, I can almost remember the bus lines I took) and write game programs on the display models in the back. They didn't have much software back then so they let kids write stuff and leave it running as an early "attract mode". There was an Apple I in a display case... it was never powered on when I was there.
Wouldn't it be ironic if Apple sues this guy for copyright infringement and pushing the DMCA instead of being thankful that he recovered this piece of history?
It would be extremely unlikely. Apple has to respond promptly to schemes that bypass controls that they are are contractually obligated to provide. They have not, so far as I know (and I've used Apple computers almost as long as there have BEEN Apple computers) ever shown any interest in chasing after people over ancient legacy stuff.