Apple's Mac Mini

[uOpt]

Not to mention it's a different processor, so there's no way for a wrapper. Don't know what I was thinking. [nuts, slap]

 

[beat mania]

Originally posted by: WackyDan

Originally posted by: beat mania
Beats shuttle and all that for SFF. FINALLY someone decides to use an external brick for PS and a laptop size dvd drive.

Too bad all the add-on options are so expensive even with edu. discount.

But you can expand the shuttle.

Check the specs on the Mini's video and you will see why this is no Shuttle killer... besides even though both are small --they both are two different classes of product.

Sure, there are a few models that can rival a desktop.

But does EVERY shuffle XPC needs to be expandable? No. You got some really crappy ones that just suck no matter what you stuff in it. So why not just make some models compact like mac mini? Why give it 200W when all you can stick in is a PCI card? Why not use an external brick and reduce the size? Because Shuttle people aren't as creative as Apple people. Even for the crappy Shuttle XPCs they feel the need to conform to the PC building blocks, because that's how they're used to doing it for years.

Watch, their attitude will change once they see how the mac mini sells.

 

[uOpt]

These days USB 2.0 and Firewire can host a lot of things that required PCI slots in the past.

Now, that opens the driver question on Macs...

 

[hopejr]

There's a really nice Driver Dev Kit (DDK) for XCode. It apparently makes writing drivers for OS X really easy and high level. That's because it wraps around the low level drivers that are in the kernel. I've yet to try it, but I will in the next few weeks because there's a possibility that I might need to write a Firewire haptic driver for OS X at school this year.

 

[uOpt]

The driver writing kit is only useful if you get driver-level documentation on the hardware.

Which is often not the case, especially with wireless equipment, video stuff and the like.

This is the reason why Linux has a wrapper for Windows drivers in first place. Writing a driver is a piece of cake for them but if they don't get the documentation they are locked out. Some hardware is worth brute-forcing it with with reverse engineering but this is nothing you can do as a one-man team and/or with few experience.

 

[Connoisseur]

not that i'm bashing the mac but I'm just really surprised to see so many AT users complaining about spyware on their pc's. Come on people, get a firewall and firefox. It's that simple.

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: hopejr
it probably wouldn't, considering the PPC is mainly Big endian (a common characteristic of Motorola/IBM chips)

Common characteristic of almost every non x86 chip... (Power/PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS, ARM, PA-RISC, Alpha, plus the most of the billions of embedded chips).

 

[halfadder]

Mac Mini isn't a Shuttle XPC competitior. Period. For starters, the Mac Mini is only 7% - 10% of the size/volume of the current Shuttle XPC models. Besides, most of the Shuttle systems have an AGP slot and a PCI slot and can use traditional drives. Basiclly, the Shuttles are normal PCs with a slightly smaller motherboard and less air space.

A better comparison would be to the Nanode, a Nano-ITX based PC that is closer in size. Nanode is 65% larger than the Mac Mini.
(Mac Mini: 5cm x 16.5cm x 16.5cm = 1361.25 cm^3, Nanode: 9.4cm x 15cm x 16cm = 2256 cm^3)
http://www.mini-itx.com/news/nanode/

Nanode has composite and SVideo out, as well as 6 channel audio. The Mac Mini does not have these features. The downsides are the slow Via CPU (less than half the G4's performance at the same clockspeed), onboard Via chipset graphics, no DVI for LCD or HDTV, no Firewire, and no modem.

Nanode should be shipping by March or April 2005 (just a month or so after Mac Mini ships). I don't know what the cost will be, but based on the price of the Cubit, I would imagine it will be significantly more than $500.

 

[Wuzup101]

Originally posted by: Connoisseur
not that i'm bashing the mac but I'm just really surprised to see so many AT users complaining about spyware on their pc's. Come on people, get a firewall and firefox. It's that simple.

Even that doesn't do it all the time. Besides, even if that were the case, there still are tons of reasons to use OSX... I think the mini is a great idea, and it looks so cute. It's priced decently, though I would have liked to see a wireless card integrated also if they could have managed for the same price. Keyboard/mouse doesn't matter, as I would rather buy my own. However, I will say that the apple keyboards are very very nice...

 

[bharok]

Originally posted by: halfadder
Mac Mini isn't a Shuttle XPC competitior. Period. For starters, the Mac Mini is only 7% - 10% of the size/volume of the current Shuttle XPC models. Besides, most of the Shuttle systems have an AGP slot and a PCI slot and can use traditional drives. Basiclly, the Shuttles are normal PCs with a slightly smaller motherboard and less air space.

A better comparison would be to the Nanode, a Nano-ITX based PC that is closer in size. Nanode is 65% larger than the Mac Mini.
(Mac Mini: 5cm x 16.5cm x 16.5cm = 1361.25 cm^3, Nanode: 9.4cm x 15cm x 16cm = 2256 cm^3)
http://www.mini-itx.com/news/nanode/

Nanode has composite and SVideo out, as well as 6 channel audio. The Mac Mini does not have these features. The downsides are the slow Via CPU (less than half the G4's performance at the same clockspeed), onboard Via chipset graphics, no DVI for LCD or HDTV, no Firewire, and no modem.

Nanode should be shipping by March or April 2005 (just a month or so after Mac Mini ships). I don't know what the cost will be, but based on the price of the Cubit, I would imagine it will be significantly more than $500.

but the mini will probably be much faster

 

[Staples]

Does anyone know if this uses a 2.5" HD? It is a cool computer but I would never buy one if it come with a 2.5". Those things are way too slow and should stop being produced.

 

[frazzled]

Yup, it's a 2.5" HDD.

I wasn't thrilled at first until I reminded myself that my daughter's G4 iBook has a 4200 RPM 2.5" HDD and I must say that it is a pleasure to use.


So would I capture video to it? No, but I prefer to avoid capturing video to anything slower than a 7200 RPM drive anyway.

This is clearly a specialty device in many ways and having started my Mac trajectory on an 800 Mhz G4 iBook I think the Mini is a superb way to get your feet wet with Macs in general. For those of you who haven't used OSX, you're in for a real treat, it's a pleasure.

Not to mention the quintissential Mac experience ... the "marriage" between the software and the hardware. It really is seamless and the inclusion of iLife 05 really shouldn't be overlooked, it truly elevates the "worth" of this $500 package. For basic use you shouldn't have to buy a single extra piece of software and iLife is a great package of mature Apps.

Anyone who has an extra monitor, keyboard and mouse and who has a real curiosity about Macs and or OSX should consider investing in one. It's a great intro AND, if it turns out to not be your cup of tea, remember that Macs hold their resale very, very well. Not much of a risk, someone will give you a good price on it.

Oh, and I most definitely am not a long-term Mac user . As you can see by my sig I've been hanging around here since '99 and I still put together PCs with some regularity, only tried a Mac and OSX when I had to configure an iBook for work...and got hooked. Sort of rediscovered the fun of computing without the driver, spyware, registry hassles.

Ack, got long winded...have fun all.

JT

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: Staples
Does anyone know if this uses a 2.5" HD? It is a cool computer but I would never buy one if it come with a 2.5". Those things are way too slow and should stop being produced.

Without 2.5" drives you would have to use the even slower 1.8" drives for your laptop!
BTW: 2.5" drives came out after 3.5" drives did

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: Staples
Does anyone know if this uses a 2.5" HD? It is a cool computer but I would never buy one if it come with a 2.5". Those things are way too slow and should stop being produced.

Yeah, because laptops have so much room.... And because the latest 7200RPM laptop drives are such dogs.... How about you stop with the ignorance?

 

[halfadder]

Years ago one of my teachers having a Macintosh Portable. It was basiclly a Macintosh Plus in a sort-of laptop formfactor. It had a real keyboard (not the crappy notebook keys we have today) and your choice of a trackball or a keypad+external mouse. You could even move the trackball to the left of the keyboard. You also had the choice of a full size floppy drive and a 3.5" hard drive, or two floppy drives. It held a whopping 4 MB of RAM and had all the usual ports on the back (serial, SCSI, modem, etc). The kicker? It had a monster lead acid battery... but that meant you could get 10 hours of runtime and no battery memory effect (like the NiCads of that era). That monster and all of its desktop-style parts weighed 18 Lbs!!! Some people called it the world's most high tech boat anchor!

http://www.moloko.de/headroom/hpic/macport.jpg

 

[cerebusPu]

i was thinking of doing a shuttle box, until this came along. how do people do development on this? you would have to write mac software right?

i really dont know what Id use this for except goofing around with OSX and surfing the web.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Xcode, which comes with the Mac mini, is an app that you use to write software for the Mac. A good person to ask about Xcode is hopejr. He uses it.

 

[hopejr]

Sure do, but haven't had time recently. It's a great IDE and lets you code in Java, C++, C and Objective C. It uses GCC and so code written in it can be compiled on Linux (or GCC can be used to cross compile the code for x86 and it will then run on linux). You can make PPC and x86 X-windows apps (if you include the right frameworks and have the X11 SDK installed) AFAIK (I actually haven't done that yet), and OS X cocoa, carbon, and Java apps in it. It's got a great Debug feature in it (using GDB). I really like it.
If you don't really care about colour coding, you can just use vi to do coding

 

[sparkyclarky]

I'm incredibly tempted to pick this up for use as my main internet/e-mail/word processing machine. My current main rig is still a gaming beast (along with having a bunch of HD space and optical drives), but it would be nice to have it shut off, reducing noise and such. Combined with a 200 gig external drive (for access to frequently used material stored on the main rig currently), this would make for a great quiet system. We have G5s at work, and they are decent machines. I can't see why this would be much worse (albeit somewhat slower). If I really get to liking it, grab the tool needed to open it, pop in a gig of RAM and change out the HD to a faster model and all would be well. GG Apple!

 

[frazzled]

The "quiet" aspect of these machines is no joke .... you can get spoiled very quickly.

I had a souped-up Cube as my primary Mac until this summer when I invested in a Dual G5. The G5 was definitely a bit louder than the Cube of course , but it is all relative. The G5 replaced a very fast self-built P4 3.06 GHz machine that sounded like an airplane taking off (my computers are up in a converted attic, many fans needed to keep them cool).

I got so spoiled that the fans in my firewire hard drive enclosure were starting to drive me crazy (kind of amusing) so I just replaced them with some small Pabst fans.

So one of these minis (especially with a fast firewire HDD off the back) will definitely make a neat and quiet OSX system for the uses you describe....just watch out for that silence

JT

 

[m3rcury]

Originally posted by: Gravity
Saw it today while looking at the $99 ipod.

Finally! An ipod that I can get some use out of. I always felt guilty considering a mp3 player that has more room that I could ever have music.

The little apple is cute as heck!! I'm still working on the ibook I got wifey for xmas.

I really dont get the idea of a music player that can store 512 mb, but wont let you navigate the files, or even display it. Even my year old 64mb player has built in mic, fm, equilizer, folder navigation, 6 play modes (shuffle, directory shuffle, random, full , and all combinations thereof), playlist creation/management , etc etc.

And now these guys say "we made an mp3 player which can shuffle songs. its so cool because it shuffles things. nobody every thought of that before. buy it". Come on, what are they thinking??

 

[Insomniak]

Makes me haha.

 

[kenan921]

lol "we made an mp3 player which can shuffle songs. its so cool because it shuffles things. nobody every thought of that before. buy it".

 

[Wuzup101]

The iPod shuffle isn't for everyone. I personally own an iPod 4g 20gig and I wouldn't really consider purchasing a shuffle. However, many people I have talked to don't need the interface and really just load up a playlist of songs they like and let it play. Also, there are going to be a decent amount of repeat iPod buyers, as many people like these things for the gym. You simply set your normal iPod on iTunes to sync with all the songs, and have the shuffle sync to just a playlist (like gym mix or whatnot). I personally think it's a good idea, but it would have a larger market if they simply put a 1 line LCD on it showing the song that was playing...

 

[frazzled]

In my case, my 10-year-old son has been very jealous of his older sister's iPod Mini for months. Knowing him a regular iPod would survive for about a week :Q . "Sorry mom, I didn't know you couldn't play catch with it"

The iPod shuflfle has his name written all over it , just have to find the time to take him by the Apple store and surprise him.

I may follow suit at some point, I have an iRiver 256MB flash player that I run with, I can't remember the last time I looked at the tiny screen and I have never liked the software it come with. I wouldn't mind twice the capacity plus the ability to use it with iTunes (for 1/2 the price I paid for the iRiver).

While I have always been fond of techie stuff, one thing I have found of late is that I am starting to appreciate simplicity. Probably another sign of that damn aging process...

JT