Submitted by Just as everyone suspected, Apple updated its various lines of desktop computers today, bringing speed and performance improvements across the board. Mac Pro, iMac, and the Mac Mini were all upgraded, and especially for the Mini, it was a long time coming. The Mac Pro sees the most changes.
The Mac Mini has the following specifications, bringing the little device a little more up to par with the competition. Still, it’s no speed demon (especially considering the price) but that’s really not what the Mini is supposed to be about anyway.
- $599. 2.0GHz Mac mini. 1GB 1066 MHz DDR SDRAM, GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, 120GB HD, 8x SuperDrive, Mini DisplayPort and mini-DVI, 5 USB Ports, One FireWire 800 Port
- $799. 2.0GHz Mac mini. 2GB 1066 MHz DDR SDRAM, GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, 320GB HD, 8x SuperDrive, Mini DisplayPort and mini-DVI, 5 USB Ports, One FireWire 800 Port
The iMac line has also been updated:
- $1199. 20-inch 2.66 GHz iMac. 2GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Integrated graphics. 320GB HD. Mini Display Port
- $1499. 24-inch 2.66 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Integrated graphics. 640GB HD. Mini Display Port
- $1799. 24-inch 2.93 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD. Mini Display Port
- $2199. 24-inch 3.06 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 130. 1TB HD. Mini Display Port
The Mac Pro sees the most changes. It now uses Intel’s Nehalem quad-core Xeon processors, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, and has an updated set of internals to allow for easier access to expansion slots and bays.
- $2499. One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3500 Processor. 3GB of RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD.
- $3299. Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 Processor. 6GB of RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD.
The new Mac Minis and iMacs will start shipping today, the Mac Pro will become available next week.
What is that Geforce GT120… It’s not even listed on Wikipedia… Is it any good?
It’s also called the 9500 GT. NVIDIA started rebranding their cards, I think.
I think the specs listed are wrong for the top-end PowerMac, too — I think that Xeon 550 is supposed to be 3.26 GHZ, not 2.26.
2.26 is correct.
8400 GS = Geforce 9300 = G100
8600 GT = Geforce 9500 = GT120
8800 GS = Geforce 9600 = GT130
8800 GT = Geforce 9800 = GT240
8800 GTS = Geforce 9800+ = GT250
Edited 2009-03-03 17:56 UTC
it is the bottom of the modern graphics barrel, and it is an insult to mac users that apple would lowball them so hard on such a high end workstation. that card cant even attempt some of the high end processing that a slightly better CHEAP card can, because it is missing some features. 9500gt is what poor people with bad htpcs bought when they wanted to play world of warcraft a bit faster LAST YEAR.
insulting to the high end workstation that might want to attempt fully featured dxva decoding or cuda processing
but they probably get away with it because the people who buy them don’t know or care
I guess that would still be better than the aging radeon x1600 that is in my current iMac…
Only Apple can make my X4 with 4GB and a 4870 look like awesome/unbelievable value for money
Only Apple can manufacture a case like the Pro^aEURTMs. That is crazy-good layout and design. Four hot swappable HDD bays, slide out CPU and RAM. Totally clean and tidy throughout. I^aEURTMd like to see pics of your rig, as cost effective and powerful it is, there^aEURTMs still plenty about Apple hardware design that you can^aEURTMt buy anywhere else.
To be honest my Artic Silentium is not as pretty. (http://www.computerfactory24.de/popup_image.php?pID=113&osCsid=ff8d…)
But I can stand it. And if I wanted a faster machine (in every respect) from Apple I would have to pay more than THREE TIMES the money. Thanks, but no thanks.
And I don’t swap RAM or disks regularly, so no extra points for that. Btw who does?
I agree with you. The whole reason someone pays premium price for Apple products is value added, be it nice design, nice OS, trend, social identification, quality, etc…
I personally don’t see any value added in Apple products compared to equivalent products among quality PC brands, but I understand why some people buy Apple products. It’s a market niche.
Even if prices were the same, I would still prefer building my own PC with high-end spare parts than purchasing a Mac with OS X.
Nice looking box. For a fridge
No criticism here – all my boxen are as beige and boring as they come.
…that can only hold 4 hdds, has no esata, no place for a drivebay or anything else thats different from a dvd-drive
aditionaly it has no pci-slot and the pcie-slots are bad arranged
overall apple fails again at copying what dec did more than 10 years ago
————edit———-
i can post a picture of a 13 year old cpu-board from dec if you want…
Edited 2009-03-03 18:00 UTC
If you want to see really good layout and design, get a Sun desktop; my Sun Ultra 40 M2 has 8 hot swappable drives, and was cheaper than comparable Apple systems (at least, in ways they could be compared!) at the time. A little more expensive than a dell though, but after having a Sun, I won’t go back.
What did you pay for Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 series processors on this X4?
It’ll still cost around two grand to get a Mac of the specs I want. No news there. Apple needs some mid-spec machines that don’t force you to get a damn monitor (iMac), and therefore jack up the price, to get what you want. At the other sides of the spectrum are the too-weak Mac Mini and the overkill (for my needs) Mac Pro. I wonder if this recession will end up biting Apple in the ass anytime soon.
Edited 2009-03-03 16:09 UTC
Uh.. what^aEURTMs so weak about the MacMini for it^aEURTMs size and price? It^aEURTMs a pretty decent piece of kit, you could even do HD video editing on that tiny box.
The Mac Pro is a business workstation. If it^aEURTMs overkill and overpriced^aEUR”there^aEURTMs a reason. People confuse the Mac Pro with a standard desktop tower. The Mac Pro is in a different league, which has been shown to be cheaper than Dell workstations of the same spec.
Cnet actually has an interesting comparison. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10186419-1.html?part=rss&tag=fe…
Although the Acer system they compared the mac mini to does not come with a core 2 duo, I would not be surprised if it could be upgraded to one by anybody with a little know how.
Its specs, maybe? Last I checked it had only integrated graphics, for one thing. There’s no way in hell I’d settle for that, unless it’s a ~$300 netbook. They also appear to be limited to 4 gigs of RAM and the processors don’t even get up to 2.5GHz, but the big one for me is the graphics.
Confuse the two? Nah, I think people notice the almost complete lack of customization in the Mac product line, and the only one that’s fully customizable aside from RAM and possibly hard drive *is* the Mac Pro. Yes… the super-high end.
What a lot of people want is that customization *without* having to pay $2500. In other words, put lower-end components in it, give it a different name, maybe a different look… done! But Apple refuses to do that. Therefore, what else are people supposed to compare it to?! Apple itself doesn’t even give you anything to compare to, so the nearest match is the Mac Pro.
But the customization part is getting a bit off-topic. The bottom line is, if you want a Mac, you’re pretty much stuck with those three choices, as I said in my previous post. Small and weak, decent hardware but inflated price thanks to the built-in screen, or an expensive overkill “business” machine. The iMac most closely matches what I want, hardware-wise… but the screen probably inflates the price by nearly half a grand.
I do believe 90% of the user do not care at all about customization. I do think a huge majority of users simply want a reliable computer that they never have to upgrade. Most users even are scared about opening the computer. Most of the mac are designed around that concept. The Mac pro are the exception and price for a specific user type.
If someone’s too scared to open their computer, guess what…? They can get along just fine by *gasp*… not opening up their computer. Obviously people don’t have a problem with this, because based on market share the PC has always mopped the floor with Apple. But those that do intend to tweak and upgrade, they’re forced to spend a ridiculous amount if they buy from Apple. Apple is alienating a large number of people, no matter how you look at it.
Meanwhile, Gateway, Dell, and the various other PC companies have almost their entire line of desktop machines–from cheap to midrange to extemely powerful–built in a way that allows them to be fully customized and upgraded after purchase. I know far more people who own a PC than a Mac, yet none of them are terrified by the fact that they can open their computer. They just don’t do it, or ask for help doing it. Hell, I’m sure some don’t even know you *can* upgrade.
The only people Apple is doing a favor with their current selection of models and pricing is themselves, and perhaps the people in the (very) few small categories they provide suitable systems for.
That is a completely flawed argument. PCs having more market share has nothing to do with whether people want to work on their own PCs.
Only Apple makes Macs… a few hundred companies make PCs.
Do you have data to show that a vast majority of PCs are sold to the enthusiast market which consists of people that tinker with their systems?
Apple has the best financial position of any of them right now. They have more cash and 0 debt than Google, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft. So obviously their business strategy is working for them. Gateway has been an non market player for years and their business is going no where.
That seems to be no problem for their shareholders or customers. They have grown faster than any of their competitors. Your arguments are so old an were the same ones people used when Apple was struggling. Apple seems to be doing just fine but the arguments haven’t changed.
Remember Michael Dells comment about Apple in 1997. He said Apple should get out of the business and return all the money to the shareholders. Apple is now a bigger company and more valuable than Dell.
Dell market cap. is 17 Billion. Cash 9 billion debt 2 billion.
Apple Market cap 81 billion. Cash 25.65 billion 0 debt.
Numbers speak for themselves.
Why so serious? If you don’t want to buy an Apple product, don’t. Expending so much energy seems pointless.
Edited 2009-03-04 17:12 UTC
Calling it a “business workstation” is just spin.
The issue is, you have a need, now what do you buy to do the job? Its not whether various adjectives can be applied to the Pro, its about whether the Apple product line has entries in it that are fit for purpose. The answer is that it is a collection of niche products which do not fit most needs. You find this out real fast when people ask you whether they should think about buying a Mac. You go look at the product line and this is what you find in the UK.
We have all-in-ones at ^Alb900 and up. You find yourself unable to tell someone that they need to spend this much, when they can spend ^Alb200-300 and get something quite good enough, and use their existing perfectly good monitor.
You have the Mini then, starting at ^Alb500. This seems to be an underpowered laptop with no screen or keyboard. Well, probably someone needs such things. With a tiny laptop hard drive in it? Why? Probably they are cycling between their flat in town and their cottage in the country? Or maybe they have tiny desks with no space under it? Or maybe they just feel good walking around with one in their coat pocket?
And finally you have the Pro, with the usual mid range graphics, starting mark you, starting at ^Alb1950, which will be no better for 95% of the market than something costing ^Alb500. Calling it a ‘business workstation’ does not change this. Put together a decent configuration and you will be in for a thousand more! Its not even real performance. You want performance in the UK, go to Novatech, buy one of these, and fill it up with hard drives and some more memory:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/barebones.html?cpu=Intel%20i…
In all cases by the way, when you get the things configured at anything above bare bones low end specs, you’ll end up spending 50% more. The memory alone must be truly workstation class, probably imported from another planet. Can’t imagine how else it could cost so much to get into a machine here on earth.
It is just ridiculous to go through this charade every time of taking a given Mac, duplicating it, and then proudly proclaiming that you have managed to spend more on duplicating some unbalanced dysfunctional configuration that hardly anyone ever wanted in the first place! The issue is, these are, for most people, overpriced and misconfigured niche products, that are sold by the Mac fans as mainstream. They are not. What they are is profit generating machines. There is no reason for most people to apply them to their wallets.
Really. Every single example in this thread for a cheaper alternative doesn’t have ECC memory. You can call it what you want but a box without ECC is a PC for some one to check email not do business critical work.
To run pro apps with no ECC for memory not a chance. Data is the most valuable business asset. More money is lost when corruption happens than saving a few quid on purchase costs. You also want bullet proof service incase things break. Beige PCs are great but fixing things your self in a business environment costs real money.
Again completely missing the point. No ECC no worky in Pro market. No field service support also no worky.
ECC registered DIMMS cost more on this planet.
Wrong. With Apple I get no hassle customer service. One year of no headache, 3 with an extended service contract. If some thing is wrong I call support they ship me a box I put it in and send it 99% of the time 3 days later my machine is back working like new.
Show me that with your barebones beige box. Who do I send it to to get fixed if the harddisk craps out or memory errors suddenly cause kernel panics. Who diagnoses it and repairs it for me? You?
Edited 2009-03-04 16:30 UTC
This is really the point, is it not? If you really need ECC memory, get it, pay for it, use it.
What if you don’t?
The problem is NOT that the machines are expensive for what they are. The problem is they are not what 95% of the customers need. Sometimes they are too portable when they don’t need portability. Sometimes they are too peformant, with too high end processors, but they have to buy them to get something better, more expandable, than the all-in-ones.
It is not the machines that are in the product line that are being criticized, its the ones that ARE NOT THERE. This is why Macs end up being too expensive. It is that you end up buying more than you need. Or taking less performance. Its a failure of product range, not of any particular product.
Got to tell you, also, Macs, particularly the all in ones, blow up far more often than medium priced x86 towers. They just do. Sorry. ECC and all.
Let’s not change the subject. Your original claim was that the “pro” in Mac Pro was marketing spin. I explained why it is not.
That’s beside the point. The surprise success of netbooks based on the Atom processors clearly shows that 95% of the customers don’t need anything more powerful than that. In fact, my wife got a Atom based netbook because it was cheap, portable and more than adequate for her work needs.
Given that laptops are outselling desktops it is safe to assume that people prefer portability over expansion and raw performance.
In your opinion that might bet the case. I would content that a macbook or mini is more than enough computer for the vast majority of people.
Please provide some real data to back that up. ECC doesn’t prevent hardware failures or manufacturing defects. ECC solves real problems, that is why all server and workstation products have it. You might think it is a marketing gimmick but here is tonne of evidence supporting why ECC is necessary. All you need to do is look at how many correctable memoy errors an average server gets per year. You wouldn’t be so callous about it.
You just making a claim saying, “they just do” is just an unsubstantiated claim nothing else. Do you have any data or are you just running out of arguments?
Wrong again.
Dells Studio mini desktop line is more expensive and has outdated hardware specs.
Dells XPS laptops are the closest in cpu and memory specs and cost 2x the mac mini.
and here’s why, http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_gtx_gts_m_series.html
actualy, by that time the 40nm cored for nvidia will be ready (the ones i linked are 55nm). at 40nm the mini can even be a gaming machine!
though I am pleased with the update.
You may be in for quite a wait. In the past Apple have been very slow to update the Mini.
and then what happens when your games need faster hardware then? are you going to wait forever?
when you could build a faster small computer right now that can play games?
small computers are the future, but the future is not waiting around for a piece of shit ripoff mac mini.
Edited 2009-03-03 18:34 UTC
And be then there will be new specs for an even greater gfx card and you will have to wait one more revision and so on and on and on…
Don’t get me wrong, i use an MacMini and I’m going to buy the new Mini next month but it sure as hell isn’t adequate for gaming. The 9400 with shared Memory will hardly be enough for Doom 3… an more than four years old game.
The Mac way of dealing with that is usually to say you are an Hardcore gamer if you want games from your century and more than single digit frame rates, which is hilarious – why aren’t you an an Hardcore-scum-couch-potato-without-a-life if you insist on more then single digit frame rates while watching a movie then?
When i switched to my MacMini – which i didn’t regret and with me not going back to horrible Windows – i basically stopped gaming as there are 1) almost no games for Mac anyway and 2) you need an very expensive Mac Pro or Macbook Pro to even play relatively old games at bearable settings and speeds.
ill be ordering one of those bad boys tomorrow
2ghz
2gb RAM (4gb im not sure I NEEEEEED for ^Alb80)
320HD
realisically I will use it for
the rare game – im not a 1st person shooter man so more spore, C&C and sims 3 style games
Movies
BBC iplayer
Before anyone says its not good value for money, find me an equal system to compare it to.
Equal means; (I feel I have to clarify)
near silent operation
small form factor
non intel IGP
same class cpu
wireless
Super Drive
bluetooth
OSX (obviously for comparison you dont need to meet this)
firewire 800
my priorities are the above order. If you can find the equal for cheaper then speak up
Just as an update to people
It arrived yesterday
Lovlely machine I have to say and seems to be working a treat!
Only issue I had initially is that the mini DVI connector is to DVI-d NOT DVI (ie digital only signal so has a different connector) a quick trip to john lewis got me an adapter. Not the end of the world, but I can’t be the first to be caught out by this as most moniters people already own (which the mini assumes) are not likly to have dvi-d connectors
Tee hee, look at what I got for just 320 EUR a few months ago:
AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor (4×2.2Ghz), 4GB of gaming RAM from Geil (whatever the hell gaming RAM means), and a fancy motherboard that can connect the on-board graphics chip to a discrete one via SLI [1]. Also bought a red Asus case and a power supply picked because it was silent. It’s a blazing-fast machine now, and I’m really happy with it.
Near-silent operation, but obviously with a bigger case – which has the added advantage of having more space to put stuff in. The other benefit is that this machine will have a much longer lifespan than the Min, since it can be upgraded.
Apple doesn’t compete in this market. I’m not shelling our twice as much for a slower machine with a shorter lifespan.
[1] http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/detail_overview….
Edited 2009-03-03 16:50 UTC
Sigh – Thom vomits all over the comments again…
So let me get this right, you bought COMPONENTS and assembled them yourself, or chose COMPONENTS and had someone with half a clue assemble them for you maybe, went through the process of setting everything up from scratch and ended up with something that gives you more “upgradability” at about one tenth the elegance, and you’re comparing that with an “out of the box ready to use” solution that my grandmother could go out and buy, set up and start using? Is that what you are telling us Thom?
Like I have said before Thom, you need to grow up. If you are in that situation then great, build your own POS, but there are a hell of a lot of people out there who want something that just works out of the box. Because you are happy with your POS doesn’t make the Mini any less valuable to those people who can’t be bothered, or don’t know how to go down the path you took. I’m pretty sure there will be thousands of people very happy with their Mini purchase too.
And as far as longevity is concerned, I have one of the original Mini’s, it is now my daughter’s (high school student) computer. Like all our computers it runs 24/7, it has never missed a beat, we’ve upgraded the hard drive and memory since it was first bought – the only upgrades the majority of people ever do, and I can be fairly confident that it will still be trucking away when your POS is on the scrap heap.
So off you go, crawl back into your beige or red or whatever colour box it is you’re using and write about how fantastic Windows is. You might find some lifeform who actually cares about your opinion.
What? You don’t think Thom should post just because you don’t agree with him? You’re certainly right, someone does need to grow up, but I don’t think it’s Thom.
Oh my, I guess I hit a nerve there, didn’t I?
What is it about my comment that rattles your chains so much? Am I not allowed to be a filled with a little glee that for half of the price of a Mac Mini, I get a much more powerful machine, with a sexy case mini-ITX case (you haven’t even seen it), with near-silent operation, and excellent upgradability, all built out of high-quality parts from respected brands?
The truth of the matter is that apparantly, 90% of the world prefers what you call “POS” computers, because here’s a little secret for you: the only people buying Mac Minis are geeks who want to use it as an efficient file server or something, or people who are already Mac enthusiasts.
The Mac Mini has NOT become the switch magnet that it was intended to become. Apple knows this, that’s why it obviously doesn’t give a rat’s bum about the Mini. And, this was I believe before you time on OSAlert, but I interviewed the founder and owner of the biggest Apple retailer in The Netherlands (he was the first to own the Macintosh in my country, back in ’84), and even he blatantly told me that the sole purpose of the Mini is to draw people into the store with, and then have them leave with a more expensive machine.
In other words: even Apple think the Mini isn’t worth the effort. And I agree with them. See, I’m not anti-apple at all, I agree with them!
Edited 2009-03-03 23:21 UTC
Funny thing is the mini might not be the switcher machine, but it has found its nieche (mostly htpc enthusiasts and home server people, who love the machine due to its low power consumption and stability) and it sells really well, apparently it is one of the big sellers on the desktop and that is reason enough that apple cannot let it die, they would love to however in favor of apple tv, the mini is one of the reasons why apple tv sells so absymally, the potential target audience simply buys the mini instead!
That probably has something to do with how crippled the ATV is compared to the Mini, I bet. Perhaps if Apple would actually put some real effort into the ATV, and actually give the users what they want from a media center, it would sell better–in other words, stop treating it as a sideline project.. Currently, what can you do with the ATV? iTunes and Youtube with HD, that’s it, unless you hack it. Most users would want, in addition to this, hulu support, netflix support, and perhaps even support for optical media playback? Imagine that. Support for an easy way to add many more codecs to the ATV–sorry Apple, but Quicktime’s default capabilities are pathetic when it comes to the file formats it can deal with. What does Apple have against ogg/Vorbis and FLAC, anyway, just to name a few?
Doesn’t Apple get to sell the mini for $200 more without fixing the ATV? Why would they cannibalize their own products… ?
If people are willing to buy the mini instead of the ATV apple still makes money and probably more margins..I fail to see your point.
The point was exactly that, why most ht enthusiasts go for the Mini over the ATV. Look at the posting I replied to. The point was that Apple would sell more ATVs if they wouldn’t artificially cripple it. I don’t see how making the ATV a proper media center would kill the Mini, which has a lot of other uses besides an htpc. So, I’m afraid I don’t see your point or your objection to mine.
Then you don’t see the point of settop boxes. ATV is a set top box.
My Roku netflix player plays netflix and amazon on demand (pretty recent). My Tivo does PVR, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon on demand..etc.My PS3 can play flash, Playstation store content, MP4, DIVX and wma content. None of them offer FLAC or ogg/vorbis support.
ATV is a set top box for Apple’s iTunes service.. end of story.
Does you argument apply to Roku, Sony PS3 and Tivo also? or Apple a special sore point for you?
I have the 3 I mentioned above. I don’t own an AppleTV.
Your objection is invalid. The mini is lucrative because you can use all those codecs and much more. It also has more processing juice for 1080p content than the ATV.
Edited 2009-03-05 00:34 UTC
Hmm, is my objection to the crippled ATV a sore point for you? I have nothing against Apple, I own several Apple products and absolutely the Macintosh platform. My point is, this is why htpc enthusiasts buy the Mini, and why ATV isn’t doing as well as it could. Not even sure why you brought the PS3 into this, it’s primarily a game console. Given the choice, what would you rather have, four or five set top boxes or one that does most things?
I would certainly put the same objections on Roku and other set tops as well, they should aim to do as much as possible. Further, I said ogg and FLAC were two examples of formats not supported. They were by no means the only ones, and even the most ardent Apple fans can’t say Quicktime has an excellent number of codecs supported in its default installation. So yes, perhaps I do not see the point in limited set tops when you could buy a Mac mini to do all those things and pay a fraction of what all the set tops to do the same tasks would cost you. Apple could push the limits of set tops if they wished, but they seem content not to do so unfortunately.
Not a sore point. I just don’t get why you think it is crippled because it doesn’t meet your needs.
The PS3 is more than a game console. It is plays Blu-Ray ( most easily updated player on the market), You can buy TV shows and Movies from the Playstation Store. Sony even added a photo app recently that can pull pictures from a digital camera directly to make fancy slideshows. The XMB interface has games, music, videos, internet browsing as primary icons. So it is comparable to other digital media hub/set top boxes.
The problem is there is no single device other than a mini form factor computer that can support all the formats that spring up everyday. Set top box manufacturers neither have the budget nor resources to develop, support and test every single codec and format. Especially when it doesn’t directly make money for them.
Apple makes money selling movies and music from iTunes. The AppleTV just augments that income from people that want to watch that content on a TV. It is very simple really.
The geeks want more they get a mini and do what they please. Which is exactly what we are discussing. If the AppleTV would do everything a mini does it would be a mini and cost as much.
Honestly, building a home-brew machine that works out of the box isn’t hard. A monkey could do it. You just need to study up on which hardware works with what, compare different products for pricing and quality, check and re-check your decisions to make sure everything’s compatible, and then order the parts. That’s what I love newegg.com for. They have tons of different parts from low to super-high quality and you can build a machine exactly how you want it for so much more cheaper and/or better quality than buying from an OEM.
Also, if you want more than the beige box of the 90’s with a homebrew machine, well… they really don’t sell beige colored cases anymore. I can get a good looking case with a window or glowy fans or even just elegantly Mac-looking for $50 (or $350– all depends). Or I can get “today’s beige” for $20, which still don’t look as bad as the original beige. They sell ugly cases with bulbous and pointless growths on them or ones of odd color, sure, but most of today’s cases are either neuteral-looking or salivating-worthy to most beholders. I honestly believe you get a higher quality machine when you build it yourself, and I’m never going to buy another desktop from an OEM. You get what you want customized how you want and you get it $100-$2000 cheaper (I looked at parts on Newegg and configured a build that was the exact same build as one from a local shop that builds them– Geekbox– and I could build their exact same configurations for $1400 cheaper including shipping. It’s ridiculous how much extra you pay manufacturers to assemble “working out of the box” machines for you… oh, and Dell’s or eMachine’s unbeatably cheap computers don’t really count– those are the real peices-of-chocolate-chips that you speak of).
Anyway, I’m not sure what you’re getting at because it’s rather simple to build a cheaper, more powerful, working out-of-the-box machine by yourself. Well, it’s harder if you want to install Mac OS X on it, or so I hear, but it’s still possible. With most open source distributions and Windows, you have almost limitless possibilities as to your hardware configuration.
Sure it is. It’s easy for *us*, not the average home user, who doesn’t want to study up on hardware and couldn’t care less. You can, almost always, get a cheaper system by building it yourself, and I don’t think anyone will argue that point. That’s not what Apple’s about, they’re about the “just works” concept and the way they do that is by putting specific hardware and tayloring their operating system to match. You do give up a lot of customization, and for us geeks that can seriously suck, but the market Apple is targeting (the home users and the artistic users) doesn’t usually care about that. I think that’s the point a lot of geeks don’t get, Apple isn’t designing their machines for the tinkerers and the hackers out there, and that’s not a market they are really pursuing.
Not that I’m claiming Apple products always “just work,” they don’t always do so. Just saying that’s what APple is going for, and they usually do quite a good job at it for the most part. I’ve certainly had to solve less problems on my Mac than on any of my PCs running either Windows or Linux, and a Macbook is my primary machine. But hey, that’s anicdotal and ymmv. Plus, having OS X gives me the experience I want–a nice interface, and cli power when I want it as I often do.; I don’t know what I’d do without access to a UNIX cli. That’s the value added part one of the posters was talking about earlier, to me, the value added is the os, its tight hardware integration, and a stable gui on top of a UNIX-like core.
Do you realise that your Mac was assembled from cheap generic componenets by semi-literate Chinese peasant girls?
Do you realise that almost any appliance you buy is assembled from cheap generic componenents by semi-literate Chinese peasant girls?
Fixed it for ya.
That’s a topic unrelated to this particular discussion. I’m not saying it’s not a serious problem, because it is, but blaming Apple for that or putting the focus on them as if they are the only company that does this is just foolish. You ridicule those who buy Macs, but tell me, do you have no appliances in your place of residence, or are you certain that all appliances you do have were manufactured in well-paid, national workshops by well-educated and well-treated people?
The original criticism was of home brew machines. A properly built home brew machine is usually far better quality than any mainstream brand including Apple
OK so the barebones box cost 320 and that is cool
Add 229 for the software bundle OS X + iLife + iWork. Add whatever you would charge for the build/ install,it comes up to about 549 euros.
The Mac is a *Platform* it is the sum product of HW and SW, the SW comes *free* as in bundled kind of like the AC in an automobile even if you don’t want to use it or live somewhere you might not need it.
Part of the price is that I will take it out of the box and put it in my kids work space, and I will not have to do a bunch of other crap to it, Or I could put it in front of my folks (60+) and have them up and running that same hour. But thesoftware bundle is quite nice. I have my ten year old _heavily invested_ in it. And my six year old also is much more competent in iWork than I would expect either of them – or i could be for that matter to be in KWord or Open Office.
As far as the ‘build out’ time unless your time is of no value – then that is also included in the price I will not even touch the hillbilly comments made about …semi-literate Chinese peasant girls?[sic]
Yes I can build a killer gaming rig, and I can be proud of it but then what do I use for the OS – Heck I could go with Fedora 8 or a MS product but I am creating more problems then I solve.
I do not disagree with Thom on content or substance- (but consider that a high percentage of users will not upgrade a dang thing in the box – so that choice is fully debatable) I do disagree completely on implementation. You have the choice to build what you want – I will let apple built one for me
— semi-literate Chinese peasant girls? would you call your mother or sister that?
I can understand that and thats something i would get when i would want a gaming rig. I primarily need a computer for programming and here is where the big big flaw comes in: Windows.
Now, i wouldn’t even consider using the same Windows machine for my work as for my gaming, because of the destructive nature of actual copy protection mechanisms, but that is not where the pain really starts.
I really hate the APIs in Windows… since i started to program on Mac – i was highly skeptical over Obj-C at first – i would never go back to the horrors of even the much improved .Net frameworks.
And then there is the fact that you could write Windows software in a Unicode supporting way… and nobody does. I gave up on trying to find even just an acceptable Image viewer that is capable of loading and displaying files that have unicode in their names or paths. Having a very international family left me with the need to constantly rename files so that i could use them… this pain is finally gone since i switched to Mac for my desktop and Linux on my Notebook. I could live with Linux, but there are a couple of Apps which i want to use and which don’t have an Linux alternative or run well enough in Wine.
I would never consider using Windows again if MS would not finally make a hard break and start over even at the cost of compatibility – and we all know they will not do that. So they will limp along into the future with all the basic flaws rooting in bad design decisions made in the nineties, but certainly without me.
I’m just so much happier with my non-gaming capable Mini.
After doing a little more research, I found that acer does already in fact sell the aspire x1700 with a core 2 duo.
The specs are 2.6ghz e7300 core 2 duo, 4gb ram, 750gb sata hd, 802.11b/g/n geforce 9400gt, and dvdrw drive, all for $599 (the same price as the mac mini).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001RHCT6S/ref=nosim/12479-r…
Its also a small form factor pc, but probably still bigger than the mac mini. I also personally don’t think its all that bad to look at either.
Please note that I am typing this from a 15in. unibody macbook pro, and also own a g4 mac mini.
I like how the Dell Studio Hybrid looks better than either of the two, though I don’t think it is quite as good a deal as the aspire.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-st…
It was a good idea to replace the graphics chip in the mini. At least it can run some versions of Final Cut, now. It would seem that not offering 7,200 RPM drives in the Mini is a marketing choice, as there are now 500GB drives that can be installed in it, and because there is a fan on it, and the newer drives run cool–even netbooks can use them.
The Mac Pro, physically has been a good machine. The dual quad isn’t such a bad deal, given the price of the processors that can play together, BUT the single quad offering is way too high.
For me, I will not be buying any mac with a glossy monitor, which sadly includes the 15″ Macbook Pro, as well as the new Macbook.
Apple should do a compact computer, crossing the lines between the Macbook air, and a Netbook.
Lastly, as almost anyone who doesn’t work at Apple will tell you: Apple needs a mid-level desktop machine, with interchangeable cards.
Edited 2009-03-03 16:55 UTC
You confuse “Apple needs” with “You need”. Apple doesn^aEURTMt need anything right now. It has no debt, and is raking in profits, like it or not!
You forget – we’re in an economic slump and the most recent data shows Apple losing market share. This is a very stupid time to be increasing prices – the Mini has seen a ^Alb100 rise in the UK at a time when technology prices are tumbling.
Apple won’t be the industry’s golden boy for ever. This product-launch-with-a-whimper is its suicide note – check back in two years time and see if your comment still makes sense.
Crazy price in the UK, totally agree. I bought my G4 MacMini precisely because it was cheap. I wouldn^aEURTMt for ^Alb499 though.
What I^aEURTMm pointing to is the trend that Apple don^aEURTMt do what geeks say they ^aEUR~should^aEURTM do. In fact Apple, doesn^aEURTMt do just about anything anybody says they should do^aEUR”they follow their own course and have been ever since Job rejoined. Are they going to change course? I say not whilst Steve is steering the ship.
Perhaps it could be: Apple may eventually need to?
There is only so much growth Apple can achieve if they continue to target the high end users. By totally ignoring other markets they’re just letting other manufacturers take a chunk of the market by not even bothering to compete with them.
So far they’ve done great by sticking with their existing high end products and introducing other products such as the iPod and iPhone. Sure, they might be profitable, but are they going to grow if they stick with the same stuff?
they ARE growing, please follow/check on their OS market share. I think your question is really about how “fast” can they grow (current markets vs. potential markets)
Disclaimer: I do seriously memory intensive work: environmental modeling and large-scale GIS work.
I am very disappointed that the new Pro models do not support the full Nehalem triple-channel memory systems: the specs say “8GB for single-socket, 32GB for dual-socket models”. That indicates that the motherboards only support dual channel memory layouts (it should have been 12GB and 48GB). That has seriousl performance implications for me.
the benchmarks I’ve seen don’t show a meaningful difference between single, dual, and triple channel memory performance. do you actually have benchmarks to suggest your application will perform worse one way vs the other?
Stream.
Which models the kind of things I do decently well.
And for that matter, my work’s memory profile is dominated by buffer-memory anyway; my own benchmarks show a 32GB machine performing 20% better than an otherwise identical 8GB one, on a benchmark that only needs 2GB of working-set memory.
I really need at least 12GB (24GB if I can get my boss to spring for it) on my desktop machine.
Mac Pro
I’d prefer 3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, if you don’t mind Apple.
I’d love to have this system around to see what sorts of OpenCL options I have via Apple using Tesla cards or 3 280 cards or 3 ATi 4870 HD cards, et al.
Beautiful system, but still they held back from making this a competitor to Nvidia and ATi who have their massive parallel card options.
Oh well.
The entry price for an octo Pro in the UK has gone from (IIRC) approx ^Alb1700 to ^Alb2500 !!
I think that’s consistent with the decreasing value of the pound…
As someone else pointed out, the price valuation adjusts to the current exchange rates. Bitch to your country.
Apple charges a premium in all other countries on top of exchange rates and taxes. Outside North America Apple has practically no impact at all. Some places in Australia are 1000km from the nearest Apple seller. But we have at least one whitebox PC retailer in virtually every suburb
At my local Australian university less than 1% of students or staff use Macs. The university has a very active Linux Users Group though.
Maybe I’m just enough of a speed freak, but I honestly don’t see what’s so unappealing about the Mac Mini. If you don’t like that it’s small, or quiet, or low in power consumption, fine – but comparing it to a tower is silly. That’s not what it does. The whole point of the Mac Mini is that the muscle you can stuff into a box its size is good enough for most people – TBH I’d wager more than enough for even a lot of the people who don’t think that it is. It’s not about being fast or upgradable. It’s about being mini.
If you’re really a speed freak you don’t want to run OS X anyways IME…
it still pales compared to my laptop on every aspect
Comparing the Vista Acer half size mini tower to the Mac mini, you might as well compare a bicycle, seriously.
Show me a Mini PC the same size as the Mini mac. There have been a few but they seem to fizzle out. Only mini ITX come close but you pretty much have to build your own and it wouldn’t be as small. Small form factor PCs have been way overpriced for a long time.
I have the current Mac mini and would love for it to have the extra video port and faster Firewire and more memory/drive but for now I can use a USB VGA adapter and external FW drive. I will crack it open soon and upgrade the ram myself (damn Apple upgrades).
As others have noted though, Apple sorely needs a mini tower in the line up that has a few slots for DRAM, PCIe cards, and drives, sort of like the old IICX, one you can open but still small and cheap. Since Apple is so nifty at designing new micro connectors, maybe they could show the industry toward small PCIe cards too. The current PCI market is a mess, cards can be any old hight and length.
I am no Apple fanboy, I mostly use Windows and Ubuntu for too long but I am starting to wonder why?
mac mini isn’t horrible, it is just an expensive laptop without a screen
^aEUR|which is cheaper than the other expensive Laptops without screens that other people are selling (aOpen, eee box &c.).
Look forward to the ARM boxes though, whilst they won^aEURTMt be powerful, they will be ridiculously small and fanless and could, therefore, supplant the MacMini as ^aEUR~carputer^aEURTM or mini media box of choice.
Actually there are various kinds of people buying the mini, people who need a small homeserver, the mini is alomost perfect due to being silent and relatively low on power consumption, but I agree a used notebook probably would suit the task better.
People who need a htpc machine, the mini is basically the closest to perfection you can get there, low on power consumption rather powerful processor and good tv frontends but the only downside the graphics card, the intel graphics card simply hat its fair share of problems regarding hd content, and probably this group (including me) will pick up the new mini as heavens sent. While the nvidia graphics chipset is not a powerhouse and definitely not suited as a gaming machine it is powerful enough to support the mini with hd content, given the codecs are written for it. So this thing is heavens sent.
Show me a decent pc which does 13 watt can do with extensions sat, cable, dvbt… you name it with a good frontend software and is deadly silent and has enough processor power to do decent video transcoding. I assume that the biggest buyers group for the mini is the htpc crowd!
There still is nothing, and I repeat nothing on the PC side which comes close except notebook computers and they are in the same ballpark pricewise but do not do the shutdown wakeup hibernation as well as the mini!
And the third are hosters which rely on the mini there are a handful of them!
maybe they should just drop the mini and imac and replace both with the mythical system everyone seems to crave.
Tower sales are falling. Why? Consumers don^aEURTMt want the 15 year old form factor anymore. Apple saw the future in 1998, PC manufacturers are [mostly] yet to catch up, instead just assuming that Laptop sales surpassing desktop sales is because everybody is carrying a laptop now…
Actually the majority of consumers that I speak to do want the desktop form factor. Laptops are still not quiet desktop replacements, though they are getting there. Computer sales in general are falling due to the economy taking a dive over the last couple of years.
The Mini is a laptop motherboard in a nice box without display, every knows that. If you add a display though, it doesn’t make it into a laptop, just a nice compact replacement for towers. Thats what I like about it, it decouples the system from the display. The all in ones and laptops are okay too, different strokes etc.
The full size PC tower is now a dinosaur for the vast majority of users even though they still sell pretty well. I just don’t get the thing with gamers and the ugly monster cases and multiple fans though and vid cards that need more power than the processor.
Look inside almost any mini ATX case and you see mostly loads of dust bunnies, and too much empty space and these are mostly never upgraded. Look inside any Apple product below the tower or any regular laptop and you see no dust, no empty space, so no upgrade possibilities. For these, low power and modest performance is key.
What the entire industry needs is a decent replacement for the tower that is compact, low power, based on standard small form factor motherboard, and somewhat upgradeable with smaller PCIe cards. No more serial/parallel/PS2 ports either. MiniITX is sort of a start but it has only one PCI slot and 1 ram slot. Only Apple could do this with style. If Intel did it, it would get over engineered like everything they do, it would still look “industrial”. Today I’d probably want to put OSX86 on it and a few others inside Parallels.
I highly doubt mac’s are immune to dust just because apple made them. But then again i’ve never actually opened my mini…
They’re not immune to dust, but there’s not much room inside the Mini for anything but the components that are in there. You’ll find a bit of dust but nowhere near what you’d find in the average ATX case. Open your mini and take a look, you seriously won’t believe how they crammed everything in there. Makes upgrading the ram and hd a bitch especially on the Intel models though it can be done, but on the other hand I doubt you’ll find a computer with that form factor and as much functionality at the same time. Compare Mini ITX all you want, but even they’re not quite that small, and machines like the eee box don’t come close to even the power of the first generation Intel minis.
What I like best about the Mini is how silent it is. Most of the time you don’t even know it’s running and it sits unobtrusively out of your way wherever you put it.
the previous guy beat me to it.
The Mac Mini is built like a laptop, I will know for sure how clean it is when I crack it after the warrantee is done. The openings are few and the heat is modest so airflow is highly managed.
I have only opened a Dell laptop once to do a repair, and was amazed at how clean it was, the path for dust entry is minimal. A heat pipe takes the processor heat directly to the backside fin where a small fan sometimes blows on it. If the Mac mini and iMacs are even remotely similar I expect them to be clean. Not sure if it uses a heat pipe to the backside yet.
On the other hand the ATX case is absolutely designed to draw loads of air over the whole motherboard. Even when the case is closed, it is wide open to dust. I sometimes see PCs that seem dead just caked in dust, but after a thorough clean up, come back to life. Dust really is bad after it piles on, limits heat flow and makes fans noisier.
Ever take a look inside the ATX PSU, those really do get disgusting, probably the high voltages enhance the dust sticking in every component crack. Funnily enough the Mini ITX guys have these wonderful 100W ATX PSUs that are tiny and fan less and stick right over the ATX connector to an external 12V DC source. These could probably be used for a lot of smaller <100W PCs too. Note that since the Mini Mac use a separate low power brick, there is even less heat in the system and that is also fan less. Once you want >>100W system power, you get noisy fans and dust entry.
Yep, the inside of most ATX PSUs gets extremely disgusting after a while, the fan pulls in not only dust but bits of whatever is near it at the time. Given how many people have their towers sitting on the floor, you don’t even have to imagine what can get in there. I’ve seen, no lie, an ATX power supply that was overheating because the fan had become blocked with cat hairs.
I have a full-size ATX case here. There is dust on top of it, but no dust inside. Why not? It’s got a revolutionary piece of technology called a “dust filter”. This marvelous mesh stops dust from getting into the machine. Four times a year just pull it downwards, wipe it with your fingers, and slide it back in place.
El-cheapo ATX and Mini-ATX cases attract dust, but didn’t you get the memo? You shouldn’t be using el-cheapo cases! Any case that is worth using has a dust filter.
Same old story. I bought an iMac a couple of weeks ago. The main deficiency was that it only has 1GB of RAM. I wouldn’t really notice the boost in CPU speed. And interestingly, we haven’t really felt cramped in the 1GB of RAM because we still mostly use our notebooks. If we ever feel cramped, I’ll go through the trivial pain of buying some Crucial and installing it.
I’ve never been happier I got out of the Apple reseller I worked at now.. Apple is now all of a sudden going in the totally WRONG direction, and I noticed about 1.5 years ago Apple Management was starting to lose touch with reality, but now its obvious they need some fresh meat in the grinder to fix things.
1) iMac’s with a keyboard with no numpad by default (which means lots of people whinging they didn’t want the compact keyboard, and that they have to pay extra for a proper keyboard). Furthermore, the iMac’s are much more expensive now then they used to be! This will not impress customers…
2) Mac mini’s that are now far overpriced. People who want a cheap computer will have to go ebay or another brand. Apple has now PURPOSELY overpriced their iMac’s so they can overprice their mac mini’s. The crowd who want the Mac Mini’s, want a cheap computer, and don’t care if its an integrated graphics card, or dedicated. People used to buy them as presents for their girlfriends and such, however, seems that’s not possible now.
3) STILL no SLI/Crossfire on the Mac Pro’s.
4) No cheap Apple displays now.. Users have to go third party now
etc.
All of this, whilst the world is going into recession. So now Apple computers are for the elite once again. What is Apple Management thinking!! They are reverting all the good changes they made which for a time led to an increasing market growth.
These changes may benefit Apple directly, but it will really screw the dedicated Apple resellers now (it seems that large resellers which aren’t loyal to Apple though and sell products such as the eeePC will be fine though).
AND WTF, THE MAC MINI’S DON’T EVEN SHIP WITH AN APPLE REMOTE ANYMORE!!! Seriously Apple, WTF..
http://www.bloguidon.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/macvspc2-thumb….
One month ago I’ve build myself an EFiX Mac (Quad) + TFT for ~ 1000,- Euro which still beats the highest iMac (~ 2100,- Euro). Everything was working out of the box. Glad I havn’t been waiting for Apple’s >update<…
Why does Apple seem to have this fetish for Nvidia 9400M and 9500M? The 9500M is a mobile (i.e. lower performance), integrated (i.e. still lower performance) version of the pathetic graphics card I bought a year ago. But seriously, it looks like all Apple’s machines now have these low-end Nvidia GPUs unless you actually specify something better.
Could it be because Nvidia can’t even *give away* those GPUs to ordinary PC manufacturers?
Probably the same reason why the 24 inch iMac uses a 3.16Ghz Core 2 Duo rather than a Core 2 Quad; Intel’s having trouble selling the fast dual cores now so I expect Apple gets them out of the dumpster.
Looks like Acer acquired Gateway a while ago. They were failing miserably and got bought out.
No LED-display on the 24″ iMac? I the new Cinema display was an indication that it would happen.
The current panel is good, but the backlight is so horribly uneven. A cheap dell display will be more uniform.