I’ll admit up front that I’ve always liked the Mac Mini. I used one as my main office computer for a couple of years before retiring it to my living room where it’s hooked up to my HD TV and makes a terrific little media centre.
Apple Mac Mini 2010 Apple's Mac Mini: the new Apple TV?
So I was delighted to see that the new …
could play HD content perfectly well (and record two more channels at the same time). I've been using a 2GHz, 2gig one to do just that for a couple of years now.
"Yup, I know fine and well that the old Mini Mac of a 'couple of years ago' had the graphics power of an asthmatic ant, and would jump and cause issues with 'HD' youtube content, as was just fast enough to play DVD's. So pluging it into an HD telly suggests you used it for HD content, which would of been rubish as opposed to 'a terrific little media centre'."
I've use a Core Duo 1.66 (so that would be about 4 years old) as a "terrific little media centre" and it has zero problems with Google or iPlayer HD content. Though for some reason iPlayer Desktop causes the cpu to max out and content is unwatchable...
mac mini 2006 - cost 300 quid from apple refurb store.
upgraded 1.6 duo to 2.33 duo,and added gig of memory (1.5gb now) for another 100 quid.
Has been on 24/7 for last 4 years as my living room media centre - accessing house servers for content (samba shares).
It plays any 720p and 1080p mkv you throw at it no probs at all, and is currently powering a 50" LG 1080p plasma.
People seem to get very cofused as to what they thing graphics cards do for HD video.... let me simplify it:
FUCK ALL*
stu
*unless running windows MPC HD, you can stand the inbuild accelerated decoder and have a compatible nvidia or ati card. On osx - its all about CPU baby. for now and for the last 4 years.
Almost all my video playback, including HD, is accelerated through the graphics card, and that's on FreeBSD for gods sake, with a £20, 4 year old graphics card. CPU doesn't come into it.
I'm pretty certain that on OS X, almost all video is accelerated when using a graphics card with the appropriate features that are supported by QuartzExtreme, QuartzGL, CoreVideo and CoreImage libraries.
If your hardware is sub-standard, only then it will fall back onto CPU decoding.
This surely would have had an i3 or i5 had Intel not got their balls in a twist over allowing NVIDIA to create chipsets. Instead Apple, who naturally want to avoid Intel graphics, had to go for the Core 2 Duo. But Intel are pricing these quite high because they want people to transition to their newer CPUs.
So blame Intel for the high price and CPU. But note that the CPU is more than good enough for most tasks, and the 320M would have a bigger effect on experience than a bit more performance.
If Intel don't up their game by next year, the next Mac Mini will be a quad-core AMD Llano.
I can't justify the current Mac Mini price for what it provides.
I have the previous Mac Mini, but the wireless adapter is really terrible, it loses it's connection with the router so frequently that I gave up trying to use it to surf the web and now it's just a very expensive dvd player and stereo. When I investigated the problem with wireless adapter on Mac forums all that people could tell me that it's known to be a cheap component and the problem is known one that there is no solution for. Can anyone tell me if this new Mac Mini has the same wireless adapter as the previous one?
As the happy owner of two previous Mac Minis (a PowerPC one and the first Core 2 Duo one - neither of which have ever had any over-heating problems, despite both being used at various times as 24 hour always-on machines and both of which still work fine), I have to say that this one seems to be a mixed bag.
I love the new case, like that the power supply has been integrated, like the easier RAM access and the HDMI port.
On the other hand, I'm mystified as to why Apple hasn't upgraded the CPU to the Core i3 (which is now tipping up everywhere in new laptops), the 2GB of RAM is disappointing, the 5400rpm drive is also a bit slow, the price is a bit on the high side and I'm not a fan of their new one-price one-spec approach.
Admittedly, last time I bought a Mac Mini, it came with 1GB of RAM and a smaller 120GB HDD and I just replaced these myself with 2GB of RAM and a 320GB HDD as it was miles cheaper than going down the Apple upgrade route.
I'm using a mac mini to write this and although it is a nice machine Apple really need to offer more for 650 quid.
I can lighten myself of several hundred pounds to get marginally improved system with HD.
Given that its a computer and I am not hugely fussed about HD anywhere that is not on my TV i really fail to see the point since there is so little improvement in spec for so much money.
Apple claims it beats the ENERGY STAR 5.0 requirement for typical electricity consumption (TEC) by 80%. Machines from other supplier typically scrape by with a margin of less than 20% (so using around four times the electricity of the Mac Mini), which mitigates somewhat the higher capital cost of the Mac Mini.
New Macs will rarely boot off any OS version older than the one that comes on the install disks - in this case 10.6.3. This is because all the hardware drivers for all supported hardware come on the install DVD.
The usual Energy Star requirement is 80% efficiency. Typical PSUs range from 70 to 90%.
Beating the ES requirement by four times that of a competitor does NOT make it 4 times more efficient. i.e. 88% vs 82% (I don't know how you propose it to beat the TEC by 80% unless it's generating its own power as some kind of perpetual motion machine!)
The top mac mini draws 85 watts... (say 4 watts less than "inefficient" competitors). At 10 cents per KwH, it would take 28 years of constant use to save 100 bucks.
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I’ll admit up front that I’ve always liked the Mac Mini. I used one as my main office computer for a couple of years before retiring it to my living room where it’s hooked up to my HD TV and makes a terrific little media centre. Apple Mac Mini 2010 Apple's Mac Mini: the new Apple TV? So I was delighted to see that the new …
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The 2007 mini
could play HD content perfectly well (and record two more channels at the same time). I've been using a 2GHz, 2gig one to do just that for a couple of years now.
So what do you thinkg 'couple of years ago' means
"Yup, I know fine and well that the old Mini Mac of a 'couple of years ago' had the graphics power of an asthmatic ant, and would jump and cause issues with 'HD' youtube content, as was just fast enough to play DVD's. So pluging it into an HD telly suggests you used it for HD content, which would of been rubish as opposed to 'a terrific little media centre'."
I've use a Core Duo 1.66 (so that would be about 4 years old) as a "terrific little media centre" and it has zero problems with Google or iPlayer HD content. Though for some reason iPlayer Desktop causes the cpu to max out and content is unwatchable...
er...
mac mini 2006 - cost 300 quid from apple refurb store.
upgraded 1.6 duo to 2.33 duo,and added gig of memory (1.5gb now) for another 100 quid.
Has been on 24/7 for last 4 years as my living room media centre - accessing house servers for content (samba shares).
It plays any 720p and 1080p mkv you throw at it no probs at all, and is currently powering a 50" LG 1080p plasma.
People seem to get very cofused as to what they thing graphics cards do for HD video.... let me simplify it:
FUCK ALL*
stu
*unless running windows MPC HD, you can stand the inbuild accelerated decoder and have a compatible nvidia or ati card. On osx - its all about CPU baby. for now and for the last 4 years.
@stu 4 - 'er OK m8'
Almost all my video playback, including HD, is accelerated through the graphics card, and that's on FreeBSD for gods sake, with a £20, 4 year old graphics card. CPU doesn't come into it.
I'm pretty certain that on OS X, almost all video is accelerated when using a graphics card with the appropriate features that are supported by QuartzExtreme, QuartzGL, CoreVideo and CoreImage libraries.
If your hardware is sub-standard, only then it will fall back onto CPU decoding.
Whatever Apple calls Purevideo and VDPAU.
> People seem to get very cofused as to what they thing graphics
> cards do for HD video.... let me simplify it:
>
> FUCK ALL*
>
> stu
>
> *unless running windows MPC HD, you can stand the inbuild accelerated
> decoder and have a compatible nvidia or ati card. On osx - its all about CPU
> baby. for now and for the last 4 years.
The nv320 does all of the heavy lifting for decoding mpeg2, divx and h264.
The nv9400 in slightly older Mac minis do just mpeg2 and h264.
HD h264 is really the only thing that needs it as an even AppleTV can handle HD divx.
If your Mac based HTPC is ever running with CPU usage more than 15% then either Apple or Adobe has done something wrong.
Not SFF!
You can't put low profile expansion cards in this machine, so it's USFF.
For the same price you could buy one of the new Dell 19" touchscreen all-in-one PCs.
Bah @ expensive Intel CPUs
This surely would have had an i3 or i5 had Intel not got their balls in a twist over allowing NVIDIA to create chipsets. Instead Apple, who naturally want to avoid Intel graphics, had to go for the Core 2 Duo. But Intel are pricing these quite high because they want people to transition to their newer CPUs.
So blame Intel for the high price and CPU. But note that the CPU is more than good enough for most tasks, and the 320M would have a bigger effect on experience than a bit more performance.
If Intel don't up their game by next year, the next Mac Mini will be a quad-core AMD Llano.
I can't justify the current Mac Mini price for what it provides.
The wireless adapter?
I have the previous Mac Mini, but the wireless adapter is really terrible, it loses it's connection with the router so frequently that I gave up trying to use it to surf the web and now it's just a very expensive dvd player and stereo. When I investigated the problem with wireless adapter on Mac forums all that people could tell me that it's known to be a cheap component and the problem is known one that there is no solution for. Can anyone tell me if this new Mac Mini has the same wireless adapter as the previous one?
A mixed bag
As the happy owner of two previous Mac Minis (a PowerPC one and the first Core 2 Duo one - neither of which have ever had any over-heating problems, despite both being used at various times as 24 hour always-on machines and both of which still work fine), I have to say that this one seems to be a mixed bag.
I love the new case, like that the power supply has been integrated, like the easier RAM access and the HDMI port.
On the other hand, I'm mystified as to why Apple hasn't upgraded the CPU to the Core i3 (which is now tipping up everywhere in new laptops), the 2GB of RAM is disappointing, the 5400rpm drive is also a bit slow, the price is a bit on the high side and I'm not a fan of their new one-price one-spec approach.
Admittedly, last time I bought a Mac Mini, it came with 1GB of RAM and a smaller 120GB HDD and I just replaced these myself with 2GB of RAM and a 320GB HDD as it was miles cheaper than going down the Apple upgrade route.
No Point
I'm using a mac mini to write this and although it is a nice machine Apple really need to offer more for 650 quid.
I can lighten myself of several hundred pounds to get marginally improved system with HD.
Given that its a computer and I am not hugely fussed about HD anywhere that is not on my TV i really fail to see the point since there is so little improvement in spec for so much money.
Electricity Consumption
Apple claims it beats the ENERGY STAR 5.0 requirement for typical electricity consumption (TEC) by 80%. Machines from other supplier typically scrape by with a margin of less than 20% (so using around four times the electricity of the Mac Mini), which mitigates somewhat the higher capital cost of the Mac Mini.
A question.
The real question is, can it run 10.5.8?
Almost certainly not
New Macs will rarely boot off any OS version older than the one that comes on the install disks - in this case 10.6.3. This is because all the hardware drivers for all supported hardware come on the install DVD.
@Chris
Did you fail high school maths?
The usual Energy Star requirement is 80% efficiency. Typical PSUs range from 70 to 90%.
Beating the ES requirement by four times that of a competitor does NOT make it 4 times more efficient. i.e. 88% vs 82% (I don't know how you propose it to beat the TEC by 80% unless it's generating its own power as some kind of perpetual motion machine!)
The top mac mini draws 85 watts... (say 4 watts less than "inefficient" competitors). At 10 cents per KwH, it would take 28 years of constant use to save 100 bucks.
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