Mac mini: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Apple Store

by Chris Howard Mar 14, 2006

The dust is settling, the zomboids who never intended to buy a Mac mini in the first place, and yet had the audacity to say the graphics on the new Intel based mini are crap, have had their say and returned to their dual-core G5s or Yonahs. The others, who for some reason thought, since Apple never put a decent gaming chip in the PPC Mac mini that it would all of a sudden put something special in the Intel mini, have wandered off muttering: they’re never going to buy a Mac mini. And they never were.

And now the nonsense has gone, sensibility is entering the arena.

Reports are showing these new minis are quick, much quicker than their PowerPC parents - even the base model with it’s Core Solo CPU and only 432MB RAM available to the system. There have been some odd quirks in the hardware reporting and over at TUAW, testing of the Solo has identified some issues with FrontRow when accessing content on other Macs via Bonjour. But at the end of the day, these new minis are - surprise, surprise - significantly better than their predecessors. And, yes, even the graphics - which can now run elements of Tiger’s Core Image that the PPC minis couldn’t, such as the ripple effect on the Dashboard.

Here’s a few links to Intel Mac mini reviews:

A funny thing happened on the way to…

I’ve been waiting six months for the Intel-based Mac mini to replace my kids’ aging Ruby G3 iMac. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Apple Store.

Now I want two.

One for the kids to use as a computer, and one for the TV entertainment unit-just to use for media content. With VNC, I could drive it from any computer in the house, so I don’t even need another mouse and keyboard.

Hands up all those with DVDs? Hands up all those with VHS tapes? Hands up all those who have to be more careful with DVDs than tapes? They’re not as robust are they? One half decent scratch can ruin an entire DVD. Now I’m not suggesting you do anything that is illegal in your part of the woods, but if you could copy your DVDs to hard disk and then put the originals away for safe keeping… you would wouldn’t you.

And if you could download movies from say…oh…um.. the iTunes Music Store you would wouldn’t you? (BTW, I don’t give a brass razoo what it’s called - I buy plenty of videos from music stores, and have for years.)

And what might you manage and play all this content with? The new Mac mini looks good to me!

But what say, I just buy one of these Mac minis? A small dilemma - I’ve got four kids. That’s up to four hours per day that the computer’s not available. (We run the excellent MacMinder, which limits them each to 1hr per day.) Assuming TV viewing window is 4pm to 11pm, that’s more than 50% wiped out if I want to run movies off the mini.

Hence, I wish for two.

It’s not going to happen in a hurry given my financial status, although at least I already have a big HDD to load up with movies. With some careful use of compression tools, I should be able to make the most of the drive I already have, but with all the miniDV tapes I have of the kids doing stuff that could only interest their parents, I will have to get a second big external HDD sometime in the future.

Fill ‘er up

It’s ironic isn’t it? I’ve worked in computers for 20 years and we never stop saying of HDDs, “You’ll never fill that!” My Dad got laughed at by his friends when his first computer had a 10MB (ten megabyte for you young ‘uns who mighta miss read that). Everyone else was buying 5MB. “You’ll never fill that!” they all laughed.

I personally thought we’d finally plateaued when we got to about 40GB to 60GB. I mean that’s a lot of Word documents, photos and even MP3s. And we had for a while. But the flood gates are about to burst open like never before.

I’ve got a 250GB external HDD but I could fill it with 1/3 of my DVD collection, 1/4 of my miniDV tapes. Until now I’d never really needed to because I wasn’t connected to the living room TV.

But give me a Mac mini and I’m gonna fill that sucker up in no time. I’m going to need at least a terabyte. Probably two. Not only is Apple going to really kick off the media center revolution, (as it did with the MP3 player market), it is going to kick off an absolute boom in HDD size expansion.

Apple made a huge huge mistake with the original Mac. It was first to market with a GUI. Steve seems to have learned his lesson and now waits for the market to get rolling and then get messy as it starts to collapse under the weight of brainless design. Then he steps up to the plate and belts the ball out of the park. But that home run is dependent on a second factor. Online content distribution.

What was the story of the iPod’s success? When did it really take off? When the iTunes Music Store came along.

The same is going to happen with the mini, it’ll coast along for a few months and then boom - Steve will announce iTMS trades in feature films.

All halo the Mac mini

The Mac mini will soon be sold not as a computer but a media center. And then it will create it’s own halo effect. At first people won’t switch. Just like they didn’t at first when they bought iPods. But then as they load all their media on the mini, they’ll get familiar with it. And familiarity breeds content (just ask Microsoft! It also breeds contempt - just ask Microsoft - but that’s another story).

Once the barriers are broken down and people no longer see the Mac as something alien - and their photos and music and movies are on it - how long before they start replacing their PCs with computers that are compatible with their media center computer, their Mac mini?

And you thought it was just a Mac mini with Intel inside, that the launch was a disappointment because nothing radical was released?

Apple just gets smarter every day.

Comments

  • And you thought it was just a Mac mini with Intel inside, that the launch was a disappointment because nothing radical was released?

    Chris, thankyou. This article was exactly what needed saying. Insight from personal standpoint yet analytical enough to be broadly interesting. Excellent!

    Benji had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 927
  • Chris, the point isn’t that the Mac Mini is faster than it’s predecessor.  At the very LEAST it should be faster.  It is, after all, a year newer and computer speed only progresses.

    But the gfx card in the Mac Mini, itself a year old, was old technology already.  And while we’d expect an onboard gfx card to be faster than ancient video technology, it’s still not as fast as a low-end gfx card they COULD put in there today.

    I mean, if it’s so fast and people are crazy to criticize onboard gfx (a strangely generous and brand new attitude among Mac fans, I might add), then why doesn’t Apple put it in ALL of their Intel Macs?

    And yes, I understand it’s a low-end machine and that typically low-end machines come with onboard gfx.  But those machines are also typically ridiculed for their gfx, and the people who buy them typically immediately upgrade the gfx, something you can’d do with the Mac Mini.

    The Mac mini will soon be sold not as a computer but a media center.

    It will not be a media center until it plays and records television.  An no, paying $2 to download an episode of SOME shows from major networks doesn’t count.

    I hope they add this feature (and a real remote), but there doesn’t seem to be any indication they’re going to do that.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 2220
  • Wonderful article. If the mac mini really does become the next iPod, you will definitely have bragging rights grin

    Beeblebrox: “An no, paying $2 to download an episode of SOME shows from major networks doesn’t count.”

    Agreed, but paying nothing for ad-supported content streamed to your mini would count. It’s pure speculation, but I imagine this scenerio is more likely than adding a TV tuner, since the latter would compromise their iTunes sales. OTOH, perhaps Apple doesn’t care about cutting into iTunes sales, since their margins are so slim.

    Oskar had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 86
  • Agreed, but paying nothing for ad-supported content streamed to your mini would count.

    No it wouldn’t.  Like the $2 downloads, it relies on content providers making their content available specifically to iTunes and then you the user subscribing or downloading it.  I get free video podcasts all the time.  Believe me, it’s not the same thing as watching television or using a PVR.

    I’m not speculating either way on whether a PVR is likely (one certainly can’t go by anything Steve Jobs or Apple says).  I’m simply saying that it won’t be a media center until it has one.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 2220
  • Not sure I agree entirely, Beeb about what constitutes a media centre. Apple has a reputation for not giving you the whole kit - eg iPod doesn’t have inbuilt FM tuner.

    Do you want Apple’s tuner and PVR? Or do you want to be able to choose your own?

    As much as I’d like a PVR built in, I can see the logic of not wanting to build a box that does everything, but then nothing well.


    PS Thanks Ben and Oskar. smile

    Chris Howard had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 1209
  • Beeblebrox: “No it wouldn’t.  Like the $2 downloads, it relies on content providers making their content available specifically to iTunes and then you the user subscribing or downloading it.”

    And you doubt Apple’s ability to get content? My speculation assumed a continued steady growth of offerings; given time, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have the kind of selection cable providers currently have.

    In fact, I see Apple as having an economic advantage. Content providers have been reeling since the TiVo debuted, so if Apple provided on-demand streaming (which could easily prevent fast-forwarding thru commercials) they may flock to it.

    Oskar had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 86
  • Not sure I agree entirely, Beeb about what constitutes a media centre.

    Well, it’s certainly your perogative to define a media center as anything that Apple builds.  You could, after all, argue that the iPod itself is a media center.

    Personally, I more or less define it as a PVR/TV tuner, music/video player, and DVD player integrated into a single interface.

    Do you want Apple’s tuner and PVR? Or do you want to be able to choose your own?

    With the Mac Mini, you can’t do either one.  Even if you did have a PVR, which I do, you can’t integrate with the Front Row interface.

    I can see the logic of not wanting to build a box that does everything, but then nothing well.

    I think the assumption is that it would handle PVR as seamlessly as it does DVD and music.

    After all, you could make this sort of excuse if Apple didn’t include a DVD player or iTunes too.  How many important features can the Mac lack before you DON’T consider it a media center?

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 2220
  • I think the ideal solution is having a separate computer with PVR capabilities that can (now!) stream directly to the mac mini. To me, scheduled recording of tv is something that is best handled by a computer interface, not with an unwieldy remote system - or worse, a media centre with keyboard and mouse: that’s just not elegant. What <i>is elegant though is the front-row interface. And if you can remove the relatively complex recording functionality to the computer in the next room, I think that is a beautiful solution.

    It’s possible that the new media-streaming capabilities of front-row will come to be regarded as *the* deciding factor in the media centre wars.

    Benji had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 927
  • (Damn me and my html tag sloppiness!)

    Benji had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 927
  • My speculation assumed a continued steady growth of offerings; given time, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have the kind of selection cable providers currently have.

    What you’re suggesting is that Apple will somehow, someway get every single show on every single channel of my cable box onto iTunes at the same time it comes on my TV, and it will all be ad-supported so I don’t have to pay $2 for each episode.

    There’s defending Apple, and then there’s living in fantasyland.  This qualifies as the latter.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 2220
  • Well it’s not total lunacy to think of streamed content as being supported by advertising in the same way that normal broadcast content is.

    I think the real question we ought to ask though is, what would be the point, exactly?

    Tech companies ideally produce solutions to outstanding problems. The iTunes store is a solution to the problem of obtaining ipod-friendly content in a consumer-friendly fashion. TV shows are sold formatted for ipods, on which they are intended to be watched. Their sale also allows you to watch them repeatedly, should you want to.

    Apple’s offerings, should they hope to be successful, will bring new functionality to the table, in the same way as they have done so far. This is one company we can hopefully rely on not to start selling ‘solutions in search of a problem’.

    Benji had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 927
  • I think the ideal solution is having a separate computer with PVR capabilities that can (now!) stream directly to the mac mini.

    My ideal solution would be all of that in one box, not two.  A Mac Mini with TV Tuner and PVR, integrated into FR with iTunes and DVD Player.

    Putting a Mac Mini in another room and being able to stream all of that content to another machine would be a great added bonus.  I don’t think, however, that it’s the deciding factor since you have to have the content to stream in the first place.  The lack of a PVR is a gaping hole in that scenario, which makes the PVR the deciding factor.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 2220
  • Well it’s not total lunacy to think of streamed content as being supported by advertising in the same way that normal broadcast content is.

    Not only is it not total lunacy, it’s becoming more and more common with video podcasts.

    But that’s not what I’m talking about.  What I’m saying is that TV content available in the iTMS is no substitute for my cable box and PVR.  Even if I didn’t have to pay $2, I still have to download it, and I still have to wait for whatever network owns the show to make it available to iTMS.  And if the network decides that they don’t feel like releasing my favorite show, then I’m pretty much out of luck.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 2220
  • Beeblebrox: “What you’re suggesting is that Apple will somehow, someway get every single show on every single channel of my cable box onto iTunes [...]”

    Right, because they weren’t able to get every single song on every single CD on there. And here I thought the main objection would be slow internet speeds, not Apple’s inability to get content providers (they’ve proven themselves in that area thoroughly).

    Beeblebrox: “There’s defending Apple, and then there’s living in fantasyland.  This qualifies as the latter.”

    Let’s not resort to implying I’m an Apple fanatic “living in fantasyland.” I think I’ve proven I’m not several times, including here:
    http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/playing_nicely_with_others/

    So let’s have an intellgient discussion and not act like dickheads.

    Beeblebrox: “Even if I didn’t have to pay $2, I still have to download it, and I still have to wait for whatever network owns the show to make it available to iTMS.”

    Streaming means playing while downloading. Go to Google Video to try it out. As for waiting, I believe they are already offering one or more shows before they show up on TV. Maybe someone else can help me remember which show that was.

    Oskar had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 86
  • RAnd here I thought the main objection would be slow internet speeds, not Apple’s inability to get content providers (they’ve proven themselves in that area thoroughly).

    You really don’t get this, Oskar.  You want an “intelligent discussion” but you can’t even comprehend the difference between a limited selection of pay-per-view downloads and a TV tuner with PVR; or why the PVR has advantages over the iTMS model that are simply impractical for Apple to overcome even if they wanted to.

    Second, there are 5 major labels that control 80% of copyrighted music, each song of which is only about 4 MB in size.  And Apple still can’t get every song. 

    There are, on the other hand, about 200 different TV channels with 24 hours of constantly changing content.  One episode of one video podcast can be tens or hundreds of MBs in size.  With TV, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of hours of video content.

    And yet, unlike with iTMS, I can record any of those shows right to my PVR when they air.  In other words, every single show that airs right now on cable is mine for the pickings.

    And that includes movies, which aren’t yet available on iTMS at all (I think they just added one title for a Disney MOW).

    Finally, there’s simply no point in doing it that way if you can just incorporate a tuner and PVR.

    iTMS competes with DVD (and only just barely), not TV, the same way it competes with CDs, not radio.

    Streaming means playing while downloading.

    I believe the streaming Ben’s referring to is the shared media streaming across your own home network devices, not live streaming from the internet, which I don’t believe iTMS currently allows, at least not with TV or video podcasts.

    The iTMS video model is not without its value.  If you don’t have a PVR and miss your favorite show (provided iTMS carries it) or want your favorite show or episode on demand, it might be worth $2 an episode.  Or if you don’t care about quality or resolution, it’s a convenient replacement for buying the season DVD.

    But it is not the same as a PVR and it never will be.  By the time we get to the point where Apple has the same number of shows, and the bandwidth across the internet could even handle it, we’ll probably be on to something else entirely.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Mar 15, 2006 Posts: 2220
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