Because of the close proximity to CES, I couldn't make it down to Mac World, which is a bit of a shame considering all of the interesting suff that was announced there. Now that some of the announcements have been made I thought I'd chime in on things:
Mac mini
The Mac mini is interesting, especially given how small it is. It's basically Apple's answer to the Shuttle XPC, except a lot smaller. The thing weighs 2.9 lbs and measures 6.5" on all sides (and is only 2" high), it's basically a laptop without the integrated display and reproportioned to maximize desktop space. The specs are quite similar to Apple's PowerBook line - offering either a 1.25GHz G4 or a 1.42GHz G4 as a CPU option. The CPU options are strong enough to be competitive with the Celerons that Dell offers in their equivalently priced systems, but definitely not strong enough to compete with something like a 2.8 - 3.0GHz Pentium 4. Honestly I think the CPU is powerful enough, but where Apple really dropped the ball is on the amount of memory. After extensively using the iMac G5 I found that even on the 1.8GHz 20" model the system is basically bound by memory size more than CPU performance (it only ships with 256MB). The move from 256MB to 512MB in OS X 10.3.7 results in a tremendous reduction in disk swapping, which is very important to the overall user experience and one area where the cheap PCs generally fall behind in.
The price points are higher than I would've liked to have seen them, but honestly $499 and $599 are still competitive. My main complaint here continues to be the memory size. I'd like to see at least the $599 model have 512MB of memory, although I wouldn't want to give up the faster processor for it. Unfortunately for $499 I don't think it will be cheap enough for PC users to pick up as a secondary system; an OS X experiment box if you will. I'd say the limit for that crowd would be $399, although then you could be compromising performance specs which would be detrimental to the idea of giving people a positive OS X experience.
I'm impressed by the integrated DVI output as well as the overall design of the system, which I think give it the edge over competing ultracheap PCs. The Radeon 9200 GPU isn't anything to get excited about, so it won't be a gaming machine, but then again Macs really aren't these days to begin with.
My only other complaint from a personal standpoint are the sizes of the HDDs, I'd like to see a massive HDD size option as this thing would make for a great personal server. It sounds like the Mac mini is using a standard 3.5" IDE HDD, if so, replacing that drive with a larger one shouldn't be a problem... :)
Overall, I think the Mac mini is a positive move for Apple and it looks to be a decent product. I was definitely skeptical of the "cheap Mac" at first, but I can say I'm quite impressed at this stage.
iWork
I've never used Keynote so Keynote 2 looks interesting to me, but there's not much I can talk about there. What truly interests me is Pages - finally a MS Word replacement for OS X. I'd do anything to replace MS Office and Dreamweaver with better native OS X applications on the Mac, while still retaining full functionality. While I'm not so sure about its HTML export capabilities, Pages does look like the application that could rid my Mac of MS Word.
iPod shuffle
I'm not as excited about the iPod shuffle because it is screenless and thus you lose one of the major strengths of the iPod - its interface. That being said, I think including a slider that lets you randomize your music or play it sequentially on the actual unit itself was a very smart move.
I'm not so sure how well organizing your playlists at sync time would work simply because I can see myself forgetting the order over time. That being said, I can also see the music itself being a reminder of the order I put the songs in while I'm actually using the unit.
I'm not much of a flash based MP3 player fan but the iPod shuffle is interesting.
The rest...
The iLife updates are also interesting, but I have yet to try iMovie or iDVD so I can't truly appreciate the updates.
Anyone else have any inputs on the announcements?
Mac mini
The Mac mini is interesting, especially given how small it is. It's basically Apple's answer to the Shuttle XPC, except a lot smaller. The thing weighs 2.9 lbs and measures 6.5" on all sides (and is only 2" high), it's basically a laptop without the integrated display and reproportioned to maximize desktop space. The specs are quite similar to Apple's PowerBook line - offering either a 1.25GHz G4 or a 1.42GHz G4 as a CPU option. The CPU options are strong enough to be competitive with the Celerons that Dell offers in their equivalently priced systems, but definitely not strong enough to compete with something like a 2.8 - 3.0GHz Pentium 4. Honestly I think the CPU is powerful enough, but where Apple really dropped the ball is on the amount of memory. After extensively using the iMac G5 I found that even on the 1.8GHz 20" model the system is basically bound by memory size more than CPU performance (it only ships with 256MB). The move from 256MB to 512MB in OS X 10.3.7 results in a tremendous reduction in disk swapping, which is very important to the overall user experience and one area where the cheap PCs generally fall behind in.
The price points are higher than I would've liked to have seen them, but honestly $499 and $599 are still competitive. My main complaint here continues to be the memory size. I'd like to see at least the $599 model have 512MB of memory, although I wouldn't want to give up the faster processor for it. Unfortunately for $499 I don't think it will be cheap enough for PC users to pick up as a secondary system; an OS X experiment box if you will. I'd say the limit for that crowd would be $399, although then you could be compromising performance specs which would be detrimental to the idea of giving people a positive OS X experience.
I'm impressed by the integrated DVI output as well as the overall design of the system, which I think give it the edge over competing ultracheap PCs. The Radeon 9200 GPU isn't anything to get excited about, so it won't be a gaming machine, but then again Macs really aren't these days to begin with.
My only other complaint from a personal standpoint are the sizes of the HDDs, I'd like to see a massive HDD size option as this thing would make for a great personal server. It sounds like the Mac mini is using a standard 3.5" IDE HDD, if so, replacing that drive with a larger one shouldn't be a problem... :)
Overall, I think the Mac mini is a positive move for Apple and it looks to be a decent product. I was definitely skeptical of the "cheap Mac" at first, but I can say I'm quite impressed at this stage.
iWork
I've never used Keynote so Keynote 2 looks interesting to me, but there's not much I can talk about there. What truly interests me is Pages - finally a MS Word replacement for OS X. I'd do anything to replace MS Office and Dreamweaver with better native OS X applications on the Mac, while still retaining full functionality. While I'm not so sure about its HTML export capabilities, Pages does look like the application that could rid my Mac of MS Word.
iPod shuffle
I'm not as excited about the iPod shuffle because it is screenless and thus you lose one of the major strengths of the iPod - its interface. That being said, I think including a slider that lets you randomize your music or play it sequentially on the actual unit itself was a very smart move.
I'm not so sure how well organizing your playlists at sync time would work simply because I can see myself forgetting the order over time. That being said, I can also see the music itself being a reminder of the order I put the songs in while I'm actually using the unit.
I'm not much of a flash based MP3 player fan but the iPod shuffle is interesting.
The rest...
The iLife updates are also interesting, but I have yet to try iMovie or iDVD so I can't truly appreciate the updates.
Anyone else have any inputs on the announcements?
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hopejr - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
oops, I meant #49 :Phopejr - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
#50, that's for clearing that up.tech010101x - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
About Carbon vs. Cocoa. Both are APIs. Cocoa is implemented, at least in Mac OS X, in part on top of Carbon. Basically, Carbon is the term used for both the C API that represents the old Mac APIs as well as all the new C APIs. Therefore, speed comparisons between just the APIs is meaningless.However, there are tons of Mac OS X apps that have roots from the old Mac OS which have not been properly re-architected for Mac OS X. Further, some don't even use the current "native" Mach-O ABI but instead use the old PEF format. There is some overhead with using the old PEF format, however PEF is also faster in in a select others areas. The fundamental problem is any application that still polls for events. Those apps - and there are quite of few of them - can consume CPU cycles when idle, both killing the performance of other apps and consuming battery life for not good reason other than the developers lack of pride in producing a good product - kidding - probably a business decision (albiet a poor one). Most Cocoa apps do not have that particular architectural problem - even those ported from very ancient code bases (remember, Cocoa is just the latest in the line of NeXTstep from 1988).
Another issue is that many older applications are still using the Metrowerks toolchain and may not produce the best G5 code. This is the case for Microsoft Office 2004. Further, since Carbon is a much lower level API than Cocoa, best practices are probably not being followed as far as making the "best" Mac OS X apps from these old code bases. Think of how Win16 apps look today in modern Windows - it's worse than that.
In any case, Cocoa brings so much to the table - developers almost have to go out of their way in order for things not to work right, like services and the color panel. On the other hand, Carbon developers have to upgrade or bring these things in - hence lots of Carbon apps just don't act or feel quite right in Mac OS X. Or worse, they just perform badly.
In the end, it's all about how good a developer ends up writing code - and the big shops just aren't putting in the effort (even though the Mac still represents a huge percentage of Adobe/Macromedia/Quark/etc. sales in the creative space).
Joe - Monday, January 17, 2005 - link
Pages, part of iWork, is more of a layout/publisher program and less of a Word Processor.If you want a really nice Word Processor for Mac, check out Nisus Writer Express.
hopejr - Monday, January 17, 2005 - link
#45, what's that got to do with the Mac mini, etc? HL2 doesn't even run on them AFAIK. You're always off topic.hopejr - Monday, January 17, 2005 - link
#41 I noticed that but I wanted to see if I could get something from the wholesaler I have an account with down the road. I ended up saving $12 AU by going there :P (although I did get PB spec'd memory, but it still works, and works very well - the AHT had no problems with it). I thought Apple was picky, but I haven't run into any problems yet. This thing just runs so fast now!The_Necromancer - Monday, January 17, 2005 - link
How about a HAlf-life 2 cpu scaling?????Eug - Monday, January 17, 2005 - link
BTW, iTunes is great of course, but iPhoto '04 is just meh. Hopefully iPhoto '05 is much better.iMovie '04 is better than average, but iDVD '04 is the best consumer level DVD authoring app ever created. Nothing comes close to iDVD '04, and iDVD '05 looks even better.
Eug - Monday, January 17, 2005 - link
Yes, it's a 2.5" laptop drive. One 1.42 GHz Mac mini has been Xbenched, and it had an 80 GB Toshiba 2.5" drive with 8 MB cache.I agree that Apple really limited its design with the memory.
It's a shame that the memory isn't user upgradable, and it's an even bigger shame that there aren't two memory slots. Size of the unit matters, but I'm sure 99% of purchasers would have preferred having a slightly bigger mini with a second user accessible memory slot to upgrade the RAM.
256 MB on a Mac is inadequate. 384-512 is a good starting point. If they're going to ship it with 256, then they should have added the option for a second user acessible slot to make it an easy upgrade to 768 MB or 1.25 GB. Or in the very least, just make the single slot user accessible, or have two slots not user accessible. Effectively, the mini costs $574, just to make the mini usable, but there is no cheap and easy option to add enough memory to make it more than just usable.
Given the obvious memory limitations of the mini, one wonders if Apple did this intentionally to promote the iMac upsell. If so, I don't think it would have been necessary to protect the iMac in this way, since the machine is already limited by the laptop drive (which is a reasonable compromise IMO for a low end small form factor machine). Furthermore, the mini only supports DDR333 speeds, not DDR400 like the iMac.
In the meantime, I will use my *silent* 1.7 GHz Cube with 7200 rpm desktop drive. :)
P.S. I like the Notebook feature of MS Word. But Pages looks truly cool.
mephisto - Monday, January 17, 2005 - link
#37 M Lin "Any DDR SO-DIMM marked PC2100 and up will do, so PC2700, which is the most plentiful, is fine. In my experience, Macs are NOT picky with RAM"You do read the articles here, don't you?
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232&a...
"The memory, as I've mentioned before, is the same DDR400 that you use in PCs, but the motherboard is quite picky about the SPD programming on the modules."
Some years back there was a G4 firmware update that disabled a lot of third party RAM. It turned out to be a cl timing issue - exactly what Anand refered to above after his first choice of high speed RAM did not work. You'll find the full story here:
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/03/24.3.sh...
So, as both Anand & I said, Macs are picky about RAM.