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Mac mini Dissection
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jan 19, 2005 02:17 AM
from the vicarious-fun dept.
from the vicarious-fun dept.
xbasque writes "Smash has a video showing the technique for cracking open a Mac mini safely. Upgrade the RAM and hard drive yourself and save a bundle (ain't that the point of the mini?)" And if you don't plan to take one apart yourself,
parvenu74 points out the pictures of exploratory Mac mini surgery on mini-itx.com, writing "From a post: 'The board itself is slightly smaller than Mini-ITX at about 160mm square by our estimations, and includes Ethernet, Modem, DVI/VGA, 2 x USB, Firewire and Audio connectors (sadly not optical).'"
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Hosting a video? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't Wait (Score:5, Funny)
Then put some wicked cool Red LED Lights in the front of the car, and whenever the car talks to me, the red lights act like a visualizer of sorts. Knight Rider here I come!
Re:Can't Wait (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, with the appropriate hacks (perhaps Salling Clicker [mac.com]), you could integrate your bluetooth phone into the mix. Open Address Book, search for a name and have the computer dial out over the phone with voice commands. Incoming calls could also automatically mute the volume on iTunes.
I dunno, that's just off the top of my head. You could also use your bluetooth phone to connect to the internet to look up directions on mapquest, but it'd probably be better to pull over for that.
One question. If the mini Mac goes into the car stereo space, does the printer go into the glove compartment or do you just mount it on top of the dash? =)
Audio in? (Score:5, Interesting)
Best PVR option at the moment is EyeTV (Score:5, Informative)
Then you just need to hook it into some kind of IR blaster...
Apple warranty service (Score:5, Informative)
Left unanswered is the obvious question: well then, if any hardware problems arise, how will Apple know I'm not to blame? Based on my experience getting Macs serviced (4 years in university), I'd say there's really not much to worry about. If you break the RAM slot, then tough luck. But if, say, the CPU dies through no fault of yours, Apple's not the sort of company to refuse to service your Mac on a technicality. There aren't a lot of assholes working for Apple customer service.
Nevertheless, I do wonder if there's some sort of sticker or seal on the inside to let Apple know you've opened the case.
Re:Apple warranty service (Score:5, Funny)
In my experience with PC repair, you can usually tell by how thoroughly the person who brought it in denies having opened the case, which is always in proportion to how broken it is.
Re:Apple warranty service (Score:5, Informative)
Translation: Apple has agreed to abide by the law and by FTC regulations. This is the same as your car dealer saying that your car warranty will remain in effect even if you elect to change your own oil filter, oil, air filter, etc.
Nevertheless, I do wonder if there's some sort of sticker or seal on the inside to let Apple know you've opened the case.
While companies put the "warranty void if this sticker is broken," such stickers would be easy to successfully challenge in court. There are some obvious exceptions, like hard drives where it is unlikely that the owner will have access to a clean room, but this is far different. Consumers have been successfully assembling, upgrading, and repairing personal computers for years. That's not to say that Apple is obliged to give warranty service if you, for example, put a higher wattage CPU in the machine and it causes a thermally-induced failure.
All of this falls under the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act. Just as the act guarantees your right to install a Fram air filter in your car without warranty repercussions, it allows you to install Crucial RAM in your Apple computer without Apple being able to deny all subsequent warranty claims.
Just my $.02.
Re:Apple warranty service (Score:5, Interesting)
i bought my power book in the US but live right now in europe. I sent it in for the know problem of white spots on the display. There was some shipping damage and ES (euro support) refused to take any responsibility for it and refused fix anything stating - paraphrasing - give us $900 or we won't fix it, because the damage was not listed in the original service request. but when i got back to the states, thety fixed it no questions asked.
I was talking to customer service in Ireland complaining about the level of service i was receiving. I had the guy on the phone tell me that he had head the words extortion and blackmail used a lot by people refering to the kind of support from ES.
Form you own conclusion!
Smash??! (Score:5, Funny)
That little WiFi board connector (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, you probably could just hook up a USB 802 adapter, but then you loose some "look how small it is" points.
Dissecting a Mac is like ... (Score:5, Funny)
Dissecting a MiniMac is sort of like ripping the limbs off of your kid sister's Barbie dolls and glueing them back onto your GI Joe action figures
[/evil]
Unusual places?? (Score:5, Funny)
the rounded corners should help cramming it into unusual places
I know I'm going to regret asking, but just what are the usual "unusual places"?
Note from a linked article (Score:5, Insightful)
"""
But it was only a matter of time before someone would argue, "It's still not price-competitive with the cheapest Dell." And within days we've got our first such columns and articles, all of which leave me scratching my head, wondering if these guys are as bad at comparing products when they shop for themselves as they apparently are when comparing products for their columns.
"""
I agree. I'm a really recent switcher. I had a second hand mac kicking around years ago (and despised the OS - I ran Be on it), but bought an iBook laptop last Friday. It's my first mac and my first laptop. My justification was that it was cheap, runs unix, has full driver support, especially for wireless networking. I've held off for about two years waiting for a laptop that can deliver that for less than two grand Australian. That's a really compelling formula, and a far better geek computer than a PC.
To get a happy unix experience on a PC laptop you either pay a lot more money or roll the dice on linux drivers and winmodems. Or you can try and run Windows and put up with the limitations of cygwin or the speed hit of vmware. Yuck.
Not that it's always been this way. Until recently, Apples sucked. But OS X has become usable and the hardware has a better reputation than it used to - laptops in particular.
If I were Apple I'd be a bit concerned at the powerbook line - the iBooks deliver so much for so little now the powerbooks don't look very attractive.
Re:This was not a dissection. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That is cool (Score:5, Funny)
So would a Cray. If you made a really big robot.
Re:A buttload of Money (Score:5, Insightful)
You can build two stinking x86 computers - or one very decent x86 computer, which would be my choice - for $500. If you know how to put parts together, you can easily make something that outperforms the mini. The problem is that 95% of the people out there don't build, but buy their machines from Dell, HP, etc. and $500 Dells suck badly. They come with Celerons and Intel Integrated graphics, they don't have Firewire or CD burners, and so the Mac mini looks reasonably competitive - especially if you value the aesthetics.
Re:A buttload of Money (Score:5, Insightful)
or if you want a silent computer that doesnt overheat.
for a good cheap comp though, nforce3 + athlon + ram + HD + cd/dvd + case probablly might end up coming out to around $500. But the computer definetly wont be the size of the mac mini, or as quiet.
Re:A buttload of Money (Score:5, Insightful)
The AGP slot is occupied by a video card, which I just recently replaced for the first time in 5 years. On the mac mini, that's already built onto the board with an ATI chipset.
1 PCI slot is used by my Soudblaster card, which I just recently upgraded, again for the first time in 5 years, and that was because the card never worked right in the first place and this happened to be the time I was upgrading things. On the mac mini, this is built into the system
1 PCI slot is occupied by an ethernet card, un upgraded in 5 years. Gigabit is built into the mac mini
1 slot contains a USB/Firewire card, again, un upgraded, and built into the mac mini.
The other two slots remain unused, and for the forseeable future, I have no use for them. In the end, they're actualy a waste.
So when I look at the mac mini, it has everything I would use PCI/AGP slots for built in.
So then the question becomes well what if you want to upgrade?
Well, when I did my mass upgrade for the first time in 5 years (until now, I had only added RAM), I bought a new motherboard, a new processor, new graphics card, new soundcard and new RAM. My total cost came out to about $600 after rebates.
After reflecting on this, it occurs to me, that if a mac mini suits my needs, by the time I would decide to upgrade it, I might as well just buy a new one for $500.
In fact, for the first time, my computer would actualy be a disposable product. Something that I could (theoreticaly) just discard and buy a new one when it no longer served my needs, and it would be roughly price equivilant to upgrading the system.
So in the end, having PCI slots and an accessable case on the mac mini would seem to be more of a waste than a benefit.
Of course, you can always argue that hard core gamers and power users have other things and upgrade more frequently, but I argue that no hardcore gamer/power user is buying a $500 computer.
Re:A buttload of Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Howzabout you buy a computer instead of hand-carving your own microchips?
People love to talk about how you can build a top-flight desktop computer for $3.25 plus two subway tokens and some kind of weird-ass coin that you dug out of your sofa that's got "Røølï" written on it, but what they curiously omit is the fact that if you took all the time you'd spend gathering parts and assembling them and worked a minimum-wage job at some fast food place instead, you'd earn hundreds of dollars. So the real cost of this "It's Shake-n-Bake, and I helped!" special is, in fact, several times higher than the sum of the price tags on the hundreds of inscrutable parts that went into it.
People who say "I can build that for less" are either not bothering to account for their time or just flat-out lying, because the plain truth of the matter is that if they could, somebody already would have, and you'd be able to just go out to a 7-11 and buy the damn thing for half off with the purchase of a medium or large fountain drink.
Re:HDD Q (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HDD Q (Score:5, Insightful)
All things considered, the Mac mini will be a great machine to use and own. Mac OS X works smoothly even on a sub 1Ghz G4 so the mini is going to be ample. More to the point, where my XP Pro box with Athlon XP 2200+ and 512MB of RAM quite often feels slow and bogged down the iBook multitasks much better. I doubt that the slow hard drive in the Mac mini is going to be that big an issue either. Just do yourself a favour if you buy one, get the cheapest and stick some Crucial RAM in it (512MB is the sweet spot). I would get a Mac keyboard but use a standard 3 button scroll wheel mouse and put a good quality 17" LCD on there. That is going to get you a really nice Mac for budget PC money and it will run OS X, something I think is worth a great deal.
Re:From the "interesting read" link... (Score:5, Informative)
With the Dell, on the other hand, you get neither antennas nor guts. That means that, if you add wireless via a card or some damn thing, it's either going to perform really poorly or it's going to have a big-ass antenna sticking out of it.
Advantage: Apple.
Re:iMac mini NEEDS a PC card slot (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that's all well and good if you only want ports, but lets look at the facts.
EZ-GO ePC-2 (Base System)
Processor: 1.1Ghz intel celeron
memory: 128 MB SDRAM
video: integrated video (11.8MB max shared)
HD: 40GB
Optical Drive: 24x CD-ROM
Price: $589
mac mini (Base System)
Processor 1.25Ghz Power PC G4
memory: 256 MB
Video: Radeon 9200 w/ 32MB memory
HD: 40GB
Optical Drive: DVD ROM/CD-RW
Price: $499
It looks to me like the mac mini is a superior system in almost every way, and costs $90 less.
Re:Images gallery of all Apples case designs? (Score:5, Informative)