Thats the way. If someone didnt switch yet from win to a clickety-click-self-everything-autoconfigured-and- managed linux, because 'linux? thats a complicated hax0r-system!', then here's the opportunity. a nice and powerful, and not expensive mac. And of course it does run linux if you want :) Its little, silent, powerful (no I am no apple representative) - and it just workz. Viruses? Ha. Ha. Ha. And you still can use the MS office things, until you get seomething better. OOo [openoffice.org] for example. Throw out your windows - have fun.

Read the review from AnandTech [anandtech.com]. It is very comprehensive (18 pages!) and doesn't fail to point out the design features Apple put in to enhance the user experience. Nor does it fail to hilight the weak points of the design.

In my experience, it is very rarely "form over function" with Apple, it's function intersecting form.

BYODKM is slow ... try...

http://www.plasticsmith.com/ [plasticsmith.com]

Since the origiinal story must be hosted on a mac mini, its already down for the count...: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/c5e2ce0f2841a64d8 a5f9e8b9b0c97bd/index.html

Check out Apple's latest quartly results. Their hardware buisness is growing, so we don't have to worry about any implosion for awhile at least :)

High end audio equipment too has many FEWER features than your standard Best Buy components. The preamp on my hi-fi only has a source selector switch and a volume control. But even with this severe lack of features, it sounds like Pink Floyd is playing live in my living room.

Lack of features doesn't necessarily translate to poor quality.

I use, and recommend, a Sun Type 6 keyboard, Item-number #320-1271. It comes with a standard USB connector and a Mac-friendly layout, including the "command" key in the correct position.

Here is a diagram [sun.com], a picture [biglobe.ne.jp], and the online ordering page. [sun.com]
Sometimes it can be ordered for less from different online stores.

> 3000$ minimum ...

RTFA

It's $499 minimum.

If space is of concern, I've read that you can successfully put the MiniMac on it's side without drive malfunctions.

Peace

Since no apps that run on 9x\nt\xp\etc will run on Longhorn, I think Microsoft are going to really start to lose market share in everything.

From Microsoft's Longhorn Developer FAQ [microsoft.com]:

Will my existing Win32 and .NET apps continue to run under Longhorn without modification?

The goal is that apps written against the documented Win32 APIs and the .NET Framework will absolutely run well without any modifications under Longhorn when it ships.

I wouldn't call $29 for the apple keyboard overpriced.

Of course you can run C++ on a Mac.

The compiler Apple ships with its IDE (Xcode) is gcc and it naturally supports C++. A lot of Mac software is written in C++ (most Carbon applications). You can also mix C++ with Objective-C and Cocoa (ObjC++).

Oracle does have products for the Mac (though I doubt you'll run them on the Mac mini). I don't know what D2K is.

As densely packed as that Mac is, there is probably a reason that the case is made of aluminium.

Only that it looks good. I know what you're getting at, but an aluminum case does not have significantly better heat transfer. The Mac Mini has forced convection (with a very quiet fan). Heat conduction through the case is laughably insignificant compared to even natural convection, given many factors such as the distance from the hot components. (If the case gets hot enough for conduction to be a factor, everything's already fried.)

Many overclockers buy aluminum cases for their better heat transfer. Many overclockers are idiots with too much money who don't have any theoretical knowledge of science or the ability to set up a controlled experiment.

I've got an El Gato EyeTV 500 [elgato.com] attached to our mini, and it works perfectly. It's the "maxi" (1.42GHz) mini, so I'm not sure if the cheaper one has enough CPU, but the maxi is routinely displaying 720p on our TV, and in my experiments (our TV won't anti-overscan the picture at 1080i, and the native resolution is 720p anyway) it appears to be able to do 1080i without using all of the CPU as well.

The combination of the mini and the EyeTV 500 makes for a great HTPC, at least for digital over-the-air TV (and unencrypted QAM digital TV over cable).

it's got an USB hub built in too. a nice touch, esp. with the proliferation of keychain memories.

A.) It may be cheap and sexy, but it's hard to find apps for. Best Buy, for example, carries no Mac software.

This has more to do with the software retail industry being a big racket than anything else. Small players, if they can get on the shelves at all, generally don't see a cent of the profits. The costs involved in getting it on the shelves (all that packaging, shipping, etc.) can overshadow what meager returns they see.

All of the large Mac software producers I can think of also produce Windows software. Adobe, Microsoft, Blizzard, etc.

On the web, it's a different story. Some of the most interesting new Mac software available is only available online. OmniOutliner [omnigroup.com], Delicious Library [delicious-monster.com], NetNewsWire [ranchero.com], SubEthaEdit [codingmonkeys.de], etc. I don't think that any of these producs are really losing out not being on the shelves at BestBuy.

Oracle does have products for the Mac (though I doubt you'll run them on the Mac mini).

As a matter of fact, you can. Just fine. I have an Oracle 10g developer edition running on -- no kidding -- a 400 MHz G3 iMac downstairs. Fast? Hell no. But it works more than well enough for doing Oracle front-end development. The same machine is also running a developer instance of Sybase ASE.

I wasn't going to chime in but nobody else has done yet. Isn't the SPARC platform more niche than Apples?
Microsoft never invested shit in Apple, they bought some non voting shares and agreed to develop their software for the Mac for 5 years at least, thats it. Btw, they have sold said shares as well.
Macs ARE better for graphics, you would know this if you worked in the industry. There are many advantages to using a mac rather than a PC. One of them being the hardware specs being the same and the monitors calibrated in same way right off the production line. Something you use on one mac will look the same on another. Take that to the windows world and you have a greater variety of hardware and displays with which to show your work on. Work you produce might not look tho same on another PC. There is an advantage in buying the same exact hardware over and over again. Dell doesn't do that.
Don't exclude the fact that Tiger is going to have real time filters built into the OS, with CoreVideo and CoreImage. Athough that is coming this season.

I see Linux and OS X as complementary products, not strictly as competitors. The spread of Linux is helping businesses to see that it doesn't have to be a Windows-only world, this helps Apple. Also, Apple is strong in education. With kids learning about computers on OS X they'll have less fear of using other Unix variants, this helps Linux/*BSD. I have used Macs for a long time, my early experience learning about OS X v10.0 lead me to buy my first-ever x86 pc ($99 used) so that I could play with various Linux distros.

You are supposed to plug them into the computer directly! Yes, I know, it sort of sucks. :-)

Apple has always had this, not only with USB, but also in the olden days with ADB, on the first Mac, which is great.

independent... but the myth of your etymology still persists

As a developer, one of the things that you should factor into a Mac purchase is the cost of the development tools. Sure, free tools exist on both Windows and OS X platforms, so it's a draw for tools like Java/Eclipse, gcc, etc. But OS X comes bundled with the very capable XCode and Interface Builder IDE, whereas Microsoft's Visual Studio will set you back a few hundred bucks. While I don't think it's possible to directly compare those two products, the point is that a very rich set of development tools can be figured into the value of a Mac purchase.

Have a look at the XCode tools [apple.com] and see if that doesn't make a Mac purchase a little more appealing.

You gotta go with the eMac, as the base config with edu pricing is $749, as the cheapest Mac LCD monitor is $899. The Mini and the eMac seem to have the same processor, memory, hard drive, etc. So, here it goes:

• eMac, $749
• $99 iPod Shuffle for your thumbdrive
• Epson Stylus C86 Ink Jet Printer, $99

For a total of $947.95, for $21 a month on an Apple Credit Account. The price for the Mini would be....

Actually, I guess you can get the Mini for your $20 a month, but you have to give up the LCD panel. Apple sells a 17" NEC CRT for $159. So, for the Mini:

• The aforementioned monitor for $159.
• Same $99 iPod shuffle
• Same $99 Epson printer
• USB keyboard and mouse: $52.
• Mac Mini, $479.

The total is $888.95. So, for just about $60 less, you get your Mini for 20 bucks a month. Oh, and there seems to be a mail in rebate for the printer for $100, but that's not going to change the payment options. I would provide links, but the links are specific to each session, so it would be pointless to repost them.