I'd be worried about this, if I were Microsoft. But I would also be worried about this if I was distributing a desktop linux distro. Now that Apple hardware is (relatively) cheap, and damn sexy, I might have to buy one. I'd probably dual boot OS X and Gentoo, but there are others who will probably go for the nice look of OS X, along with BSD under the hood, and leave Linux/*BSD for ever. The only thing that is working in Linux/*BSD's favor is multiplatform compatibility (i.e. you can run the same OS on x86 and PPC), and selection of application. Fink (is that it?) is working on taking one of those away. All this being said, is it necessarily a bad thing if Linux is relegated to the server room with a small percentage of workstations, with Apple picking up the rest?

These accessories I'd think can be useful, but not *that* useful. I mean, what is the point of the 'Mac Mini skirt?'

I'm really trying not to troll here, but I think worthwhile accessories would be to the tune of, a dock type thing, that has a built-in USB pro-audio card that looks kind of like this "Mini Skirt."

The Mini is already stylish enough, and I think the only merit of the two latter products is stylistic, if they expanded the usefullness and capacities of the Mini, then i'm all for it ;).

They've got a monitor pedestal that closely encloses the Mini. As densely packed as that Mac is, there is probably a reason that the case is made of aluminium. I'd be careful about insulating that box.

Exactly how much? That's a tall order. A percentage point...maybe two. Not much more than that though, I wouldn't imagine. It looks like a nice system, but I wouldn't imagine that the iPod set Apple seems to be targeting would see the value in having multiple computers. I don't mean geeks with iPods, now, I mean the people who bought an iPod as much because it was the thing to have and be seen with as it was a nice piece of useful technology. It's harder to be seen on the Metro or walking around campus with a Mac Mini. Maybe if they made distinctive earphones for it.

As cynical as I'm being here, I would like to see the mini both on my desk, and putting a dent in the market!

As long as you put 512MB of ram in it, the mini should be capable of running anything your mom wants to run for the next few years. If you want to do video editing or something, well, the G4 can do it, but you'd be better off with a G5. Frankly no 1+ GHz computer is really a toy, ANY of them can run the office apps and such. To me, 1GHz was the line that had to be crossed to get decent performance. Sure, most of us said this kind of stuff when the 386DX came out - it's a 32 bit processor! blah blah blah! And of course, not all 1 gig chips are created equal, compare via to an athlon xp sometime, but I've never met a 1 gig chip that couldn't do everything the average user needed to do with a modern operating system slowing it down :)

Except that'll never happen.

Imagine how much money they would make selling their OS for ~200$. Now imagine what they make now, even with their tiny market share, selling 3000$ minimum machines :) Apple would lose so much money moving the PC platform, its not even funny.

I wandered down to the Apple Store in London last Sunday and came back with the base Mac Mini and am extremely impressed with it, this being my first foray into the Mac world.

Anyway, having just looked at the accessories (Coral link [nyud.net] as the original is /.ed) I wouldn't pick up any of them, they look a bit crap and the Grandstand appears to be the only one with any use and then only if you have very limited desk space.

From the story title I was hoping for something a bit morethan bent plastic/metal.

My mac mini is great. I really like it. But it doesn't replace my windows PC. It's very much a second computer to do different things on. If I only had one computer it would be my PC still.

Find a PC for the same price with comparable features. Most people point to Dell/HP/etc boxes. They always end up having crappy integrated graphics cards, and things like that. You won't find a PC for a comparable price. (Remember to factor in software. The mini comes with OSX, which has software for everything, and for what it doesnt have, it also comes with iLife '05, and a few games too. Windows boxes come with WindowsXP, which has um, solitare, spider solitare.. and then CD's full of shareware. Boo.)

For proof, read here [macworld.com]

Some guy has done this already here's his site [jaccorens.com] (it seems to be down at the moment?). But not to make this post completely worthless, here's a guy who made a raid out of floppy drives [8k.com].

I seriously think it won't be too long before Microsoft are in serious trouble over their market share.. Lets just think about it:

Firefox has come along, its much better than IE and IE is starting to lose a relatively large part of its market share. IE was left too long to be fixed up and now MS are paying for it.
Google (not like it ever didnt, but still) owns the shit out of MSN search, although MSN is getting better and better. Macs and Linux are much much cheaper and more secure (or less exploits\viruses are made for them, same difference), add that to the fact that Microsoft are going to change the updates to subscription only customers.
Gmail whoops Hotmails ass when it comes to email, so theres another big blow to MS (think about the advertising revenue they will lose). IIRC, Microsoft also annonced that they will be stopping access to Hotmail via Outlook for non-paying customers.
And in 20xx, out comes Windows Longhorn and then Blackcomb, which will use a completely new Windows API.. the very thing that has kept Microsoft top of the league for so long. 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.
Recently there's been a lot of stories about OSS software being used by several countries' governments, and the stories about Sun and IBM releasing patented technology to OSS.

Recently I've also been noticing Microsoft have been making other bad business decisions (sorry, none seem to be coming to mind atm) which will no doubt lead to a difficult time for them in the future.

Of course, none of this is to say Microsoft are out of it, because with their bank balance, they could change tactics at almost any time and get back into things before its too late. Although I severely dislike Microsoft ('s business practices) and hope they take a good bashing soon, I think we need them, or something like them, for things to run as they are.. Without Microsoft we wouldn't need *as much* F/OSS or other things.

I've gotten rid of windows a long time about, and the Mac Mini, finally allowed me to get my wife off windows also. It wasn't for lack of trying, it was just that the pricetag made it ok (My wife is an accountant by day, artist by night). So the mac appealed to her artistic side, and didn't upset the accountant side. So with her pc scheduled to become another small server, we are down to 1 box @ home that has Windows on it, and that box dual boots FreeBSD 5.3 (where it spends most of its time).
As for it stealing Linux/*BSD users away. I can see this sort of happening. My primary workstation now is an 17" Al powerbook, It replaced a Dell Inspiron running slackware. I still use various forms of *nix everyday. My firewall @ home and my other laptop here are OpenBSD. My file server and workstation run FreeBSD (5.3 on workstation, 4-Stable on the file server). At work all 36 Servers run FreeBSD 4-Stable. So while it might not be on our desktops everyday, we still use it.

The overpriced Apple keyboard is a whopping $29! I know that may seem ourageous to those that buy $9.99 Best Buy specials, but I prefer a keyboard that doesn't feel like crap.

Peace

You only need to avoid putting weight on the inner white plastic part of the top. The alu extrusion that runs around the outside of the case will be able to support somthing without pressing on the drive.

You could stack a load of minis on top of each other by putting the first on the right way up then the next on on top upside down to avoid loading the white plastic.

Well, I bought myself an iPod for Christmas, and I've gottnen used to it "just working". I wonder how much of a better computing experience I can get with a mac, and have tried our grapic design dept's G5 to surf /. while they're at lunch...I think the real draw is knowing that all of your apps can work as well as iTunes. I've looked at getting a mini, but I think that for the money, I might be able to get something like a G3 tower on eBay for around $300. I'm more interested in a tower-style system since there'd be more room for larger drives. I've got too much music (200+GB) to be accomodated in a mini, and this would be an even lower-cost solution. The high quality of my iPod makes me comfortable purchasing a used mac. And no, an iPod on window isn't as easy to use as a mac. I've had i/o errors trying to connect my iPod, and few of my friends pcs have firewire ports, and if they do, they're the four pin connectors. I'm guessing that a mac would be much more accomodating to my ipod.

Then again, iPods are overpriced and under-featured and seem to have caught the public interest - so maybe people really are as stupid as Apple thinks they are.

I often wonder whether this really comes down to a question of taste. Despite what the original poster thinks, people don't like iPods (or Mac OS X, although this applies in a more limited way to that as well) because they're stupid, but simply because they do something, one thing or one limited set of things, very, very well. When people bitch about the iPod not having an FM radio/voice recorder/video capability/robotic dog walker, what they fail to realize is that heaping features on a product often, usually, impedes the product from doing what it was originally meant to do. The iPod does something that no radio, voice recorder, video player, or robotic dog walker could, and does that something better than most other portable digital music players, and if I wanted radio or any of that other stuff, I'd buy a radio. Apple's products aren't about making things that are "simple," but rather about making techie gadgets that don't act and seem like techie gadgets, but instead seem organic. Apple really excels at bringing some sprezzataura to the techie UI world.

Then again, this may be just taste. Maybe there really isn't anything inherently better in this approach versus the Wintel and standard gadget maker philosophy of heaping features on a product and hoping it clicks with the public. But considering that the technologies that last are the ones that just vanish into everyday usability by being simple and by doing something that nothing else does, I really doubt it. I'm sure back in the 19th and 20th century there were phones that heaped all sorts of useless features, and people who bitched about the phones that couldn't shoe your horse for you being for stupid people.

I recently bought an iMac G5, with Apple's Wireless Mouse & Keyboard. The mouse indeed has a delay, which was very annoying for a while. However, after about a day, I didn't notice the delay anymore. There is still some loss of precision, but it's not something I notice anymore.

Having just one mouse button is never great, but what's bothering me is the lack of a scrolling wheel. Having a second mouse button isn't very important in OS X (IMHO).

But I must say I am more satisfied with the wireless keyboard. The buttons are better and easier to press than those on the older Pro Keyboard. There is no delay on the keypresses (that that be noticed).

Overall, except for the mouse delay and the obvious no-scrollwheel problem, both devices are great. They feel good, work well, and the Bluetooth connection is solid. Actually, I found the wireless range of these products to be much longer than Apple claims. :-)

It doesn't matter ... as long as Apple is a small minority.

If, however, you have a longer memory, you may remember that when Apple was a large player in the personal computer market, that it was more hostile to linking to other computers than MS is today. On the AppleII, e.g., the built-in basic refused to generate program text files. The floppy disks were of a totally non-standard format (and they patented the chip used to read those disks, and refused to license it).

So while I'm glad that MS stands to lose market share, the thought of Apple becoming dominant does not thrill me.

Fortunately, I believe that Apple has lost the designers that originally made it such a stellar performer. The new Macs are glitzy, but when it comes to ease of use (for a practiced user) they are more difficult that KDE. I believe that Gnome is shooting for the user that wants a "simple user interface". (Certainly, to my eyes, Gnome is oversimplifying...this probably means that they've hit many people's sweet-spot.)

What originally made the Macintosh so stellar was the care that was given to it's human factors interface. (The mistake was to attempt to exclude games, e.g., no color model in the early Mac OS.) This care is missing from the current rewrite. It's quite easy to get lost in the disk. I can always, with effort, disentangle my position, but my wife frequently asks me to help her locate herself. And when she does, there's not standard way that I can tell her to use. (This is made worse because the Gimp is one of our most needed programs, but the implementation of X for the Mac doesn't understand Macintosh aliases as being links. [There's probably a good reason for this, but I don't know it.]) This means that we need to use two different models of the same desktop ... and I don't know how to even attempt to explain it to her except by a kind of "If you're in Gimp you do it this way, but normally you do it that way" kind of explanation.

That looks just like it, only without the CD slit.

This way, one could stack the MacMini on top of the drive(s), or vice versa, in a neat little pile.

The mac mini isn't big enough to hold my MP3 collection (right now, teetering around 105 gigs) and certianly won't be big enough to deal with the video I want to run through it. So I need 7200rpm ATA drives in a MacMini box.

Personally, I would cheerfully build my own using some hideous noisy case - I'm not that picky. But Mrs Spoilsport is VERY picky about that kind of thing - heck: she thinks having visible stereo wires to te speakers is like having one's underwear showing or having toilet paper stuck to one's shoe.

She tried to get me to go to wireless speakers, and I said "You Buy 'em". We still don't have wireless speakers, thank Bog.

But, i we could get a MacMini with matching drive(s), it'll make the transition to the full on digital system a simpler effort, as it would please the aesthetes in the home (And to think - I'm the one who makes a living as an artist!)

RS

The worst possible outcome of all is an OS like OS X. You take a completely Free and Open OS and then weld a Proprietary hood on it. How is this good for Free software in the long run? It isn't. Imagine if Longorn were to run on GNU/Linux yet have a completely Proprietary graphics and windowing system with proprietary drivers for all. How would that be any different than OSX? Now 90% of the World's OS's run Proprietary Linux. How is this a victory for OSS?

Has the spirit of OSS been tainted by Apple? I think it has. I'm not saying Apple should give what they do away for Free. But acting like just because Apple is based on Darwin that automatically qualifies it as a "good thing" for OSS is Extremely shortsighted. I guess some people are just happy to see any OSS at all being used. I don't object to Apple using what developers put out there to be used in any way they see fit. I object to people pointing to OS X as a model of OSS success when it isn't.

Maybe that's really the future for OSS that advocates are going to see. Maybe all of OSS will be co-opted by companies like Apple and eventually a company like Microsoft. Maybe OSS never had a future to stand completely on its own in the first place. Then again maybe we can point this out to everyone before its too late and future generations think OSS means half OSS/half proprietary in most situations.

I think your wrong when you say that it doesn't hurt the OSS community. It hurts OSS exactly where it's most vulnerable. "Here have some quasi-Free software, trust me is MUCH less painful to use. Stop worrying about what is and isn't True OSS. Relax..." Sorry, don't want to be lulled into that way of thinking. Everytime I read about some OSS programmer(and there are a shitload of them) buying/bragging about a MAC they just bought it bothers me. Not because I believe you should never run a proprietary OS, I run XP on my laptop. But because they trick themselves into thinking OS X is somehow the "Best of both Worlds". I just don't buy into Apple's version of what the Free software world should look like no matter how easy Apple makes it seem. I believe in the GPL and I believe there are consequences to taking Non-Free shorcuts.

Have you ever checked out Sun's Project Looking Glass [sun.com]? It's pretty cool stuff, although some of its "advanced technology" we've already begun to seen come to market. Also, check out the demo [sun.com] by Jonathon Schwartz. (Warning: huge .mov file)

I don't know how far along this project is. I think the demo was old when I saw it a few years ago. The point is that there are useful creative ways to approach the desktop other than the Apple approach. However, I will readily admit that Apple has done the best job so far with OS X. Not that you need to twist my arm to sing Apple's praises. =)

Microsoft couldn't do this because almost all Linux distros are GPL. And the GPL explicitly forbids mixing free and proprietary because of it's viral nautre. That is one of the reasons that Linux itself doesn't underly OS X.

You want to point out that OS X isn't free, but the actual operating system underneath, Darwin, is free and open for all to play with. If someone else wants to build thier own GUI and drawing system on top then they are free to do so.

You believe that OS X harms OSS because Apple claims that it is the best of both worlds. The fact of the matter is that OS X IS the best of both worlds, I have free and open source to everything underneath my toolset and a platform that proprietary software doesn't run from. I can look at the source to CoreFoundation that is toll-free bridged with all the Cocoa foundation objects. I can look at the filesystem code, or networking code, and it's all free. I can use Gimp or Photoshop, I can use vi or Dreamweaver, I have the CHOICE to use either. Isn't the entire point of OSS that warm feeling you get when you have choices? I don't have to use anything and can compare them directly next to each other.

If Gnome or KDE was closed sourced would you be making such a gripe? All OS X is doing is it packages a completely free and open OS with a beautiful DE on top of it, and you never see the ugly scrolling lines. Gnome + GRUB does the same thing. You get a somewhat pretty startup, you get dumped at a login screen if you have that setup and you get a pretty desktop never needing to open a terminal to get anything done.

OSS Developers that get new macs are a good thing because like an earlier poster said, they can finally aim their efforts at making products that are better than OS X rather than as good as windows.

It's not about hip; it's about statistics. Apple's research showed that between 6% and 10% of iPod owners who were not already Mac owners would consider a Mac as their next computer as a result of their iPod experience. Another sizable portion said that they'd love to own a Mac, but that the price was prohibitive. That's why Apple made the Mac mini.

4 million iPods were sold last quarter, and 90% of them to Windows users. So that's 3.6 million Windows users with iPods. If 10% of them switch to Macs as a result of their iPod experience, that's another 360,000 Mac users, or an over 33% increase in unit sales. (Apple sold just over a million Macs last quarter.)

Oh yeah, and up the network to gigabit. Especially if this thing is supposed to be the hub of an existing home networked type entertainment system.

And the video should be of the latest generation, not the previous (doesn't have to be high-end, just of current generation).

...will absolutely run well without any modifications...

If that really does happen, then the new flavor of Windows will STILL be insecure and users will have to contend with all the malware that currently can and does afflict Windows. Many programs for Windows are written with the assumtions of the user having unfettered access to every bit and byte on their PERSONAL computer. Personal computers were meant to be used by ONE user only and that user has total control over ALL of their machine.

UNIX flavored systems were and are designed with the many user premise that the ordinary user does NOT have access to the total machine unless that user is also the administrator or root user. All programs written for such a multiuser environment are aware of the elaborate permissions structure. Windows also has a permissions structure, but restricting permissions causes many Windows programs to fail. If MS enforces their permissions structure, then any old program unaware of these will likely fail. This means that all the old malware will also fail and result in a secure system for most ordinary users. If the old programs still run under their new system, so will the old malware and the users will have no more security than they have now.

Any user, on any computer can fall victim to social engineering and be tricked into facilitating the entry of malware into their system. However, if that user does not have the ability to install and run new software without knowing and/or giving the administrator password, new programs including nasties, cannot be added to the computer. Every system should have at least two accounts, a restricted one for every day use and another ONLY for tasks requiring system administrator activities.

A Mac Mini would fit perfectly on top of my PC tower. If I had a KVM that would fit underneath with short USB and DVI cables to the Mac Mini and longer cables to my PC and monitor/keyboard/mouse, I'd be set. The ordinary DVI KVM's are rather clunky. A sleekly designed one made spedifically with the Mac Mini in mind would be a good deal for switchers (or people with multiple Mini's, maybe).