New iBook and Apple mini 480
shintaro writes "ThinkSecret reports that 'Apple delivers iBook, Mac mini updates July 26 - Apple updated its iBook and Mac mini lines Tuesday, increasing standard RAM across the board to 512MB and improving other specs. Missing from the iBook update was the long-rumored move to a widescreen model which unconfirmed reports had suggested might arrive with the revision.' "
Re:512 Mb RAM (Score:3, Interesting)
zzzaaahhhggwaaahh (Score:3, Interesting)
The Mini is a great little machine. Worth the money.
The iBook is a dead horse. OK, it's not horrible for $1000.00 but they could do better.
In fact their entire (oh! all six?) portable line is stale and going nowhere fast. Where are the innovations? The better screens? The tablet? (they practically led the way with HWR and it's in OSX as Ink). What about the built-in media reader? I like that feature on my M-In_Law's HP book.
On another topic but closely related, I can't wait to see how the Intel transition plays out and what new growth engines they'll introduce. I'd hate to think that Apple will continue to play so conservatively with their computer (designs, features, specs) because as it stands that's where they are.
Why widescreen in a laptop? (Score:3, Interesting)
My 15" powerbook on the other hand fits with an inch to spare, which is much more convenient. At least for us young guys who get screwed when the company does it's travel budget allocation for the year.
School season (Score:2, Interesting)
This is clearly targeted for the students buying new computers in August and September.
It's all about dumping the last G4/G5 and gaining market share.
Re:Sweet Spot (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:1024x768 screens (Score:2, Interesting)
Radeon 9550 vs. 9200 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sweet Spot (Score:4, Interesting)
Why bother? It's not like you're going to play Doom3 on these machines.
Hey, the mini can't support dual 30-inch cinema displays, either! What a rip! If you really care about performance, buy a dual-G5 Powermac and a ATI Radeon 9650. Otherwise, recognize that you're making a choice to have a lower-than-maximum-performance machine.
Yes, I realize you're making a point that for the price of a little extra R&D and a small amount of money per machine, you could get an added dashboard effect... but you know what? Someone decided having that wasn't too important and isn't going to sell more Mac minis, and probably they asked a lot of people their opinions on the matter before making the decision. You might be the only person who noticed the mini didn't do whatever dashboard effect you're talking about.
Re:Sweet Spot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who's going to buy it ? (Score:4, Interesting)
And the upcoming x86 switch is exactly why I choose the mini. Before the x86 announcement, I had been planning to get a 20" iMac, but I decided that I didn't want to drop $2000 on and end-of-line product. The $600 I spent on the mini, however, is low enough for me to accept as a temporary system.
Maybe in a few years I'll get a more powerful x86 Mac and turn the mini into a media jukebox or some such thing. I'm sure I'll be able to find some use for it, if only to give away to a relative on a tighter budget. A few years of use is plenty for $600.
Re:Who's going to buy it ? (Score:3, Interesting)
So I wait.
Re:Mac Mini + (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Think Seceret Reports? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's such an incremental upgrade that you'd have to be a spec-pert to have any idea what's changed.
This weekend we get to buy everything without sales tax in Georgia. (Actually that may only be good for school-related items, I think clothes, computers, school supplies, etc) My sister's starting at georgia tech next month, and I convinced her to get an ibook. We've been looking at them for a month or so...the upgrade is actually very pleasing. For the same price the ram is upgraded, bigger hard drives, better optical drives, bluetooth built in, better video card, faster processor, the powerbook tilt sensor, and a new trackpad that scrolls when you use 2 fingers. It may be incremental, but if you were stewing about whether or not to buy bluetooth, or whether to pay apple's outrageous prices for ram or go buy a stick and put it in yourself...the upgrade is very welcome.
Is this an upgrade? no... its a discount (Score:2, Interesting)
1.25 Mini -- Hidden cheapest Superdrive system (Score:4, Interesting)
More to the point, the *only* difference between the $599 and $699 is the Superdrive. They've changed a $100 BTO html SELECT box into a new level o' Mac.
Now if I can just get someone to let me upgrade their new Mini to a gig of RAM. I can save them about $100 and keep their Mini's 512 for my Athlon system... Any takers?
Re:Who's going to buy it ? (Score:3, Interesting)
If it holds true as some people have said that the Intel move is good econonomics and will make the chips cheaper, then we should eventually see a $399 Mini.
Truth be told, though, most current intel vendors aren't putting out much for $399. Dell's $399 box isn't likely to do much for very long, if they're anything like the Dell's I've used. You can get a computer at Walmart for less than $400, but I wouldn't expect the average consumer to do much with it right out of the box. A mac, on the other hand, comes with enough software to do everything most people would want to- I do more with my Mac than i ever did with my PC, and I haven't bought a single piece of software. (Yeah, I downloaded some free stuff, and it all beats the crap out of the Windows versions I used to use.)
Even with the Intel macs around the corner, though, I'll probably be buying my girlfriend a mac mini or an ibook in August. Why? Because I want her to have a good machine for the fall semester, and I think that the G4 is still a big enough improvement over what she has now, and yeah, I expect it to be useful for years down the line even if we later buy a newer one.
I guess if I really loved her i'd buy her an iMac now and a Centrino powerbook next year... i think she'd rather have a ring.
FreeType is your friend (Score:3, Interesting)
From the KDE Control Center, you can, with a few clicks, indicate what kind of font smoothing you want.
Go to Control Center -> Fonts. Check the "Use anti-aliasing for fonts" box. The "Configure..." button becomes active. Click it.
You have the following options:
[ ] Exclude range [8.0pt] to [15.0pt] (if you want it to behave like (IIRC) Win2K, which only smoothes large fonts)
[ ] Use sub-pixel hinting (This is the ClearType-like feature) -> it has a combo where you can specify how are the subpixels of your LCD laid out -- just do some trial and error and see what looks best for you.
Hinting style: [None/Slight/Medium/Full] -> here you can adjust how "aggressive" you want font smoothing to be.
Easy, powerful and free!
Re:Sweet Spot (Score:3, Interesting)
I use the wireless mouse from a fair distance away from the computer, and internal Bluetooth range (in the very noisy RF environment that my house has turned out to be) would not have cut it. It totally sucks to use a wireless mouse that keeps dropping the signal and/or gives choppy performance.
With the external module, I was able to build a crude parabolic dish for it out of a $6 cooking wok and more than double the range.
Plus, it's a neat conversation-starter when people look up at my projection system and see the homebrew dish antenna next to it.
Re:Who's going to buy it ? (Score:1, Interesting)
Obsolete = no longer in use or no longer useful.
Not to mention the fact that PPC Macs are still going to be produced for 2-3 more years, not even taking into account their useful lifetime once they've stopped being manufactured.
Uh, say what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
* ATI Radeon 9600, 9600 XT, 9650, 9800 XT, X800 XT
* nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
* nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
* nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL
So how is that a fully Core Image compliant GPU on the new iBook?
Just in time for tax free shopping (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who's going to buy it ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What are they thinking? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't look at Apple like any other PC manufacturer. When you evaluate Apple computers, it's not like buying a new car, where you shop around and try to find your best value, try to get all the discounts, etc. That's what Dell is there for. When you're buying an Apple computer, it's like buying a luxury car (best I can come up with), where you are sure of what you want, but don't nessicarily have all of the money in the world.
Don't take this as a "oh no apple are elitest!!one", it's simply a fact; Apple users tend to be more enthusiastic about their machines, and their operating system. So they buy what they can. Those who really enjoy Apple will move up the ranks to the Power products, regardless if they actually need that power. Those who are new to Apple buy for the cuteness factor, and get sucked into the Reality Distortion Field. Apple just isn't your ordinary computer company.
So, in this crowd, everyone bags on Apple every time they release any product, saying how it could be better, but let's understand it folks; the people who are going to Apple have a reason for crossing the line. Whether it is a fad and they're doing it because the machine looks good, whether it's a status symbol, whether it is the best computer for the money isn't nessicarily the reason. So, if you want a machine with a better graphics card, fine, go out and buy a Dell, and make sure they're using a desktop board and CPU and a 19" flatpanel, and come back and brag to us about how you paid the same amount for it as some guy's 17" Powerbook. But, I can assure you that the Powerbook user's back will have the last laugh
What I would like to see in the Mac Mini $499 (Score:4, Interesting)
* Radeon 9600 graphics chip with a minimum of 64MB or anything that drives Quartz Extreme
I think this price range is possible
For those folks who want to pay extra for an elegant and intergrated PVR solution and not the more expensive EyeTV. An ATI Theater 550 Pro video processor with H.264 hardware encoding.
http://www.ati.com/products/theater550/index.html [ati.com]
With a new iLife software solution to easily record TV shows (TiVo) and does post processing of these recordings to a small H.264 file to build content for a future video iPod and for video podcasting (a.k.a vodcasting).
Re:Mac Mini + (Score:2, Interesting)
Just a heads up, my G5 has 4.5 gigs of ram and tiger reports over a gig used in wired+active and thats just with light web browsing and mail.app use. OS X fills the ram with as much as it can, so you will never really have free memory (also, it swaps out beautifully, so you can never really fill up your ram easily, i know, I had some bad dimms in here at first, and it took forever to fill 4.5 gigs to trouble shoot).
Re:Sweet Spot (Score:3, Interesting)
Should I just say "yea, unless you want to run OS X", or leave it to someone else to feed your troll ;)
I actually want to take your off-hand witticism seriously, but first I want to make a point which I'm pretty sure you probably understand : If you can't run OS X on the hardware you're talking about, it's useless to someone who wants to run OS X. It doesn't matter how cheap or fast it is, it doesn't run OS X, so it's not relevant to the discussion, unless the discussion is "why you should stop using OS X and use something else". I don't mean to sound harsh or be annoying when I say that, but think about it for a minute- there's something really lame about your post, at least in the context of this thread. The lame thing is that your post is completely off-topic. It adds nothing useful to the discussion as written. Include the words "forget about OS X" and suddenly your post is less lame, somehow, though still slightly off-topic.
Really, if you want to run Linux, and not have the option of OS X, I agree with you completely... although, that's a pretty expensive chip [tomshardware.com] and graphic card [dealtime.com], so depending on what other components you put in your system, it's not likely to be less than $2500 anyway, and as such not *much* less expensive... please don't tell me your spending over $1500 on a CPU and graphics card and less than $1000 on everything ( mobo, memory, HD, DVD-R, power supply, case, sound card, keyboard, mouse, etc ) else in the system combined... or if you do, please tell me you didn't skimp on the power supply and motherboard, at least...
again, I don't disagree ( given the whole implicit "don't want to run OS X" thing ) but the 'more likely lower price' thing isn't a sure bet. On the other hand, it is somewhat nice to be able to pick-and-choose your own components, but doing so is rarely about price...
Heck, why build your own. Stuff like this $1999 pre-built [boldata.com] system look pretty tempting. Of course, you still have to add in a DVD-RW and a few other goodies, and toss out the Radeon X800 they throw in, but it comes with a gig of RAM, so what the heck. Of course, still no OS X. You know, it's a real shame that M$ had to crush NeXTStep Intel with those anticompetitive OEM licensing agreements, or we might not have this problem.
I also applaud your choice of AMD over Intel, but Tom's found the Intel Pentium 840 Extreme Edition to be a bit better [tomshardware.com] with regard to actual multi-application performance. If you're looking to run a single app, like a game, though, the AMD is clearly the better choice. It's what I'd go with, except for a couple of details. I'm not looking to spend a couple thousand dollars on a high-end machine to run either Linux or Windows. I'm looking to run Linux on my old PII, and looking to avoid Windows as much as possible. If I want to get real work done, most of my tasks aren't too CPU intensive, so my several-years-old flat-panel iMac gets the job done quite nicely. Some day after my kid gets out of college, I'll pick up a machine 20x as powerful as any of these for a couple hundred bucks and slip it into my wallet... and be glad I didn't blow my cash on hardware I didn't need. But I don't want to deal with a sea of viruses and worms, and I don't want to have the system my wife and 3-year-old son use be a custom build job, so I'm not using Windows and I'm not using Linux on that machine. I'm using OS X, and your suggestion is, in that context a useless troll, as well-meaning and humorous as it might otherwise be.