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Technology (Apple) Businesses Apple Technology

Apple Releases Mac Mini 1212

cranesan writes "The rumors of Apple releasing a small PC are confirmed. The Mac mini can be found at Apple's website. As expected, the box uses a G4 processor. You can order one today; estimate 3-4 weeks shipping date. Base unit starts at $499."
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Apple Releases Mac Mini

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  • Dupe... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Delphix ( 571159 ) * on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:01AM (#11347312)
    C'mon guys. This isn't news, especially since you reported it yourself here [slashdot.org]. It's just a two day old dupe of old news.
    • Re:Dupe... (Score:5, Funny)

      by BurritoWarrior ( 90481 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:04AM (#11347334)
      The next story will be about the Apple Shuffle.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:14AM (#11347425)
      Who in their right mind buys memory from an OEM? Don't get on Apple's case about expensive memory, because it's true in the PC world too! Whether it's Dell, Sony, IBM, whoever - you're almost always better off dollarwise to buy your system with the least available memory, then buy the upgrade from someone else. With the exception of the occasional special deal, this has been true for as long as I can remember.

      Of course, this begs the question: does the mini allow user upgrades? Can't check because the Apple site isn't responding at the moment, but that little box looks to be shut tighter than a virgin's iPod.

      *-*

      What I see more focus on hardware design, the exact opposite of the clone fiasco. They are getting, and supporting, higher margins on their hardware because of their design engineering. No other MP3 player looks or feels as good as the iPod. The Mini looks looks like another homerun, their first small form factor PC and its uniquely Apple and great looking.

      Apple's focus has shifted to perfecting the Human-Computer interface. This is what it was all about originally. They are focusing on the look and feel of products, both hardware and software.

      Get the details right, and they will come.

      *-*

      The Mac Mini will be a perfect X-Terminal to use with a Linux box in another room. You'll have a silent and small box on your desk and the fat and loud server is down in the basement. Great.

      *-*

      Another thing to note. A DIN slot (car radio standard size) is 2"x7", the mini mac is 2"x6.5".

      If it had a radio faceplate and a laptop drive, this would be the best car stereo ever.

      *-*

      Say hello to *real* "Media Center" Machine

      (1) add a RAM stick BTO - cheapo
      (2) add bluetooth BTO - cheapo
      (3) add Wifi card BTO - cheapo
      (4) sit unobtrusively to my way-cool existing TV and hook up A/V - nothin'
      (5) hook to already existing wifi ADSL-powered network - nothin'
      (6) bring in my already existing Sony-Ericsson Z600 - nothin'
      (7) ...?
      (8) Profit!

      Lemme see what I get from this:

      (A) iTunes playback
      (B) VLC playback
      (C) DVD playback
      (D) UNIX development
      (E) Surf web
      (F) Check mail
      (7) Photo slideshow
      (8) Remote control via Z600 (see 2,6,A,B,C,E)
      All in the living room sitting comfortably on the sofa (see D)! Yay!

      *-*

      INSTRUCTIONS:
      1. Select proper post
      2. Copy and paste into the reply box
      3. Submit (no need for preview!)
      4. Profit

      • Well... I'd say this would be one case where you'd buy the OEM RAM. The mini-mac's only got one DIMM. So, if you buy the 256MB, then run out and buy a 512MB stick from Crucial, say, you'd be throwing your money away on the 256MB that came with the unit.
        • There are *no* user servicable parts in a mini Mac: you want to open it up you have to bust the case and void your warranty.

          That includes switching in some more memory.

          Not that it stopped me buying one and speccing it with 512MB: it's not as if it's going to be doing a lot of memory intensive work for me: for that I use my DP G5 :-)

          • by CaptDeuce ( 84529 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @10:35AM (#11348183) Journal
            There are *no* user servicable parts in a mini Mac: you want to open it up you have to bust the case and void your warranty. That includes switching in some more memory.

            This simply isn't true. I'll let Henry Norr, veteran Mac journalist at http://www.macintouch.com/mwsf2005notebook.html/ [macintouch.com], tell it like it is:

            Apple "does not recommend" that users upgrade the memory themselves - you're supposed to have a service provider do it if you want to add more after purchase - but doing it yourself does not void the warranty unless you damage something. A booth person told me the memory slot is easily accessible once you get the case open.

            This has been Apple's policy for donkey years.

            • This is not Apple's traditional policy.

              To quote the Mac Mini tech specs page [apple.com]:

              5. Memory upgrade must be performed by an Apple Authorized Service provider.

              You won't find this on other Mac models. The iMac, for example, explicitly marks various parts like the RAM and the hard drive as user-serviceable.

              "Easily accessible once you get the case open" is laughable. The original iBook's hard drive was "easily accessible" once you get the case sufficiently open, but getting to that point took an hour and a hal
    • Re:Dupe... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Chuqmystr ( 126045 )
      Uhhhh, yeh. I like already had myself to all that Mac Mini pr0n, smoked a cig, cleaned up, asked my computer if things were gonna get all wierd now and moved on to the next thing say, two days ago?
    • Re:Dupe... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kzinti ( 9651 )
      Not only is it a dupe, but the announcement was so widely anticipated and so widely reported that you'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard about it! Way to stay on top of timely news, samzen.
    • Re:Dupe... (Score:4, Funny)

      by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld.gmail@com> on Thursday January 13, 2005 @10:04AM (#11347919) Homepage
      Well the only way to avoid duplicate stories would be to have some sort of way to, via some sort of computer automation, examine old stories and see if they had certain key words in common, some sort of "search engine" to coin a phrase. Obviously that would be impossible at our current level of technology, but one can hope for the future.
  • by Nexum ( 516661 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:02AM (#11347314)
    ... in other news Microsoft unveils next generation Windows operating system... ""Windows XP".
  • by pnevin ( 168332 ) * on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:04AM (#11347331)
    We're getting unconfirmed rumours that President Kennedy's been shot. Can anyone clarify this?
  • Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by alwsn ( 593349 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:04AM (#11347341)
    Now if only they'd release some new type of ipod to go with this "Mac Mini" It could even be flashed based. It's a brave new world.
  • Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by martinX ( 672498 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:05AM (#11347347)
    What? Another mini?
  • samzenpus? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FrenZon ( 65408 ) * on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:06AM (#11347355) Homepage

    Anyone notice that all the stories on the front page are now listed as posted by 'samzenpus'? The fact that such a glaringly obvious dupe was posted kinda raised the 'this website has been hacked' alarm.

    • Re:samzenpus? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Noryungi ( 70322 )
      Anyone notice that all the stories on the front page are now listed as posted by 'samzenpus'? The fact that such a glaringly obvious dupe was posted kinda raised the 'this website has been hacked' alarm.

      Yep. Also, MetaModeration is severely out of whack.
      [Yes, I do MetaModerate from time to time...]
    • Re:samzenpus? (Score:3, Informative)

      by fons ( 190526 )
      He does have UID 5, so it seems legit. Unless he hacked that uid too offcourse :-)
  • This was previously discussed on this Slashdot story [slashdot.org]. Also of interest is this announcement :

    Apple announced their financial results for the fourth quarter today, reporting a profit of $295M, or $0.70 per share. They shipped 4.58M iPods, an increase of 525 % over the year ago quarter. But more surprisingly, Apple CPU sales were up 26% themselves over the year ago quarter. Over 1,046,000 Macs went found their way into customer's hands in the quarter.
    See http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jan/12results .html [apple.com]

    After reading comments from the other /. story discussing the Mac Mini, I believe this Mac Mini is doomed for a **huge** success. Good for competition. Good for everyone :-)
    • I bought one as soon as they were announced.

      I'm a PC person really but have been looking to do the mac-thing for a while... at this price it's definately a winner.
    • by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @10:19AM (#11348046) Journal
      I've been an Apple non-believer for most of my life. Since day one I considered the Apple IIe to be overrated (Commodores were better), Mac's lacked the flexibility and software that the IBM PC/AT/XT/386/486+ did. For the 1990s, Macs were overpriced and lacked software to compete realistically for an PC market share. And don't get me started on games.

      I also figured iPods would be doomed to failure. Why would people spend $400-600 on harddrive mp3 player, instead of say $150 on a flash mp3 player? How small could they get those disks anyways? As for Mac OS/X, come on...if someone could put an elegant GUI on a robust unix kernel don't you think Microsoft or IBM would have done it already??? And Apple was clearly doomed financially...has any company ever lasted long after a Microsoft payoff?

      Now, in 2005, 20 years after I gave up on Apple, everything is falling into place. They finally have production costs under control, and long term strategic chip partnership with IBM. iPods are more popular than Sony Walkman's in the day. Mac OS/X is perhaps the best operating system in the market.

      And now this. Although there's alot of Mini-ITX cases available for the PC (Apple appears to be copying the PC market), this one DOES IT RIGHT. OS is included; several very good tools and software are included. You won't be using this mini-Mac for gaming, but for internet/digital photos/word processing its an awesome setup.

      Kudos Mr Jobs. I finally consider Apple a true market player once again.

  • by utexaspunk ( 527541 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:08AM (#11347373)
    Come ON... this story was obviously posted just to get a thousand "DUPE!" comments...

    Slashdot: -1, Troll
  • This isn't "isn't" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Himring ( 646324 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:12AM (#11347412) Homepage Journal
    This is so much not news, that all the redundant posts saying this isn't news isn't news, and even this post isn't a post. As a matter of fact, I'm questioning "isn't" right now, cuz it just "isn't" ... is it?
  • by simon_hibbs2 ( 792812 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:13AM (#11347420)
    All the price comparisons I've seen, including the 'in-depth' analysis on CNet, talk purely about the value of the hardware. (BTW, theirs is bogus, because they compare to boxes with crappy integrated graphics and no DVD player). The attraction of the Mac is in the software, mainly iLife. This is why people buy computers - to do stuff. Of the news site anayses I've seen, most of them don't even mention the bundled iLife software at all, yet it's the core of the digital lifestyle that Apple are selling. This is why comparisons of Windows PCs and Macs are nearly uniformly missing the point. A Mac isn't realy in the same product category as a PC. It's more like the product category of digital cameras, synthesisers and DVD players. Simon Hibbs
  • The news is (Score:3, Interesting)

    by terminal.dk ( 102718 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:15AM (#11347442) Homepage
    That the machine has sold very well, and that the shipping date for new orders are no longer Jan 22nd, but 3-4 weeks.

    Luckily, my order got through early, so mine is expected to ship Jan 28th or earlier. This is pretty good since official release in Denmark is 29th.
  • by Lurker McLurker ( 730170 ) <allthecoolnameshavegone@gmail. c o m> on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:20AM (#11347477)
    Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father.

    When asked for a comment Mr Vader said "I find your lack of faith disturbing".

  • by museumpeace ( 735109 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:20AM (#11347478) Journal
    From TFA:
    Perfect for Programmers Set a space-saving Mac mini atop your workstation PC and add a KVM switch to share keyboard, monitor and mouse. Mac OS X includes free developer tools for Mac, UNIX and Java. Test out a Mac version of your latest creation, instantly. Pretty soon you'll be using the Mac full-time, with that PC relegated to the testbed.

    I have always been a sucker for the coolness factor in Apple products [but I didn't buy a Lisa!] and this [apple.com] has me drooling.
  • by magicsloth ( 73914 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:21AM (#11347496)
    I love all the posts saying "This isn't a good deal." or "Dell did this last year." etc. That is missing the point. I think the Mac mini is kinda a crappy machine for a few reasons, but I also think that it will sell like hotcakes to the iPod users and people new to digital photography/video that Apple is targeting. From the website http://www.apple.com/macmini/ [apple.com] it seems obvious to me that they are targeting PC users who just got an iPod from a few things.

    1) From the first paragraph on that page:
    And yes, Mac mini will take advantage of your two-button USB mouse with scroll-wheel and your favorite USB keyboard. Just plug them in.


    2) From the second paragraph:
    Manage your music for iPod or organize and share your digital pictures with ease.


    For the average /. reader these things probably aren't that nice (especially since they probably won't be easily user serviceable). To your 50 year old father who wants to edit some pictures he takes with iPhoto and listen to Jimmy Buffet on his iPod (maybe this is just my dad) this might be a nice machine.
    • by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @10:23AM (#11348082) Journal
      Are you kidding, this is the best thing to ever happen to us techies! All I need to do is get my mom and my grandparents to replaces their piece of crap, cheap-ass gateways/dells; and all of a sudden, my family tech support responsibilities will drop by ridiculous amount.

      With all the new free time I'll have, I'll need a new hobby. Maybe I'll finally start drinking.
    • by Dragoon412 ( 648209 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @12:10PM (#11348775)
      It's more than just your 50 year-old father.

      I'm a 24 year-old network admin that's tired of dealing with Windows falling apart, or having to beat my Linux box into submission to make it do what I want.

      I've used OSX before, briefly, before; the university was covered in iMacs. But only to print papers, or check a website. Then, just after Christmas, I was house sitting for my sister, a technophobe that manages to use an older G4 iMac. Having a week to sit down with the OS, my reaction now is this:

      I'm not running any sort of heavy duty server, so fucking forget dealing with Linux. And if I'm going to pay for an OS, OSX runs rings around the best things Microsoft could even conceive. Now, how can I justify buying a full-priced Mac when I already have a pretty uber gaming PC?

      This announcement couldn't have been more perfectly timed. I adore my iPod. I'm tired of PCs. And this thing's affordable and works with the pretty pricey monitor I've already got.

      If they had an option to upgrade the video card in this thing to something like a 9600/9800 Pro, I'd be absolutely sold, but as it is, I'll probably buy one, anyways.
    • by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @12:35PM (#11349099) Homepage
      You say the Mac mini is "kinda a crappy machine" but you give no reasons for it, so I'm gonna help you out. I currently have a Powerbook 867 with a 40 GB hard drive. I use the powerbook to edit video, record multitrack audio, make DVDs with DVD Studio Pro, etc.

      Now, this Mac mini has a processor almost twice as fast, double the hard disk space, and DDR memory (my laptop uses SDRAM)... for 500 bucks. I would hardly call it a crappy machine. Your post makes no sense to me, but obviously a few people find you insightful.

  • by Mr. Cancelled ( 572486 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:23AM (#11347510)
    Of course, that's assuming that Amiga gets over their "Our OS can only be ran on our hardware" mentality.

    I've been a vocal critic of Amiga for going this route, ever since it was announced, but here's yet another example of why their plan is dumb: You can now buy a complete PPC machine (sans mouse, keyboard, and monitor) for less than you can buy an Amiga OS 4 board!

    Yes... They'd have to get their OS to boot on the machines, but as a growing number of Linux distributions prove, it's not too hard to do.

    I think, after seeing this machines price, and the price of the (yet unreleased, other than in alpha/beta form) Amiga board/CPU combo, that there must only be one or two nails left before the Amigas coffin is finally sealed shut.
  • Shipping date... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by seebs ( 15766 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:32AM (#11347602) Homepage
    When I first saw it, it said "Estimated arrival by January 22", now it says "3-4 weeks". I assume there was a rush early on.

    It'll be interesting seeing whether it can be easily set up for TV out.
  • by sita ( 71217 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:53AM (#11347814)
    It is kind of difficult to tell from the pictures. An external power supply (like laptops have) would make a lot of sense. Also it would make the following wishful thinking slightly more realistic:

    Imagine a mac mini. Add a battery pack. Add wireless option. Throw it in your backpack. Add wireless screen (sort of like a tablet PC but just enough computing power to be a remote desktop client...for the mac mini you have in your back ack). In your home office, add a dock, and a real screen, keyboard and mouse. And so on.

    In my dreams, at least.
  • by rcastro0 ( 241450 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:54AM (#11347823) Homepage
    Neo: Whoa, deja vu.
    Trinity: What did you just say?
    Neo: Nothing, I just had a little deja vu.
    Trinity: What did you see?
    Cypher: What happened?
    Neo: A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.
    Trinity: How much like it, was it the same cat?
    Neo: Might have been, I'm not sure.
    Morpheus: Switch, Apoc.
    Neo: What is it?
    Trinity: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.
  • by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @10:42AM (#11348242) Homepage Journal
    ...because it doesn't have an internal power supply. It uses a power brick. The power brick is the size of a washing machine and requires three-phase power.
  • by guidryp ( 702488 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @12:02PM (#11348670)
    Since this machine is a luggable and uses Laptop components. I thought I would compare a low end laptop.

    I configured a low end dell laptop with 40G drive/ CD-RW/DVD combo drive/256 MB ram/Celeron 2.6./90 day warranty (7.5 lbs) Price $852

    I configure the mac Mini with standard 1.25 G4/ 40G drive/ cd-RW/DVD combo/ 256ram/ 90 day warranty. 2.9lbs mac mouse and keyboard combo. Price $552
    CMV 15" LCD Monitor 5.3 lbs $179 newegg.
    Total Price: $731

    So one is luggable on the other true portable. But you have similar power and price/size/mass. Upgrade capability and pricing also similar.

    Those comparing the price performance to a off the shelf standard PC are out to lunch. This is not a power users box. It is not the best price peforming box on the planet.

    What it is is a very small cool, REASONABLY priced mac.

    I never used a mac before but I could see KVM'ing one of these into my current setup. I could meet 90% of my computing needs in blisfully quiet operation, keeping the PC for powerhouse/legacy tasks the other 10% of the time.

    I think they are going to sell all they can build. I would have ordered one already if it came with digital audio outputs.

    While not everything to everyone, this machine has an interesting niche to occupy and represents one of the few chances to get an Apple without paying a significant premium IMO. I wish them well. Hopefully they will be successful and release a mini2 that is more suitable for media center usage.

  • by garagekubrick ( 121058 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @04:42PM (#11352421) Homepage
    Nearly every complaint about the Mac Mini can be explained away by the general modularity of Macs which tend to be far more external than PCs. On my desk I have a Dell Winbox and a G5. I've had the G5 for a year now. Not one OS crash or failure or reboot. And now the only reason I run the PC is for soulseek. I will never go back to Windows, ever.

    1) 2 USB ports. What do you do after mouse / keyboard and you want to plug in a printer?

    A USB HUB. I can't believe people on /. have complained about this. Also, the standard Mac keyboard has two USB plugs.

    2) No Audio In - external firewire devices, which have been mentioned in many other posts with links, are readily available. If you're serious about gargeband you won't want a crappy minijack audio in anyway. You'll want a breakout box with a 1/4 or optical line in.

    3) No Optical Audio out - again the reverse of the above.

    4) Harddrive space, not enough for today's digital media. Same as an Ipod.

    Again, external firewire drives, which are very important to the Mac in general. I use my G5 primarily for heavy duty HD editing. Guess what I use for storage? No SCSI or Raid array - an off the shelf LaCie Terabyte external Firewire 800 drive. I took it out of the box, plugged it in, copied files over from the SATA drive that came with the system, and within 15 minutes my setup was complete with now a terabyte to work with. Hell, you could plug one of them into a Mac Mini if you had that much porn to archive and were going to hack the thing to be a video server.

    5) What hardware you're getting for that price.

    You're also getting OSX and iLife '05. I skipped iLife 04, but I am rushing out the day '05 hits, because it is just incredible what you're getting for 79$. That cost is part of the Mini Mac.

    Ultimately it's not even about the hardware. Granted I'm spoiled with a dual G5 processor, but when push comes to shove what made me fall in love with my Mac wasn't the sheer power of my system - it was the OS environment, the software, the interface, the stability, the lack of virus and spyware and adware and malware.

    That to me is easily worth $500, which is why this is a product that should be for two ends of the market. Clueless newbies who expect - rightly so - that things should work, and hardcore techies who can now afford to keep a second box. What I think you'll find is that under Jobs' second tenure the Mac has become a device for your life, and it's all to do with the exceptional software made for it.

    Most of us here shell out at least 1000 for a good PC system even if we build from scratch cause that's often the price for the best thing out there. Wouldn't you gladly pay $500 extra if you knew that WinXP would never crash, never present .DLL nightmares, pick up viruses in everything from cursor settings to email, et. al... For a base $500 you can have a computer that does that and so much more.

    6) No DVD Burner. Not enough RAM.

    You can add Ram without violating the warranty yourself. Apple is charging way too much for it. And you can add a Superdrive for about $100 if I recall right. Giving you the option to burn DVDs. This I believe is a cost everyone should upgrade to, especially once they see the ease of iMovie and iDVD.

    7) No VGA / S VIdeo out

    Well it comes with a DVI to VGA adapater - if you're hooking up to an HDTV then use DVI for the love of god. And you can get a SVIdeo out for 19$

    Did you also remember this is fanless and whisper quiet and smaller than a lunchbox? That they've liberated you from having to pair up with their overpriced (but absolutely phenonmenal) displays?

    Every bit of commentary I've seen about this computer has completely missed the point or just been rife with ignorance. Every single major gripe is addressable, and the price point is absoutely amazing, again, for the software. Most of the readers here do get it - they can afford to have one to play with, and I wouldn't be surpri

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