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Technology (Apple) Technology Hardware

Mac mini as Embedded Development Platform 80

Posted by timothy from the one-for-each-passenger-in-my-car dept.
Ohreally_factor writes "Peter Seebach has written a paper over at IBM developerWorks on the potential use of the Mac mini as a high-end embedded development board. Quote from the article: 'Comparing it to other embedded systems, you'll find that it's not much bigger, and it's smaller than some. It has a broader array of connectors, a faster processor, support for a very large amount of memory, and comes with self-hosted development tools. In short, if you look at it as an embedded development platform, it's a competitive one.'"
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Mac mini as Embedded Development Platform More

Mac mini as Embedded Development Platform

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  • When I first saw the Mac Mini (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @03:36PM (#12092790)
    ...I thought of the DARPA project. Or how cool it would be to have a Mac in a car anyways. One button mouse makes it easy to while in a figity car.

    I for one welcome our new Mac Mini overlords.

    • Re:When I first saw the Mac Mini (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @03:45PM (#12092912)

      One button mouse makes it easy to while in a figity car.

      More importantly, an interface designed to work with a single button makes specialized interface devices much easier to implement.

      • Unfortunately the Mac OS interface is not designed to work with a single button. There are a lot of thing you need to use control- option- or command- click to do, and shift-click is often nearly as critical.

        Really, the Mac has a 5 button mouse with 4 of them on the keyboard.
        • Name one; I'm using my iBook as of current, and I can see almost anything I would need to use a second click for in a menu somewhere.
          • Name one; I'm using my iBook as of current, and I can see almost anything I would need to use a second click for in a menu somewhere.

            You need control-click to bring up contextual manus in many situations. Click-and-hold doesn't work.

            You need command-click or shift-click for multiple selections.

            You need command-click to move or remove menu-bar objects.

            You need control, shift, and option-click all over the place in Photoshop... long one of the "killer apps" for the Mac. In other apps I've run into as much as 2-keys-chorded-plus-double-click.

            In OS 9, which was more consistent about this than OS X, you needed option-click to move the control strip.

            That's just off the top of my head.
            • In the Finder the contextual menu is available via the "action" button for those who stick with one button ever since 10.3. I'm not quite sure what requires multiple buttons/modifier keys anymore. Since UI scripting became available as an OS function (10.2.3) I've had access for assistive devices on so that might be making more things than normal accessible.

              In short, the list of things you can't do without a modifier key or a second button has dropped to either zero or near zero in the recent past, at lea
              • In the Finder the contextual menu is available [...]

                The Finder is not the only application on the Mac.

                In short, the list of things you can't do without a modifier key or a second button has dropped to either zero or near zero in the recent past, at least at the OS level.

                In short, there have always been things you can't do, and more things you can't easily or conveniently do, without a modifier key, and while there are workarounds that make many of them easier if not more convenient... the Mac user int
                • We're talking about an embedded platform, right. In that case, the applications that will be run will likely not be the same as you would run on a desktop machine. Embedded applications run their own stuff, designed for that particular embedded application. In that case, only finder independence of modifier keys really matters. Everything else is going to be independently developed and created with the unusual input device environment in mind.

                  The fact that Photoshop or Maya, or Quark may be dependent on mo
                  • We're talking about an embedded platform, right. In that case, the applications that will be run will likely not be the same as you would run on a desktop machine. Embedded applications run their own stuff, designed for that particular embedded application. In that case, only finder independence of modifier keys really matters.

                    Finder still needs modifier keys for extended select.

                    Besides, if you're going to write your own applications, then you're better off using one of the flash-booted Linux or BSD base

            • Re:When I first saw the Mac Mini (Score:1, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward
              Your 3 first items are all shortcuts.

              Contextual menus are just shortcuts to actual menu bar menu items, or items accessible otherwise.

              Multiple items can be handled in one by one.

              Menu and toolbar items can be removed by other means. Menu apps can be removed from their folder in the file system to keep them from loading. The 'Customize toolbar' mode in applications does not require command-dragging.

              But yeah

              The design of Adobe Photoshop® isn't that great. Many third party apps take privileges that
            • Every action in a contextual menu should be available by other means. Yes, you need modifiers for multiple selection in most programs. Menulings can be removed from the preferences of respective program / preference pane. That holds true for all Apple-provided menulings. Yes, many third-party programs require modifiers to perform certain tasks, but in many cases there are alternative ways of achieving the same thing. Yes, option was used to move the control strip. Using modifiers is not the same thing
            • MacOS has supported _12_ mouse buttons for years - it might be more now. Of course, this is assuming the application has something to do with 12 mouse buttons.

              Here's what you do: Buy a mac mini. Buy a USB mouse with more buttons. Plug it in. Done.

              Apple specifies that basic application functions should be available with a single button - so that novice users can always use the apps, and to discourage arbitrarily hiding functions in context-menus.

              Generally the context-menu (right-click) is ALSO mapped
              • Here's what you do: Buy a mac mini. Buy a USB mouse with more buttons. Plug it in.

                Step three? There is no step three!
                Umm.... I mean four.
                There's is no step four.

                =Tod K
              • I have come to appreciate using key chords. it keeps my left hand busier and has cut way down on the tendinitis pain I had with 2 and 3 button dependency.

                it does get ridiculous in 3D applications though where with things like houdini and maya etc. you have chords with both the mouse AND the keyboard.

                oddly, one of apple's own products, (though only recently purchased,) shake, REQUIRES the use of a 3 button mouse. this if nothing else should convince people that macs and apple are fully conversant with mult
            • You need control, shift, and option-click all over the place in Photoshop... long one of the "killer apps" for the Mac. In other apps I've run into as much as 2-keys-chorded-plus-double-click.

              Dude, he is IN HIS CAR. Why would you need photoshop IN YOUR CAR?
              • Why would you need photoshop IN YOUR CAR?

                So that you can clean up the pic you took on your cameraphone before you upload it to your iPod Photo to impress the member-of-the-appropriate-sex next to you BEFORE THE LIGHT CHANGES!
            • If you are doing Photoshop while driving, I think you have more to worry about than the number of buttons.
    • I have nothing against the Mac. In my experience with embedded platforms (which is not a lot), I've noticed that the issue with them is to find a platform that fits your specification like a glove without any extraneous features to bloat your price point. Very often we spend a lot of time making the hardware cheaper.

      Now this is not true of defense related projects, where cost is never an issue. But in manufacturing even a few dollars can shave a whole lot off your price. So just having a platform with oodl

  • Makes sense.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GregAllen ( 178208 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @03:40PM (#12092838) Homepage
    For quite some time, we've used PowerBooks as embedded platforms. They are typically cheaper, faster, lower power, and easier to get than similar VME solutions with a PowerPC. Packaging is a bit of an issue, but the benefits have outweighed the problems. There's a large market for embedded x86 PCs, why not PPC with AltiVec?
  • The machine is great , small, compact , silent , powerfull , has a unix with full driver support for all included components ,Excelent development tools and a price that is unmatched in the area .
    I use my mini as a general purpose slim line as well as a digital hub.
    Whilst i read through this , i cant help myself saying "Exactly" out loud , Apple has one hell of a commodity/general purpose computer on its hand in the mini .
    seriously how many other mainstream computers can equaly compete in the Digital hub and embeded development market, OS X allows me the power of a unix system which I use daily and allows the system to be so easy that an adult with no experiance ( children pick GUI navigation up too easily to be worth mentioning) could use it quickly .
    Bravo apple , this machine made me break out the wallet the minute it was announced ,Ive used apple computers for a long time but never have i found an apple that was this versatile .
    • Come on now, you can get all of that on a PC labtop. If you like the MiniMac design, that's great. But don't make it seem like a Sager labtop or a souped up Alienware can't be a digital Hub either.

    • I am wondering if Apple might come out with a Mac Micro next. A Mac mini without an optical drive or hard drive set to boot from one of Apples servers. For Schools and big companies it could be just the thing. The users could keep their data on the server or a USB drive. Less to break or steal. It could be made very simple to manage as well. Sort of a thin client done right.

  • OS X "Lite" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bhima ( 46039 ) <Bhima,Pandava&gmail,com> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @04:02PM (#12093144) Journal
    One of the things I've been coveting since the MiniMac came out is a OS X Lite sort of thing. I thought Win98Lite was probably the most interesting windows thing going when it was current. I really do think a MiniMac could be a great, really cheap reference platform.

    Having said all of that I'm looking forward to PART II!

    • Re:OS X "Lite" (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BeerCat ( 685972 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @05:23PM (#12094210) Homepage
      The problem with a "lite" version is what do you take out? Two different people might both want a cut down version (especially if it cost less), but person A might want to retain a certain feature that person B thought was not required.

      An alternative would be a "what do you not want / need" installer which would run when the machine was first powered up. It would have to include a short sentence or two to explain why you might want to throw out feature X.

      At present, an OS X custom install has a few options (like foreign languages, printer drivers, X windows, BSD subsystem and so on), but nothing as radical as "don't need this - remove"
    • If there was a hack for the window manager to turn off rounded windows and drop-shadows, I think that would be nifty. I generally run 3D type things that reall would run better if the general UI wasn't using a significant amount of the video card's power...

    • OSX == OSX Lite (Score:5, Informative)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @09:15PM (#12096361) Homepage Journal
      OSX is built on Darwin, the BSD/Mach core.

      But drop to a shell and look around - everything is Unix, you can tweak the text-based config files, specify which extensions load, which daemons start, whatever you want.

      There's no voodoo here - so no need for Win98Lite style utilities.

      If you want a simple GUI use X11. If you want Aqua, set autologin and remove all the apps that shouldn't be there.

      For embedded, the cost of Aqua over X11 (OSX over Darwin) may be too high, especially if you can source Mini motherboards directly.
    • What the frack is a MiniMac ? This reminds of people who say "American Online" instead of America Online ...

      • Re:OS X "Lite" (Score:5, Funny)

        by Frodo Crockett ( 861942 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @12:52AM (#12097491)
        What the frack is a MiniMac ? This reminds of people who say "American Online" instead of America Online ...

        That's not so bad. I work in retail, and I have to put up with people who say "98 Windows" on a regular basis. Also note that "Lexmark" is frequently mis-pronounced as "Lensmark", "Lamar", and, inexplicably, "Linux". Were it not for my Jedi training, I fear I might do something rather violent to these people.
        • Tell 'em "These are not the names you are looking for."

          Better yet, screw the Jedi training and slash 'em. Then give their families a free printer two days after.

          (If Yoda asks, blame it on those midi-chlorians.)
    • It's called FreeBSD. Enjoy!
    • OS X "Lite"

      Not sure exactly what you really need, but 'Simple Finder' came instantly to mind when i saw "OS X lite."

      We use it for a lot of the Graphic Artists here who can't be bothered to learn the new OS after upgrading their systems from OS 9.3.

      You create a new user and under 'Limitations' set up a "Simple Finder"

      Viola ... OS X Lite.
    • One of the things I've been coveting since the MiniMac came out is a OS X Lite sort of thing.

      Well, you can download it right here! [apple.com]

      Just download the Darwin sources, strip out all the bits you don't need from the kernel (not that difficult, as much of it is modular). You don't necessarily need a GUI for embedded, either.

    • Ahh, it's called 'Darwin' and you can download it for free. Instead of Quartz you can use the included framebuffer or standard X11.

      Esentially, Darwin is a super-modern BSD with a totally revamped device driver structure, more modern multithreaded startup scripting, a high-performance balanced-tree filesystem with journaling and metadata, included compiler, fantastic hardware support, advanced networking with configd, OpenDirectory for LDAP and AD integration, and self-tuning performance features.

  • And with the price... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jnetsurfer ( 637137 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @04:17PM (#12093335) Homepage Journal
    And with the price of the Mac Mini, it's a great way for Unix/Linux developers to test ports of their software to Darwin/OS X, or a great way to learn Cocoa or Mac programming in general.

  • How does it go again... (Score:5, Funny)

    by iluvcapra ( 782887 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @04:21PM (#12093374)
    No 9 pin, less space than a Cappucino. Lame. :)

  • BRIQ (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <vasqzr@@@netscape...net> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @04:50PM (#12093746)

    What happened to the briQ or whatever from YellowDog?

    • Re:BRIQ (Score:5, Informative)

      by Frequency Domain ( 601421 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @05:05PM (#12093964)
      What happened to the briQ or whatever from YellowDog?
      They priced themselves right out of the market. They were asking about $1300, if memory serves, for a 400Mhz G3, and about $500 more to upgrade it to a G4. And that was after their "big price drop." It reminded me of the old joke about trying to make a profit from each of your customers, as opposed to from all of them.

  • that would make it (Score:4, Funny)

    by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @05:01PM (#12093912)
    the world's biggest wristwatch

  • not written by a Macintosh expert, and that's cool (Score:5, Interesting)

    by javaxman ( 705658 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @05:31PM (#12094318) Journal
    You know what's most interesting to me about this article? The fact that it's written by a guy who is clearly not actually very expert on things Apple. I find the fact that he's not seriously an Apple guy very cool, and very indicative that Apple's really done something different with the introduction of the Mac mini.

    Don't get me wrong, he knows what's up, but... it's not clear he's an expert in some of the more subtle areas, like Open Firmware- the 'zap the PRAM three times' function is supposed to clear the Open Firmware password, as an example. He seems to be more of an embedded systems guy rather than an Apple hardware geek, that's all.

    • You know what's most interesting to me about this article? The fact that it's written by a guy who is clearly not actually very expert on things Apple.

      He's not exactly a novice. He does mention that zapping the PRAM three times is supposed to do extra things, but claims that might be superstition-- he does mention that he hasn't had to do that on a "modern machine," I don't know exactly what that means, but I suspect the last time he zapped the PRAM was when his G3 tower was high-end.

      A little backg

      • Oh, yea, like I said, he knows his stuff... and has been using Macs for a long, long time. I was just trying to point out that it's not his area of expertise per se- he actually reads like more of an embedded systems guy, or, as it turns out, a FreeBSD/*nix guy, and my point was that, hey, cool, the Mac mini has him and other like him looking at Apple hardware again. Which is good for Apple.

        You guys are not alone on the desire to call it a mini-mac. I have to try really hard to type "Mac mini"... I think

        • I own about a half-dozen macs. I know what zapping the PRAM officially does. I also know that people in comp.sys.mac.system will recommend it for anything from "machine won't boot" to "SCSI termination problems". I don't know whether it has side-effects that we don't really know about.

          I'm not exactly a Mac expert, but I do write about 'em a lot.
    • Zapping the PRAM doesn't reset the OF passwd. Assuming a password is set, you need physical access to the mainboard.

      A four-key-at-boot workaround would make OF passwd sercurity a bit useless, wouldn't it?

  • TAMS 3011 MOAB (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:34PM (#12095604)
    I would have loved to use a Mac Mini for this home-brewed embedded project I have. Unfortunately, the Mac Mini has no PCI support. Instead I'm now using a TAMS 3011 MOAB [tamsinc.com]. It's not as good of a value as a Mac Mini and has some limitations, but it does have PCI.

  • Oh well... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by curious.corn ( 167387 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:49PM (#12095731)
    very true, a mini is a hell of a cool device but I only wish for someone to discover an unfinished header port on the mini's logic board and find out it's a JTAG. Now, that'd make the mini the most 'leet toy ever (it makes debugging a live OS the same as with your user level app... but you can mess with the ram, chipset, CPU, rollback contexts, like the CPU light panels on '70 room sized mainframes... wet dreams... wet dreams ;-) )
  • ... it's a bloody expensive embedded system - most of these are $1-200, not $500. The popular ones are $100 (Rabbit, Arm, AVR, PIC)

    Don't get me wrong, I think the Mac mini is just fabulous, but you'd have to have a damn good reason to pay the premium over more traditional embedded systems...

    Simon

    • Re:Not to rain on the parade, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @10:10PM (#12096681)
      Ummm... PIC, AVR, dude, those are pee shooters, of course they are going to be cheaper, they aren't even in the same league. You cannot find a single board computer that runs at 1.25 Ghz, has 256 MB DDR, 32MB Graphics, firewire, USB, 100BaseT, etc. for the same price as the mini. Freescale has their MPC5200 Lite board with a 400 Mhz PowerPC processor for $1000.
      • And a huge percentage of the embedded market is done with those 'pea shooters' . My point is that in the embedded market, speed/RAM size, whatever isn't anywhere near as important. Cost is.

        If you wanted a consumer-grade device, there may be an argument, but embedded is (very!) rarely such a resource hog. There is also always a mini-itx [mini-itx.com] type for $100->$200 depending on what you want. Ok, add $40 for 256 MB RAM, and it runs a little slower at (up to) 1GHz but you do get firewire, USB, 100-BASET (up to 4 o

    • Re:Nope (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bussdriver ( 620565 )
      HIGH-END embedded systems.
      they are NOT cheap.
    • it's a bloody expensive embedded system - most of these are $1-200, not $500. The popular ones are $100 (Rabbit, Arm, AVR, PIC)

      Yup. I've done all of them but AVR. Different type of embedded.

      For example, for $250 we have a Geode running at 233 Mhz. For similar footprint (and faster clock) we are talking in the $500 range or more.

      Rabbit runs like a pig compared Mac.

  • How fast does it boot? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @09:07PM (#12096313) Homepage
    One of the major draws to embedded boards is the boot time.

    Unless it beats my current 3 second embedded solution, I won't be investing in it as an option.

  • How about as a embedded development host? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Onnimikki ( 63071 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:01AM (#12098888) Homepage
    One of the nice things about doing embedded development on Windows boxes is the availability of cheap parallel-port BDM/JTAG interfaces, like Macraigor's Wiggler [macraigor.com]. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an easy way to connect these to the USB ports of any Mac (the parallel port to USB converters that are used for printers reportedly don't work). I'm looking forward to the day that I can buy a cheap USB-compatible Wiggler that GDB can talk to.

  • Dual Ethernet Ports (Score:2, Insightful)

    by eluusive ( 642298 )
    I'd buy one if it had two ethernet ports. Think of what a leat--yet small--router you could have. My current webserver/router/firewall/dhcp/dns/etc server is a 466mhz celeron I found in a dumpster and replaced the hard drive on. heh. At least it has two NIC cards though.
    • I'd buy one if it had two ethernet ports. Think of what a leat--yet small--router you could have. My current webserver/router/firewall/dhcp/dns/etc server is a 466mhz celeron I found in a dumpster and replaced the hard drive on. heh. At least it has two NIC cards though.

      Consider a USB NIC. I wouldn't want to rely on one for anything mission-critical, but for home use it should be fine.

      Of course you can also run multiple IPs on the same NIC, plug your DSL/cable modem into the LAN switch, and trust the s
      • Consider a USB NIC. I wouldn't want to rely on one for anything mission-critical, but for home use it should be fine.

        Do you know of one that works? The one that I have at the house doesn't.

  • Better than a self-hosted web-cam (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JawzX ( 3756 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @04:18PM (#12104179) Homepage Journal
    Mac Mini (w/ airport) + iSight + Darwin Streaming Server = Kicks any self-hosted web-cam's ass. As matter of fact we just did one of these for a local bar. It was a little more expensive than a self hosted cam, but it does synched audio, supports simultanious streams at different bandwidths, and can handle more than twice the user load. It sits headless on a shelf high on a wall, the iSight right next to it, it connects to the network wirelessly and we VNC into it... it's a perfect comodity device!

  • I have to authorize purchases, and... (Score:4, Informative)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:50PM (#12107195)
    The only problem with using an Apple box as an embedded platform is this: By the time you release your product, based on the Mini, Apple will discontinue it and start developing something else.

    The iMac got replaced. The Mac Cube is long gone. The lampshade is on its way out. Apple constantly innovates and comes out with something new. In embedded systems, you need something that probably isn't as exciting as an Apple system, but that will remain stable and available for years to come, with no or minimal changes. Otherwise, you are asking for trouble.

    As NASA said, test what you fly and fly what you test. You can't design something, change the computer at the last minute, and expect it to be fine, even if all the software still works. There are electrical noises, temperature considerations, EMI, RFI, and all kinds of other fun things that will keep you chasing shadows for months. Embedded projects fail over this kind of thing.

    I would LOVE to use some Apple box in an embedded system... but Apple would have to release such a box as one that is INTENDED for embedded applications, and they would need to promise continued production for a number of years.

  • In one of the articles for this small computer it was noted you can get a "Happy Hacking keyboard" to use with it instead of a regular sized one. I looked at the price of the Happy Hacking keyboard and was shocked. Can anyone explain why someone would pay upwards of US$125.00 for a keyboard which is slightly smaller than usual ones when a typical regular size keyboard, brand new, sells for US$3.95? (That's what I paid about a month ago at Micro Center for the brand-new keyboard I am using right now and t

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