I think they may have raised the price so that the $399 AppleTV (in the same new Mini enclosure) has a nice comfy middle spot in the pricing line-up.
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Eerie Silence: new Mac Mini is worse value than previous revision
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I think they may have raised the price so that the $399 AppleTV (in the same new Mini enclosure) has a nice comfy middle spot in the pricing line-up.
Sometimes they do small spec bumps or price drops between revisions. I remember that they have done it, I couldn't say how common it is.
And about the RAM, yeah if it came with 4GB that would make much more sense. Upgrading you either pay $100 to Apple or you buy the RAM yourself for not much cheaper and probably throw away the 2x1GB DIMMs.
Yeah, but at the price it's at now, it should already cover the 4GB. Who knows, though, just a theory.
I'm saying that most official revisions (Rev B, C, D...) are mainly just spec bumps. I'm not counting massive redesigns or new chip architectures in this category. But if you look at the MR Buyers Guide or the Guides section, you can see that the majority of "revisions" are small spec bumps or price drops.
IMO I think the new mini with the nvidia 320m blows the previous generation with the nvidia 9400m out the water.
I returned the previous generation mac mini with nvidia 9400m a week ago because I found it TOO slow to play some big mkv bluray files that are bigger than 10GB+ under the plex player.
Some movies especially with fast moving scenes would lose so much framerates its unwatchable. Also I use alot of spaces and even just using 4 spaces the animation is slow and stutters.
Anyway, I bought the 13" 2.4GHz macbook pro with the same specs as the newly released mac minis and its so much faster.
The nvidia 320m has almost the same 3dmark06 points as the previous generation dedicated GPU of the nvidia 9600m GT!
Basically, the nvidia 9400m gt scores the highest 3dmark06 point of 1800 while the new 320m scores a 3dmark06 of 4600! That's a HUGE difference. Now I can do everything I did on my 17" i7 2.66GHz model on the 2.4GHz, 320m nvidia! It performs pretty much the same under OSX. Everything is buttery smooth, even with 9 spaces opened with 20+ apps running and vmware fusion!
I returned the previous generation mac mini with nvidia 9400m a week ago because I found it TOO slow to play some big mkv bluray files that are bigger than 10GB+ under the plex player.
Some movies especially with fast moving scenes would lose so much framerates its unwatchable. Also I use alot of spaces and even just using 4 spaces the animation is slow and stutters.
Anyway, I bought the 13" 2.4GHz macbook pro with the same specs as the newly released mac minis and its so much faster.
The nvidia 320m has almost the same 3dmark06 points as the previous generation dedicated GPU of the nvidia 9600m GT!
Basically, the nvidia 9400m gt scores the highest 3dmark06 point of 1800 while the new 320m scores a 3dmark06 of 4600! That's a HUGE difference. Now I can do everything I did on my 17" i7 2.66GHz model on the 2.4GHz, 320m nvidia! It performs pretty much the same under OSX. Everything is buttery smooth, even with 9 spaces opened with 20+ apps running and vmware fusion!
Yep.
Now if they'd just have kept the $599 entry price or gone to $699 and included 4 GB RAM, we'd all be happy.
I don't know how the newer Macs have been with HD video, but my current 2.16 GHz White Macbook with 2GB of ram and Intel GMA 950 graphics would choke to death with the 1080p version of this video:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/mhd.html
The 2010 Mac Mini played it perfectly fine, and in the Activity Monitor, the CPU was barely breaking a sweat. It was a basic base model - 2.4 GHz and 2GB ram. My white Macbook would just make a ton of fan noises and shutter like hell, and display what looks more like a PowerPoint slide show instead of a HD video.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/mhd.html
The 2010 Mac Mini played it perfectly fine, and in the Activity Monitor, the CPU was barely breaking a sweat. It was a basic base model - 2.4 GHz and 2GB ram. My white Macbook would just make a ton of fan noises and shutter like hell, and display what looks more like a PowerPoint slide show instead of a HD video.
I think its not too big of a deal breaker. IMO people are just crying over spilt milk over a $100 increase in price of the mac mini. At least you do get the 320GB HDD as to the 160GB HDD. That means it leaves about $50 increase in price from the previous generation with the newly Nvidia 320m, which is the best upgraded portion of the mac mini.
You can also go to amazon.com and buy the new 2.4GHz base model mac mini for $669.99 + no tax and free shipping. That'll save you $70 over the previous generation's mac mini from apple.com + student discount + tax which equals out to $598. So $670-$598 = $72.
MCP89 is a pin for pin drop in upgrade from MCP79.
On the processor front Intel trickles down faster parts over time. The Core i7 920 at $284 was replaced by the Core i7 930 and that will be replaced by the Core i7 950.
Magical price increase justifications are magical.
On the processor front Intel trickles down faster parts over time. The Core i7 920 at $284 was replaced by the Core i7 930 and that will be replaced by the Core i7 950.
Magical price increase justifications are magical.
err... no it isn't
it has no BRD, or integrated port to receive TV or decent software to do anything much media wise.
a HDMI port does not suddenly = HTPC
at its price, its the Mac apple would rather you didn't but. Dreadful machine...
It was all about HDMI for me. None of the HDMI inputs on my tv had a separate audio input, so a DVI to HDMI adapter was worthless to me, seeing as there was no audio passthrough on the old mini. Obviously, a $300 Windows box has HDMI, but it lacks the ability to perform Time Machine backups. That's where Apple has me by the short hairs.
Consider yourselves REALLY LUCKY to be living in the USA.
In Europe, the new Mac Mini entry model (2.4GHz C2D, 2GB, 320GB model) costs 799 euro. That is 988 USD. Nine-hundred-and-eighty-eight US Dollars.
And that for old technology. Come one, a C2D. Just 2GB RAM. Just 320GB HDD. For that price, it should have come with AT LEAST 4GB RAM and a 7200rpm 500GB HDD. CPU move to an i3 might be difficult, not sure, to combine with a descent GPU.
For about 1/4 of this price we can buy an ASRock ION system, which does a perfect job as a HTPC combined with the free XMBC (Live). For about 1/2 of the price we can buy an ASRock system with an i3 CPU, bluray drive, 4GB RAM, ........ I'm not sure which road I will take. Eather the old Mini if I can still get one, or a 21.5" entry iMac. But not the new Mini for this ridiculous price.
This new pricing scheme is nothing short of simply insane, especially in Europe. A pure ripoff. Nothing positive can be said about the new Mini. In Europe the sales will be a disaster.
you miss the point, sales are a disaster anyway...they were on the old one they will be on the new one.
Apple's future (in their eyes) is a cloud linked iOS device they have no real interest or desire in selling it, but if they have to they'll charge the moon for it...... they don't care, its a short term thing for them.
they'd much rather sell you an iPad
No but it helps significantly.
As does small form factor, attractive shell, no power brick, no converter dongles, low power consumption, IR port and silent operation.
All those hardware features combined are exactly what I want to put IP-based content on my television and why I have no problem with the price increase. The computational specs of the last-gen were fine but the hardware was still unrefined, this is a massive improvement in that area.
I have two Blu-ray devices and I don't need another. Both of which are huge in comparison. I don't need a TV input on the Mini when I have HDHomerun. I don't need Mac media software when there are plenty of other options that work.
If you want a tiny, unobtrusive PC to sit in your living room without requiring an array of wires and boxes, then the new Mac Mini is probably the best option there is.
If you want a lower cost option ...
well, Apple isn't for you and never has been. There are always cheaper alternatives elsewhere with better specs.
But Nvidia 320M + Plex Player = Perfect HTPC.
HDMI is a bonus but I already connect my macbook pro or mac minis to the HDTV using the DVI to the Mini Display Port (from monoprice) that works fine.
But you can't receive any form of broadcast TV (without periph.) and there is no built in software worthy of the name.
plus no BRD...
I think for serious aficionados its 50% of a perfect HTPC at 200% of the price.
How are you defining that the older model is a 'better' Mac Mini at the same price? What does the $799 older Mac Mini do/have that a new Mac Mini (up to 4GB of RAM for $799) doesn't have?
If you bump up the RAM on the new Mac mini to price it the same as the previous gen at $799, the older Mac mini only has 133mhz CPU increase (which isn't a big deal), but the newer model gains an HDMI Port, an SD Card Slot, easier accessibility for upgrades, and most importantly an upgraded GPU. Additionally, the newer model also receives a revised case, loses the power brick, and has less power consumption then the older model.
Again, I think most people, myself included, would gladly give up 133mhz in CPU clock speed for the additional features of the newer model. I believe that the newer model, when upped to 4GB of memory, is superior to the older model at the same price point, especially in an HTPC application.
There is a Hulu plugin for the Plex player. Just get an apple remote and you can watch anything. Also you can add your favorite tv shows to the favorites section to just store what you want to watch via hulu.
Also you can daisy chain your Terabytes of hdds into the mac mini via plex and it picks up all your movies under the same category folders that you create (best part of plex!). So you can keep adding your library of movies.
IMO there is nothing out there that comes close to what Plex offers! As for bluray movies, *10GB+ MKV files with AAC or AC3 and full DTS looks and sounds almost idental to the original bluray movies (I've compared them with the same movies on a PS3, no difference at all that I can notice), also I'll stop now because I cant really discuss any further here.
Oh and the Plex player has a Netflix plugin as well so you can log into your account and watch hd movies right away instead of paying 2x more for the bluray discs and waiting a day or two to receive them. IMHO, the future is going to be done away with discs and instant streaming will take over. Well it sort of has already.
As you can see the mac mini is the perfect HTPC because its so quiet, fast and you can run Plex on it but the only downside thus far was the 9400m gpu that couldnt handle the TOO demanding mkv files where it would drop frames and lip sync doesnt match, etc.. But now the 320m is a God send! It can play anything you throw at it.
I'm getting kind of tired of connecting and disconnecting my 13" macbook pro to my hdtv and back to my 23" external monitor for general computing needs. I'm thinking about picking up a base model mac mini to station right under my hdtv, that would be ideal setup.
I'd say it again, new mac mini + plex player + hulu plugin + daisy chaining external HDD for movies and organizing the categories and ease of use + apple remote = HTPC heaven.
good.... you're talking nonsense.. (bluray rips same as uncompressed master disc
)for pure media you should but a Win 7 box, with an i3 or i5 processor, HD sat card, BR drive and save some money!
btw we don't all live in the 'free' world.
good.... you're talking nonsense.. (bluray rips same as uncompressed master disc
for pure media you should but a Win 7 box, with an i3 or i5 processor, HD sat card, BR drive and save some money!
btw we don't all live in the 'free' world.
Well you can always stream the movies right to you. IMO thats the smart thing to do anyway.
I always dont see what the huge fuss is about with bluray players, IMO its just a gimmick to get people to buy blurays when it really isnt necessary. Its overrated as well, its great if you have a $20,000 surround sound system that can pick up every little details in sound noise and quality (this is why blurays are big mostly due to more sound files) but streaming movies right to your hdtv via netflix is just about the same (and cheaper).
I think the old one was overpriced - but I have paid under list for all 4 of my mini's.
I already have Core2Duo at 2.0Ghz - don't see anything compelling with either the 2009 or 2010 models, since I don't do anything taxing of the graphics and don't need a second 24" monitor (yet).
If the new one had an i5 - well then I would eventually order one.
I already have Core2Duo at 2.0Ghz - don't see anything compelling with either the 2009 or 2010 models, since I don't do anything taxing of the graphics and don't need a second 24" monitor (yet).
If the new one had an i5 - well then I would eventually order one.
You don't understand how the computer component market works. Yes it has a new GPU. But thats because its the new GPU that replaced the old GPU in nVidia's product offerings, probably for about the same component price. I don't know that nVidia is even selling new licenses for the 9400M. Similarly, hard drives have gotten cheaper, and a 160GB is considered "legacy" hardware, which means that you can get a more modern hard drive for the same price or cheaper. When a new computer is released one year later it is supposed to come with 1-year-improved-components for the same price or cheaper, not more expensive. You don't pay for the upgrade to the 320M. Its not an upgrade. Its the next year product revision that nVidia charges about the same amount for.
Old Mac Mini ($599) > New Mac Mini ($699)
C2D 2.26ghz > 2.4ghz less than evolutionary change, you can hardly find new computers without at least Core i3, but I'll give this one to Apple since they had good reason to stick with nVidia integrated graphics
2GB RAM > 2GB RAM no change
nVidia 9400M > 320M evolutionary change, they were both nVidia's "mainstream integrated graphics" product offering at the time the respective computers were announced
160GB > 320GB evolutionary change
There is nothing new in the new Mac Mini that is more than what you would expect from a year of technology improvements and price drops. In some ways you are getting less than a year of improvement. And yet the price was increased $100. And as multiple people have said, the new $699 compares even worse to the old $799, which actually comes with a faster CPU and the same hard drive for the same price when you upgrade to equal RAM.
Don't defend it if you don't know what you're talking about. We're all Mac enthusiasts and we understand that you can't compare Macs to PCs, we're just comparing Mac to Mac and its very clear to anyone who is familiar with computer components that this new Mac Mini is a much worse deal for the time than the old one was.
To me the $100 difference is a respectable upgrade. You get a far superior GPU for the new mac mini + 320GB HDD.
And I KNOW what I'm talking about because I've owned the mac mini with the Nvidia 9400m and know what it can do and what it CANT do well and now a 13" macbook pro with practically the same specs as the base model mac mini.
Its worth every penny for the new mac mini. Its SO much faster, immediately you can tell its a totally different machine when you use it.
It will be interesting to see... I think there's a distinct possibility that Apple could adopt AMD/ATI platforms for upcoming Macs with integrated graphics, especially desktops where performance/watt is near irrelevant. Then again, it would be a very Apple thing to do for them to suddenly forget the last few years of them touting the importance of GPU capability and their relatively powerful nVidia integrated graphics, and start using Intel graphics again.
What makes you believe that the newer components cost more than the previous ones?
You can't get a 120 GB hard drive replaced from Apple anymore. They give you a 160 GB one now.