Posted on 01/11/2005 10:49:21 AM PST by HAL9000
Premier is still available, and you wouldn't believe what else.. if you have a little scratch. Apple has been buying up high end packages and offering them at 25% of their former price to create stunning video production capabilities as a second nature for an OSX machine.
I know about a half dozen or so guys that do this sort of thing for fun and damn near all of them have better machines than mine.The dirty little secret is that many people who know nothing about PCs but have money buy really nice ones and junk them or donate them to Goodwill the first time they have some software glitch.
The maybe its you, dig was low.. and boorish. But shrug, if you haven't had to deal with this issue, this is a good thing, not bad. Boxes that have issues like this are unstable, with weird unexplained crashes and such. Its no fun to own one of them unless you know what you are getting into. Do you build alot of high end servers? Are they all windows boxen?
A scrounger can have alot of fun. Frankly, I bet the landfills are starting to see a bunch of 1Ghz systems. mmmm.. where are my rubber gloves.. :)
- The lack of even ONE PCI slot is a bit of a handicap.
- Two USB 2.0's? Well...could be better.
- Only ONE firewire? Tsk. Bad.
- The Mac mini's home page says you could plug your guitar into it - does this mean there's audio in? The copy also says that the one visible audio connector is line-out. Which way IS it?
- PC2700 RAM: ouch - I can't add any of my current stuff. And the copy says 'service provider' installation only.
- How big (physical size) is the hard drive? Easily replaceable/swappable if I want to go bigger?
---- If the RAM is a 'service install' the drive probably is too.
- Can't install my second (warehouse) drive - gotta buy a firewire enclosure.
- Ditto with my DVD+-RW 8x (using my current one is cheaper than buying a super drive from Apple).
---- Great - traffic slowdowns on my firewire.
- Gotta hoard those USB ports and 'hub' things strangely if I want to use my video digitizers.
---- Again - traffic concerns.
Maybe I'll wait and see how the unit sells - I almost bought a cube, and look where THAT ended-up... It looks like a good 'crossover' system for someone who has a compromised/microsoft box but I can't see most current Apple users migrating to it easily.
Power users probably won't bite either - it seems like it's only a faster, smaller Cube.
You could've done better Jobs - good price, but handicapped upgradeability. Again.
macmini design page on apple site
Apple gives a peek at the insides of this beastie on the above page.. its all packed in pretty tight. The difference here I think is that Apple learned alot from the Cube (one hopes) and this is more a descendant of the Titanium Powerbook than the Cube.
IIRC, Adobe dropped the Mac version because they couldn't compete against Apple's Final Cut Pro HD
Its a bit pricey at $999 for the stand alone or $1299 for the Production Suite but a lot of Hollywood types are using it to produce full length theatrical and DVD movies and TV shows.
Anyway, why would you build a server on a non-ACPI board?
Having been a systems admin for a shop with Macs and PCs I can say this. NOT ONE MAC was EVER infected with any virus.
The PCs, on the other hand, we had problems with, regardless of Trend Micro and Norton AntiVirus. Many problems, sometimes the virus would infect before either system was aware, and sometimes it took a while for a fix to come out with.
And all along our Macs and Xserve kept chugging along...
Having been a systems admin for a shop with Macs and PCs I can say this. NOT ONE MAC was EVER infected with any virus.
The PCs, on the other hand, we had problems with, regardless of Trend Micro and Norton AntiVirus. Many problems, sometimes the virus would infect before either system was aware, and sometimes it took a while for a fix to come out with.
And all along our Macs and Xserve kept chugging along...
mmm.. shows that I have been reading too many PC Catalogs..
The funny thing is that the old BIOSes allowed you to override IRQ assignments in the BIOS config, but now.. with ACPI boards they are dropping this.. I was installing an Intel Server Mobo in this instance I had a scsi controller that controlled the tape backup unit and the raid controller that ran a 600GB array and these both insisted on using the same IRQ no matter what, no matter what order until I put the scsi card into the old 32bit PCI slot rather than one of the 3 Modern X-PCI slots and then I got some separation. This meant I had to buy a new multi-port serial card because this was what I had in that short PCI slot. But, I had to do this because otherwise the first drive in the array would get kicked every time I rebooted the system. I didn't have this problem with the old MoBo because you could set the IRQ's in the BIOS.
I had an original Apple II back in my childhood. Used a tape player to load programs before upgrading to a disk drive. I used that faithful machine for about 11 years before "moving up" to a Macintosh Plus, which Apple made useless and obsolete about a month or two after I took it out of the box. I then purchased an Amiga 500 that was about 10x as powerful as that Macintosh for about a 1/3rd of the price... a few years later, it was a PC, and has been that way ever since.
My feeling is the Macintosh is way overpriced. For $499, you can get yourself a much more powerful and loaded PC that will have tons more software and will be compatible with the computers used by business associates.
In terms of the virus issue, I am sure the hackers will hit Macs if they ever start to sell in any significant numbers. I've heard of people who keep Windows 95/98 installed because no one bothers to make viruses for that version of Windows anymore.
This $499 deal looks even more pathetic now that I see the details. No mouse, no keyboard.. just a little box. Probably not much room for expansion.
Ummm... The Memory is expanadble, Blue Tooth can be added, Air Port can be added, upgradable to combo drive,... It looks just as expandable as some of the 'mini' PC systems I have seen over hte years from Dell, Compaq, and IBM..
Thanks for the ping! I went to Macworld SFO yesterday to check out the new stuff. The energy and enthusiasm around that place is unlike any trade show. The new products, especially the new Mac mini, are going to be a HUGE hit, based on the interest level I saw.
The local Apple store in town sold out of their huge inventory of the iPod shuffle very quickly. It is so light and it is one slick little device. It would be good as a second device for skiing, doing yard work, working out, or anywhere else where you might damage your iPod. At $99, it is very affordable and I can see those things selling like hotcakes.
Apple has another couple of winners!
Cheers, CC :)
Win2k handles ACPI just fine - the IRQs I enumerated yesterday were from a Win2k box. Anyway, why are you "upgrading" to a five year old mobo?
It depends on what you compare it to. Check out, for instance, a 12" Dell Inspiron 700M vs. a 12" iBook. $999 for both, similarly configured (actually, the Dell costs $50 more for a burner).
If you are going to compare PC laptops to Apples--matching feature for feature and sticking to manufacturers like Dell, IBM and Sony, the Mac laptops are competitive and *way* cooler.
The ACPI specification is available from this site..
The interesting bits are primarily downloadable PDFs.. As for upgrading.. 5 year old.. it was more like 4 but alas in the world of the golden rule.. you do what you are asked by the client if it is not on its face unreasonable. I had recommended replacing the Mobo but for other reasons, but the client reasonably responded we may as well upgrade the whole machine in that case. In retrospect, board or machine.. this would have been prudent. But, just remember, my board shuffling problems began when I won the upgrade of the machine to a "modern" Mobo, A brand new INTEL Mobo. This was because you have no control of how the Mobo will allocate IRQ's. If it doesn't do it correctly and you get a conflict, Intel support will tell you to do just exactly what I said I had to do.. shuffle the boards until you get a workable combination. Luck of the draw..
Lets not forget, this whole conversation began because I was lamenting that at this late day and age that IRQ's still matter for Intel based processors. This despite the fact, that the whole concept has been outdated for a decade. For PowerPC based machines.. duh? This just isn't a conversation.
IRQ's are a nod back to the old x86 processor days when the specification for RAM "space" allowed only 784K or such of RAM in total and devices were accessed directly by poking at distinct memory addresses. Backward compatibility has P4 architectures still using these constraints (or providing hooks to step around them) while permitting them to exist because the Win/tel solution never bit the bullet to make a clean break from the 1980's solutions.
Apple bit this bullet in 1992 with the adoption of the PowerPC processor. This transition was initially handled well, then later.. in the move to the more standard PCI bus rather than the less popular Nubus technology, Apple released the PCI based Mac's without a stable OS so for 6 months, these machines ran like crap. Apple lost half of its market share in this 6 months and have never recovered. I lost a significant portion of my Mac base during this period and by the year 2000, I was down to a single 8600 Mac in my offices, and I laughed at a guy who walked in one day offering to be my "Mac Sys Admin." That was the bottom. Ever since then, it has been uphill for Apple and the quality and utility of OSX. That guy did join my organization, despite being silly. And rebuilt my whole Mac practice that I had dropped in despair.
But, it was when he began sneaking old crappy Mac's on my programmers desks and they dropped their use of Windows and Linux boxes in favor of the slower Mac boxes that I stood up and took notice. I had the biggest PC bigot in the office (who was also my lead programmer) confront me one day about 2 months after he started playing with OS X and he forbade me buying any more Microsoft OS machines!!! He took the 3 Linux boxes and Win2K box off his desk and started using a Blue and White PowerMac until I relented and replaced the dog. Now I only have one coder using Windows.. in an office strangely full again with Macs..
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