News & Views

After sending out mysterious announcements to the press for a special event on February 28 (in a deliberate attempt to generate fanfare), Apple used the event to introduce an Intel-based Mac mini.
But instead of attempting to capture the living room with a beautifully small box that talks to your music and video library and serves up content to stereo and television peripherals around your house, the new mini really just improves system performance over the former model that used the IBM chip. Apple claims a 4x speed improvement, so in my opinion, plan for 2x. (The system bus has gone from 167 Mhz to 667 Mhz.) The executive summary on this product is that it is an incremental improvement, but does not represent a substantially redeveloped, or category-defining, product. So in industry terms this is a speed bump, not a groundbreaking product redesign.

Im not sure why Apple went to all that trouble to have a select group of journalists travel to Cupertino to hear about this. You do get two more USB ports, and they are now USB 2.0. Oh, and instead of a $599 and $699 model, you now have to choose between a $599 and $799 model. Oops. I guess this proves that Intel is probably deriving more benefit from having Apple as a customer than Apple is deriving from having Intel as a supplier.

Processors: The new mini may be purchased with either a single-core Intel chip ($599) or a dual-core Intel chip ($799). All minis have included built in wireless and Bluetooth since July 2005, so all that is added with this new model is support for the new Apple Remote. So for $200 difference between the top and bottom models, you get a slightly bigger hard drive, the ability to burn a DVD instead of just watch or play a DVD, and the dual-core chip which (in theory) lets the computer divide tasks between two masters, making it somewhat faster at some tasks. The mini uses Intels least desirable Core processors, and reputedly the prices on those are going to fall drastically in the next three months as faster ones come out. So that tells me that a $499 mini might be available by Christmas if they dont sell at this price. Having said all that, if you thought the previous mini was slow, I would wager that youd need to pop for the $799 model if you wanted to really see a difference.

Graphics: Apple is integrating more Intel technologies here, such as the graphics subsystem, to save space and to save cost. In the case of the mini, they are using Intels integrated GMA950 graphics with 64mb of graphics memory. According to the nerds over at extremetech.com, we can state flatly that if you buy a system using Intel's GMA950 integrated graphics and want to play 3D games, invest at least $60 in an add-on card. If what you want is simply a system that can run standard office software, plus maybe play some DVD movies, then Intel's new graphics core is probably suitable. So if you thought the new mini was going to do battle with the Xbox 360, guess again. If you thought this would be the machine that will finally let you play Roller Coaster Tycoon, you might want to keep shopping.

Predictions: I am not in the business of predictions, but the announcement of the new mini tells me that new iBooks are imminent, because if Apple can shoehorn all this technology into a mini, the iBook is not that much different of a form factor. I would therefore speculate the new iBooks will technologically be a lot more like the mini, and a lot less like the MacBook Pro, and that we should expect them before May.

Conclusion: Personally Ive always thought the mini was a Trojan Horse, because by the time you buy a souped up mini and a nice looking 19 Dell flat panel monitor (the Apple monitors are too expensive), you might as well have just bought a 17 iMac. Ive been buying all my Macs this year with 2gb of RAM, and the biggest hard disk that I can get, and I just did a sample shopping cart of the with a Mac mini completely pimped out, and it came to $1323 without a monitor. Considering that a similarly pimped out Intel iMac 17 would be $1599 and that it includes a faster Intel chip, a better graphics subsystem, and a gorgeous screen, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would buy a Mac mini. I had heard that they were flying off the shelves by people anxious to own a Mac, so maybe I just dont understand the attraction, or maybe the people buying minis already have monitors and dont do anything except type email and documents. I really could only recommend a Mac mini for the dashboard display in your car (yes, people are using them for that), or if you only have $599 to spend and have a bunch of old stuff (like a screen and keyboard) already. I had previously considered buying a mini and giving it to my in-laws so that we could share digital pictures with them, but now that Ive seen how fun the iMac and MacBook Pro are with their built-in video cameras, I do not think I would put a mini at the in-laws house anymore.