The Mac mini was announced on January 11, 2005 (Initial Ship Date: January 22*) at the annual Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, California. It is the most affordable Macintosh ever produced by Apple. Positioned clearly to appeal to the Microsoft Windows users who have shied away from the Macintosh because of the higher price — it lacks a display, mouse, and keyboard, or as Steve Jobs stated it's BYODKM (Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse).

The launch of this minimalist appearing computer was heralded by flurries of pre-Macworld rumors of a such a product from Mac rumor sites to mainstream media. It is a clear attempt by Apple to take advantage of the runaway success of the iPod and its subsequent halo effect. On a price comparison with the flagship iMac G5 the Mac mini does not stand up; it appears that the main goal of the Mac mini is not for current Mac users, but in effect a "gateway Mac"--dropping the price of the Macintosh down so that buyers will be convinced to purchase a better Mac in the future.

However, some have commented that the Mac mini harks back to the (in)famous Power Mac G4 Cube, which was praised for its style and decried for its mediocre power. The Mac mini looks, on a technical level, to be little more than a souped-up PowerBook, and perhaps could be interpreted as a reborn iMac G4. However, with the Mac mini, the price is clearly not as outrageous as the Cube's was at a power per price comparison. It remains to be seen if the Mac mini will help woo more people over to Apple — Mac OS X — Apple's market-share has sunk to a rather low 2%.


First and Second Generation* Specifications

  • CPU: 1.25 GHz (Models M9686LL/A and M9686LL/B)/1.42 GHz (Models M9687LL/A and M9687LL/B) G4
  • Memory: 256 MB PC3200U-30330 (the "A" model) or 512 MB PC3200U-30330 (the "B" model) DDR SDRAM, expandable to 1 GB in either the first or second generation models
  • Graphics: ATI Radeon 9200 -- 32 MB DDR SDRAM; AGP 4x
  • Hard Drive: Seagate 40 GB (default on 1.25 GHz model)/80 GB Ultra ATA/100 (default on 1.42 GHz model)
  • Optical Drive: MatshitaCD slot-loading combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW), upgradable to a SuperDrive (DVD-RW/CD-RW) on either model
  • Ports: One FireWire 400 port; Two Apple USB 2.0 ports; DVI display output; VGA output too (via an included DVI-to-D-Sub adapter)
  • Connectivity: Unspecified brand of built-in 10/100BASE-T ethernet adapter and a Motorola SM56K V.92 modem. AirPort Extreme optional; a Bluetooth internal module is also optional
  • Audio: Headphone/audio line out (unspecified brand of sound card); PC speaker

  • Dimensions & Weight:
    • Height: 2 inches (5.08 cm)
    • Width: 6.5 inches (16.51 cm)
    • Depth: 6.5 inches (16.51 cm)
    • Weight: 2.9 pounds (1.32 kg)

* As of 2006, six additional Mac mini models have been introduced, with 6th and 7th generation models utilizing Intel duo core processors.


References

  • http://www.apple.com/macmini/
  • The Mac Mini does indeed seem to be a "gateway Mac" aimed at PC users who've really dug their iPods but who haven't made the jump to the Mac platform yet because of the largely-psychological cost barrier. The base-model Mini is, after all, only $100 more than a high-end iPod.

    Speaking as a person who does mainly PC tech support for a a school the size of a small city, I believe the Mini has the chance to do very well for Apple. Spyware and viruses are a real plague for PC users. I've had many, many calls from frustrated students and faculty who've caught one of the variants of the CoolWebSearch trojan that must be removed by the hard-for-novices HijackThis ... or worse, can't be removed at all.

    Macs don't have any spyware or virus problems to speak of right now. That alone should be a huge selling point to non-geeks who need a computer that simply works and for which the Web isn't a minefield of hidden dangers. And Mini sales could triple or quadruple Apple's market share before your average money-grubbing spyware hack will believe that the plaform is worth coding malware for.

    A Mini with a copy of Virtual PC can do most anything your average student or faculty member needs to do on his or her computer. Virtual PC on a Mac has the advantage of acting like Petri dish -- if something in it goes horribly, horribly wrong, you just dump it and start over, without having to lose a lot of time or data.

    But the Minis are highly attractive to existing Mac users who have been seeking a small portable, so it's not merely a gateway for the PC folks.

    If you've been a computer user for any length of time, you've already got extra mice and keyboards and monitors lying around. The Mini weighs two pounds less than the smallest iBook, fits neatly into many carry bags made for external CD burners, and costs several hundred less than the least expensive iBook.

    And the new Mini costs less than many used Macs that have a fraction of the hard drive space and processing power. Used 600MHz iBooks with 20GB hard drives and half the RAM sell for $499 at many stores -- the same price as the 1.25GHz Mini model. On Ebay, you will be hard-pressed to win a 4-year-old firewire clamshell iBook for less than $350 after you factor in shipping and fees.

    So if you wanted a portable with firewire (dead handy if you want to boot it in target mode to easily transfer files between computers), why not spring the extra $150 for a brand new computer with a warranty?

    If you add in a $20-$50 USB-compatible KVM switch from your local computer store, you don't even need an extra monitor; you can run the mini on your existing monitor at home, and then take it to work with you to do the same thing.

    The petite size of the Mini makes it ideal as a media server to hook up to your TV and stereo system. You can easily dock it to most any existing system with a DVI-to-video adapter to serve up music and movies, surf the web, and play World of Warcraft.

    If you wanted to lie on the couch and remote-control your Mini along with your TV and stereo, you don't even have to spring for Apple-installed Bluetooth. MacAlly's KeyPoint is a small wireless remote you can plug into your Mini's USB port and has programmable buttons you can use to control iTunes and the Mac's DVD player.

    And, as SharQ pointed out to me, many people who are seeking to customize their automobiles have noticed that the Mac Mini is approximately the same size as the ISO car stereo. With the proper cooling and cabling combined with a small LCD, the Mini could provide an instant in-car computer.

    So, yeah. The little 6-by-6 computer has a lot of potential. Does it have downsides? Certainly. The Mini's innards are advertized as being not user-servicable, not even the RAM. However, if you've got steady hands and a clean putty knife, it's a fairly simple procedure to get the mini's cover off. The Mini's hard drive is too darned slow for pro and semi-pro videographers yearning for a portable to take with them on shoots. There's heated debate over whether or not the Minis' graphics cards are powerful enough to run Tiger, the future incarnation of MacOS (presumably, it will run Tiger fine; tweaking Tiger might account for its delay in getting to market). And even the fastest model of the first-generation Minis won't be able to run DOOM 3 when it's released for OSX soon.

    In mid-2010 Apple released a different version of their little plastic block of computing goodness known as the Mac Mini. The newer iteration switched over to a hefty chunk of machined aluminum and actually made it possible to easily upgrade some parts. After Hell thawed out it was a popular little computer for folks who were interested in seeing what all of this Macintosh stuff was about.

    The machined aluminium body was what Apple called a Unibody. Around three pounds, the unit is a 7.7 inch square and 1.4 inches tall. The bottom of the computer had a large round plastic disk that folks could rotate a few degrees and remove to see the innards. Right on top (assuming you opened the disk and the computer was upside down on your bench), on the right-hand side you can see 2 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (PC3-8500) memory, in the form of two 1 GB RAM units. The Unibody Mac Mini could be updated to 8 GB of memory or, if you flashed the unit, you could even get to 16 GB of technically unsupported memory.

    The CPU was a non-upgradable 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (P8600) processor soldered to the logic board. The graphics were supplied by an on-board, non-upgradable NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256 MB of shared memory. The only thing on the front of the unit is a slot for the 8X dual-layer SuperDrive.

    The back of the computer had plenty of ports, including an HDMI and a Mini DisplayPort, a Firewire port, four USB 2.0 ports, audio line in and audio line out/headphone minijacks, a 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet port, built-in AirPort Extreme (802.11a/b/g/n), a Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and an SD card slot. The power button is also located on the rear of the unit.

    The model is A1347, MC270LL/A, Macmini4,1 for those who like to delve into the arcane details. The original sales price was $699, a bargain for anything that had "Apple" in the pedigree

    These days the Mac Mini is terribly underpowered but they can allow folks to have a Mac without breaking the bank. You can pick up these older units on Ebay for $100, upgrade the RAM to 8GB for $31, and replace the original 320 GB 5400-rpm SATA 2.5-inch form factor drive with a much faster SSD unit for $50. It's a bit more involved but replacing the drive is easy. Just make sure you reconnect the little temperature sensors on the drive so your Mac cooling fan doesn't run full-blast all the time.

    Why bother, you ask? There are some folks who like the Mac for its Unix-based operating system, and the mid-2010 supports up to OSX 10.13.6 with no issues. You can push it further but the tradeoff is lots of hardware/software compatibility problems.

    I just found I had one of these units in a box in storage, so I updated the hard drive and the RAM. I need a Mac because I have some software that only works on Apple products. In this case it's Vellum, which I use to generate eBooks. I do have a Macbook Air but I use that just for writing novels and stories. Now I have a dedicated machine that I can use to work on the book production side and I don't have to worry about someone stealing it at a convention. Also, it saves the landfill from some nasty compounds that would leech out if I tossed the unit.

    If you sell ebooks or upload podcasts to the Apple store having a Mac makes things much easier.

    FeXII

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