New Mini Mac & iPod Shuffle

Wow, its the first time I have been unable to get on the apple site, they must be rammed.

Shuffle = £69 for 512Mb and £99 for 1Gb

Martin

Minis are £339 and £399 (inc VAT).

Martin

I think the new iPod will be huge, I also think I shall be buying one.

Not too sure on the Mac Mini, I'm sure it will be a huge hit, and considering you get an office suite and OS X included I think it's good value, just a shame Apple don't make a reasonably priced 17" matching TFT - though as it is I'm tempted to get one for my Mum to replace her PC.

Paul

They seemed to have forgotten a tv out on the mac mini - bad move imho.

CD5/112/150/S5e's/smiling

Linn Kivor on the cheap?

The new mini is very cool. Priced at only $300 more than the cost of OSX and iLife I can see apple converting a lot of people who already have a monitor and keyboard lying around.

Now, considering the cost of even an entry level hi-fi CD player, a Mini+Squeezebox at $700- gives an attractive way to access all your CD's from the comfort of your armchair. A monitor/kb would only be needed to load up the disk. I bet the gap narrows further with the addition of an external DAC such as the 47 Labs Shigaraki or Ack!Dac.

Very interesting,

Dan

quote:

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Originally posted by Paul Hutchings:
Not too sure on the Mac Mini

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I think an entry level machine is something Apple need to hit the market with, but I don't think selling without monitor & keyboard is a great idea. Also by the time the price of a monitor is added it doesn't look good value compared to entry level PC's as £500-£600 gets you a lot of PC for your money these days.

Just think --

Fifteen years ago the NeXT cube (from the company Steve Jobs formed after he was ousted from Apple) was widely regarded as the most advanced desktop computer in the world: 25 MHz Motorola 68030 processor, 64 MB RAM (Max), UNIX-based NeXTSTEP OS, B&W graphics, Display Postscript, 250 MB Optical disk (no HD). Add in the NeXTDimension colour graphics board (Intel i860 w. 32 MB VRAM) and you had THE machine that everyone lusted after. But it would have set you back around £10 000.

Today we have a machine that has a processor 50x faster, full-colour Quartz graphics as standard, Display Postscript (OK, Display PDF), a graphics card that would leave the NeXT Dimension in the dust, 256 MB RAM minimum and has the latest iteration of the NeXTSTEP operating system on it (that's esentially what OS X is). Yours for £339. Pretty incredible when you think about it.

The only thing that hsn't improved in those fifteen years is the 32MB VRAM -- one of the biggest let-downs on this machine.

Still, it has to be said that Jobs' obsession with tininess can be grating sometimes. If this thing had been a few inches bigger all round, there would have been room for an extra DIMM slot -- that would have made taking it up to 1 Gig RAM (the comfort zone) far more cost-effective, without seriously impacting on margins. No-one seems to know yet whether the HD is a standard 3.5" or a notebook 2.5" (more expensive and slower). Just from eyeballing it, it looks like a 2.5".

Shipping without mouse and keyboard? For years people who wanted to switch have complained that Apple 'makes' them buy a mouse and keyboard with new machines (and a display with the eMAc and iMac). Now they introduce a Mac that you can simply drop into any existing system (with USB) and...

As for the value/price comparison between a £339 Mac mini sans and a £500-600 PC with a cheap 17" CRT and mouse/keyboard...I'll leave that for others to chew over.


Cheers,

Tim

Oh --

And the "Free Mac Mini / iPod Shuffle" ads are on eBay already.

quote:

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Originally posted by Tim Danaher:
As for the value/price comparison between a £339 Mac mini _sans_ and a £500-600 PC with a cheap 17" CRT and mouse/keyboard...I'll leave that for others to chew over.

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I'm not sure how relevant the argument is of course as anyone who wanted a cheap Apple would previously only have had the option of purchasing a used one so in that sense the new machine has to be a move forward.

A quick check on the Dell site throws up the following in that price bracket, as an example of what sort of PC you could get for similar cash:

Dell Dimension 3000 (specced up to from a starting price of £359):

2.66GHz processor
XP Home
Free printer
256MB RAM
80GB HDD
17" flat panel monitor
DVD/CD-RW
Keyboard & optical mouse
Microsoft works software

£558

Note that is for a machine with a flat panel, not a "cheap CRT". If you were happy with a CRT then you could have a usable complete PC (and printer in this case) for about the same price as the Mini Mac base unit.

On the BBC website talking about apple Mac's in general they say

quote:

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... it's long been regarded as something designed for those who want to see themselves as an elite.

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Tell us that ain't so Gary!!

Duncan

I have followed Gary's advice over the years and bought a iMac G5. It's very snazzy. Just need to figure out how to use it now

Dev B on the wheels of steel! You got one, well done.

Well I don't think I feel elite owning an apple, but more often then not I feel smug.

I convinced my step dad to get on board as well, and he has been a PC man all of his life. He is blown away with it. I have had to sit through various homemade DVDs of his diving trips and he has been doing photo montages to send to people (god help us)

The greatest thing he told me was being able to go to various software sites and download games , freeware and shareware with no fear of being attacked. He has also mentioned the pleasure of computing without backing up anti virus, de fragging harddrives and installing service packs every day, something apparently quite important on a PC.

So yea all in all I enjoy computing without these hardships. As MatthewR is always keen to prove, you need a PHD in computing on a PC in order not to get attacked every day.

As for Dell, well fair enough you can get legacy hardware put into a cheap plastic box for not a lot of money.

Presumably I will see you all down in Comet purchasing a CD player, I hear you can get the whole package for 36 quid....

My opinon is any PC or computer in general being sold today with a floppy disk drive on it is appealing to the nuggets who will actually buy one.

I am not an expert in computing, I consider myself advanced in photoshop and MSOffice, and very good at photo retouching etc, something I enjoy, the mac allows me to do that with no background in programming, and I would suggest to anyone considering a new computer who is fed up of the hassle of PC to consider one, lets be fair and say its the computer for muppets!

Dev if you launch iChat (In the dock)

Click on the plus button, and type in my name which is garethsnaim I can often be found surfing the chat waves talking the same crap as I do here.

"As for Dell, well fair enough you can get legacy hardware put into a cheap plastic box for not a lot of money"

Isn't that exactly what Apple are doing with this new thing though (and that's no bad thing if you ask me as many/most people don't want to pay big money for a computer)?

Steve the oldest compnent is indeed the chip, and I can't argue that but you look inside a dell there is a lot of stuff in there, this can't all be new kit can it?

One thingh apple cannot be accused of is using old stuff, macs always seem to be on the forefront of new technology, I point you to wireless, USB and firewire. Sure it may have been developed by others, but apple had all these things on desktops way before the general PC populse caught up, as indeed when apple ditched the floppy drive wayyyy back in 1998, and still today PCs with floppies why?

Someone tell me why?

I have to be honest, for someone who wants a cheap computer you can get some bloody fabulous deals from Dell.

Even with the launch of this, PCs are still the cheaper option for the "average home user".

I got a G5 iMac for home a month ago, I'd always been curious about Macs, I could afford it so I figured why not.

Basically the PC hasn't been switched on since, other than to burn some WMV files to a DVD video which you just cannot do on a Mac.

I'd say the difference is OS X - it really makes Windows, even XP, seem like an absolute piece of antiquated shit, and I don't say that lightly as it's my job to look after Windows based systems, so I'm not exactly "computer illiterate" IYSWIM.

If they relase OS X for x86, then MS will have some competition IMHO, I don't see it happening though because Apple would probably not exist without their proprietry hardware sales.

Paul

Gary

Geek warning

Have you heard of the Wessex Apple Macintosh User Groups - WAGS

User G web site
They have meetings around the region quite ueful

Derek

<< >>

quote:

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Originally posted by Paul Hutchings:
I have to be honest, for someone who wants a cheap computer you can get some bloody fabulous deals from Dell.

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What Gary doesn't appear to understand is that not everyone wants the latest technology etc. What a lot of people want is a computer to use, and they don't know or care what components it's made up of or that some of those components (or even all of them) aren't the very latest available.

At the moment £400 gets you a usable new PC, and £600 should get you something pretty decent. This latest move from Apple looks like they may actually understand that now, and if were to package up these Mini things with say a 15" TFT monitor and keyboard etc. for £500-600 (surely something retailers will be doing from day 1 anyway?) they'll be well placed to boost their market share.

It's scarier than that Steve, right now for £209+VAT you can get a brand new PC from Dell:

2.8ghz Celeron
256mb RAM
40gb HDD
CDR (CDRW is +£25)
17" CRT screen
XP Home

Now without getting into the usual PC vs Mac stuff, that's bloody cheap and will most things for most people, the exception being gamers and heavy video/photo work.

If you're going to buy a PC and are totally computer illiterate, I think you'd need a lot of convincing before spending at least twice as much once you factor in a monitor/keyboard/mouse.

I love my Mac, but it's bloody hard to justify the cost when you look at the specs on paper.

Paul

Agreed the arguing is pointless, but to counter the cheapness argument.

My dad got a PC last Christmas with a generic cheap flat screen, the quality is totally appalling, you cannot use it for any photo work, and it barely passes for a cheap DVD player.

I agree that if you are a die hard PC user then that dell seems a reasonable price, but frankly you can't get a half way decent flat screen for that price alone, so basically the base components of that system simply have to be shit.

Again I point out that you can go to Comet right now and get a full hifi system for £36 on paper the specs read just like a naim system, we all know differently.

Yesterday I finally ordered an 23 inch Apple cinema display. Can't wait...

quote:

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Originally posted by garyi:
I agree that if you are a die hard PC user then that dell seems a reasonable price, but frankly you can't get a half way decent flat screen for that price alone,

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Yes you can, it just won't be a TFT one. For most people looking for a budget computer they'd be far better getting a better specced base unit and a 17" CRT monitor - but the trendy thing at the moment seems to be to get a TFT so the rest of the spec will suffer.

I don't even think that's true any more.

When we buy Dell desktops at work for "office use" we get their budget 17" TFT, and it's fine, OK it's analog only, no USB or any trick features but the picture is very good and I've not yet had one come through with a dead pixel.

I'm not suggesting it's the last word in quality because doubtless it isn't, but for 95% of people a £199 17" Iiyama TFT is perfect.

Always makes laugh the way a lot of "mac people" don't seem able to accept that by and large Macs are bloody expensive hardware if you look at what you get for the money compared to an Intel/AMD based box, the difference is the reliability and OS X, you just have to tempt people in and hopefully that's where the Mac Mini will play a big part.

cheers,
Paul

And the build quality Paul, G5 cases etc cannot be cheap to produce.

Yes I know the apple is more expensive on spec.

A naim-Audio nap250 has 60 watts of power, on paper its crap.

The mac is built by the same company the produces the software for it, it makes sense and is (IMO) a lot nicer to use than a PC, and there fore is worth the extra money.

I am a mac houre though, I know this.