Does anyone have a mac mini?

[zed]

Im thinking of going over to the dark side. I do have an old mac here os 10.5 (which I hate)

see here
http://dicksmith.co.nz/computers/apple-computers
the mac mini looks the best, is it?
now I have a couple of questions,
A/ can I run two or more monitors off this?
B/ how improved is OS 10.7? eg has the maximum window been fixed, right click implemented fully (no click with the mac key) etc

cheers zed

 

[pcchen]

Newer (at least the latest ones) Mac minis support dual display.
Also MacOS X always supports right mouse button. You just have to enable it in the control panel (and also have a two button mouse, of course).
Note that MacOS X 10.7 needs more memory than 10.6 so I recommend at least 4GB RAM (8GB preferred for serious works).

 

[zed]

OK cheers mate, dual displays are a must have.
my complaint with rightmouse buttons is with lots of programs it doesnt seem to be implemented was well as it is in win/linux.
Ill prolly be OK with 2GB as Im only really gonna use it for programming/surfing etc. I dont play games

$950 aint too bad a price, similar to what a PC of similar specs would be I think.
CPU seems to be 2960 ON PASSMARK, MY CURRENT CPU SCORE 1300 so should be a bit quicker, not to mention quieter, I assume due to the small size it doesnt have many fans

 

[pcchen]

Ill prolly be OK with 2GB as Im only really gonna use it for programming/surfing etc. I dont play games

If you want to use Xcode 4 you'll want to have at least 4GB memory. I use my Mac mini mainly for surfing and programming with Xcode, after upgrading to Lion and Xcode 4, it started to swap like hell (my habit of opening multiple tabs in Firefox probably "helps" a lot though...) so I decided to upgrade its memory to 8GB. Now I always have around 2 ~ 3GB available memory so it rarely swaps.

Fortunately, it's much easier to upgrade a new Mac mini's memory (I have to bring my old one to an Apple store for upgrading and it's expensive), so if you are not satisfied with 2GB memory you can still upgrade by yourself later as DRAM are dirt cheap these days

 

[zed]

OK cheers mate, I think I'll grab one sometime in the next week (I see none in stock ATM though)
yes firefox is a memory hog (~3x the memory compared to chrome to open pages, do javascript etc) IIRC the guys behind FF are trying to rectify this now

 

[zed]

10% off apples this weekend has forced my hand.
A sign of how the times have changed, the price is roughly the same as what an equiviant windows PC costs, the days of the apple tax are gone. Not to mention in a couple of years with the new OS it'll only cost $50 to buy the new version of the OS

 

[Arwin]

Not here, and/or not by my definition of equivalent.

 

[MfA]

This is not an Apple forum, I don't really mind if you people lie to yourselves ... but let's not try to spread the insanity. 850$ is a fuckton of money for the hardware, you're paying for the design ... which is fine, but just be honest about it.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

10% off apples this weekend has forced my hand.
A sign of how the times have changed, the price is roughly the same as what an equiviant windows PC costs, the days of the apple tax are gone. Not to mention in a couple of years with the new OS it'll only cost $50 to buy the new version of the OS

Uhhh so 800 euro's for a 2.5ghz dualcore, 4gb ram, a slow as crap 500gb hdd and a slow gfx card is the same as a i7 3.2ghz, mainboard, 16gb ram, radeon 6870 and a 1tb disk, case & psu for a little over 800 euro's? You are paying more than DOUBLE than what the hardware in that mini mac is really worth.

 

[zed]

its actually 491 euros at todays exchange rate. (im in nz)
yes I know you can buy hardware cheaper
but you also gotta have a OS, now windows is very expensive (as we hear all the time its often the most expensive component in a PC).

in a couple of years time if I go to a shop and buy the latest version of the the mac OS or the latest version of windows, windows is going to cost me ~4 x the price of the mac OS (part of the reason why the most common windows OS is XP from 10 years ago! which is shocking, Ive ranted about this before so wont go into this again)

hey Im not a fan of apple, in fact I think their OS's are crap (well I havent tried 10.6 or 10.7 so maybe theyve improved dramatically)
I'ld prefer having a windows/linux PC but its time to join the crowd & to jump into ipad/phone development. So watch out guys , Im perhaps the fastest programmer on the planet, havent really used C next (or whatever it is) but I should have my first game done in a month

Anyways, just placed my order so I'll get it sometime next week. I actually went to the shop today (prolly the largest PC chain in NZ, 75+ stores) to see if they can order it (& I'll pick it up there next week) but they've changed their methods about a month ago, now apples can only be sold at only the 3 main stores, auckland, chch, wellington. Apparently it didnt look good for the apple brand letting it being sold in smaller centers. WTF

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Uhn no.

1. If you build your own pc you can get a OEM windows. Costs? 99 euro's. Probably less if you order online. If you are a student you can get windows for something like 60 euro's.
2. You can hardly call windows expensive when you get free support and service packs for a decade. Yes a totally new version of windows is more expensive that the osx updates but you get a totally new product for that and a decade of free updates. Besides, as said above at 100 euro's its not really expensive plus you could always get a upgrade version which will cost even less.
3. The reason most pc's have XP is because the average user doesn't give a crap about upgrading their OS. Why would they if XP is working fine for them?

 

[Florin]

I have a 2009 model with a Core2 Duo and an Nvidia 9400, and I'm still well happy with it. Would definitely purchase again. These things are simply reliable and unobtrusive. Memory prices being what they are, I recently popped 8GB in there and it remains entirely relevant for almost all purposes - aside from only the lightest of gaming.

To all the haters, I would encourage you to try and build something similar out of mini-ITX and laptop components, spend around the same amount of money, and end up with something that doesn't suck. Other big brand and global warranty compact PCs are quite comparable in price, but you could always try and save a bit of money by buying the likes of Acer, or going full size. Either way, it's hardly the same, and of course still won't run OSX legally nor painlessly.

And with VMware Fusion costing about half of Workstation for a comparable feature set, you'll have some spare cash for that Windows license, so you can easily use those apps at the same time in Unity mode too.

 

[hoho]

its actually 491 euros at todays exchange rate. (im in nz)

Are these prices with or without taxes? I know in US the online stuff is listed without taxes.

To all the haters, I would encourage you to try and build something similar out of mini-ITX and laptop components, spend around the same amount of money, and end up with something that doesn't suck

Why would I want to build myself a computer inside that little case? I don't live in a box, I don't have problems with space and I kind of like to have a TON of HDD space directly on my PC, not somewhere on LAN with horrible latency and throughput

 

[pcchen]

Why would I want to build myself a computer inside that little case? I don't live in a box, I don't have problems with space and I kind of like to have a TON of HDD space directly on my PC, not somewhere on LAN with horrible latency and throughput

But it'd be unfair to compare two completely different computers, no? I mean, if someone said, some certain notebook is cheap! and another replies something like, but I can build a much better desktop with less money! that'd be quite pointless.

Of course, Mac mini is not a notebook, but it's very small and consumes very little power (the TDP of an entire Mac mini is 85W, less than some desktop CPU). It may not be relevant to you but it's relevant to others. To me, since I already have a big Windows box, it's actually quite nice to have another small computer which can sit on top of my Windows box so I can use two computers at the same time.

 

[zed]

Are these prices with or without taxes? I know in US the online stuff is listed without taxes.

thats how much I paid (including GST) I paid NZ dollars converted to euros

TOTAL $854.10
(paid by Credit Card)
GST on order $111.40

so NZ $742.70 without tax = 427.17euros

at the same shop I got the mac from (so NZ dollars)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade $249 cheapest way to buy win7
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium $389 cheapest non upgrade version of win7

compare this to the standard price of macOS lion here in NZ
NZ$38.99 including GST

so we are talking about 10x more expensive in an apple to apple comparison ('cuse the pun)

@tongue_of_colicab uhh yes
1. Worldwide Prices for OS X Lion = Netherlands €23.99
also point #2 is not very good
3. Im pretty sure a lot more would upgrade if win7 cost €23.99, win8 comes out within the next 2 years, I guarantee if it was €23.99 most ppl here would be grabbing it day one

yes pcchen is correct the thing with a mac is you know youre gonna get a semi-decent constructed PC i.e. compare it to a dell or sony or something.
Sure youre still paying a price premium, what Im saying is unlike say a decade ago when apples were like ~twice the price of comparable PCs, nowadays the prices are pretty similar.

FWIW this is the first time Ive brought a PC since the 1980s (amiga 500) Ive always put my own together

 

[RedVi]

at the same shop I got the mac from (so NZ dollars)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade $249 cheapest way to buy win7
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium $389 cheapest non upgrade version of win7

compare this to the standard price of macOS lion here in NZ
NZ$38.99 including GST

Nobody in the know buys retail Windows. OEM shouldn't be much more than $100NZ, you can even buy it online (DL) without a hardware purchase.

Mac Mini's are pretty well priced though. For that size format and power use the price is very reasonable. You can get smaller ITX based PC's though, but I can't really see the draw of going any smaller myself.

 

[zed]

you can even buy it online (DL) without a hardware purchase.

can you give me a link to this?, cheers

but I can't really see the draw of going any smaller myself.

* small so its portable, its 1.2 kg 20cmx20cmx3.5cm so smaller than a laptop, I may take mine up during xmas to show my family some stuff (brothers a graphic designer) but admittedly this is minor point since I dont intend to do this often.
* 84W power supply, so less power bills
* quiet (I assume) this is prolly the best feature for me (my current gpu has no fan). Ill chuck it inside an existing PC case it should be silent then (hopefully it doesnt overheat)

but for me, size isnt so important at all, Im a bit worried about where it saiz operating temp up to 35degrees, it was 30degrees 3 days ago in my room, and its only the middle of spring [gulp]

 

[zed]

in yesterdays new york post
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/apples-lower-prices-are-all-part-of-the-plan.html?_r=1

Something unexpected has happened at Apple, once known as the tech industry’s high-price leader. Over the last several years it began beating rivals on price.

this is what Im getting at, theres been a definite change in their pricing from 5+ years ago.
If it was a decade ago the mac min which I paid $850 would prolly of cost me $1500.

whilst not the major reason (which is most likely iphone,ipad ruboffness?)
I think this is part of the reason sales of mac's are growing at ~25% per year vs other PCs ~2.5%
If it was $1500 I wouldnt of brought it.

 

[MfA]

Why did the guy writing that article not just compare prices for the same provider actually selling the iPhone 4s for the Galaxy S2? Just look at the simlock free prices in Europe, much easier to see what the real prices are (hint, the iPhone 4s is more expensive). The article is disingenuous bullshit.

PS. which is not to say that in certain segments of desktop hardware Apple hasn't matched prices, it's a shame they only do niches ... they have bugger all in the price/performance sweetspot for gamers.

 

[zed]

but do gamers buy apples?

On windows Im still using winXP!, its not that I dont want to use win7 but at $250+ to get it, I cant justify it. yes I could pirate it but I dont want tot do that.
If it was the same price as other software i.e. <~$100 (they'ld still make billions profit) I'ld get win7/8 in a heartbeat. Im pretty sure theres a large percentage of population that feel similar.
Like I said look at winXP still having the largest windows marketshare after 10 years, vs how it happens with apple, new OS comes out, bang within prolly a couple of months its the most used macOS version. At less than 50 bucks why wouldnt you?
Surely having the users running the latest version of your OS would benefit MS, it certainly would benefit developers. Theyre too focused on maximum returns but in doing so whats happened is apple has overtaken them even in this field.