Mac Mini mini-review

[halfadder]

I will eventually have a full review posted online. For now I have some pictures and a list of comments I will be adding to:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/mac_mini_review.html

First impressions:
FedEx delivered a BIG box about 26" x 16" x 14". Inside was a smaller box surrounded by packing peanuts. Inside the smaller box was a pair of foam inserts holding the still smaller Mac Mini box itself. I think FedEx could have dropped the box from their jet plane and the Mac Mini would have landed in my yard unharmed!

Mac Mini is *tiny* it's about the size of a small stack of CD jewel cases. It's also very queit, I can't hear it at all over the noise from the furnace down the hall. After 6 hours of use it's still cool to the touch, though the power brick is a little warm.

Video quality is amazing! With my oldschool Dell with ATI RagePro graphics, 1280 x 1024 was a little blurry on my (VGA-only) LCD monitor, but with the Mac Mini the image is razor sharp. One of my buddies asked if I was using DVI. Nope, just VGA via the included adapter.

Only 2 USB ports. I solved that with a $9 4 port hub from Staples. Still would have been nice to have more ports on the Mini itself though. Maybe I will buy a keyboard with a built-in USB hub someday.

My Microsoft optical wheel mouse worked perfectly the moment I plugged it in, the wheel works, the right button works as it should. So do the volume keys on my Logitech keyboard. I haven't yet tried the Logitech drivers to enable the rest of the buttons.

Performance has been amazing thus far, considering that I only ordered the 1.25 GHz model and only have the stock 256 MB. I was able to play streaming music from iTunes while iPhoto downloaded images from my camera while I surfed the web with Safari without any problems. The bundled applications (Quicken 2005, AppleWorks) also work great when iTunes is running, but I have not yet tried to hammer the system (ie, iMovie rendering while playing a Flash game on a website).

I will reply to any questions you may have and I'll try to write a formal review sometime tomorrow.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Awesome! You are making me jealous!! Thanks for posting this review and the pics! Many others will thank you for it too. This was very helpful!

 

[Eug]

Cool. Congrats!

Nice to hear about lack of noise.

A few words of advice, if I may:

Get at least 512 MB, and preferably 1 GB.

AppleWorks isn't a great program. Office 2004 is a bit slow, but overall it's a nice program and it's a lot more useful for cross-platform document transfers obviously.

And while the MS mouse should work fine, you can download OS X drivers for it for added functionality.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Or, if you dont want to use Office 2004, you can get iWork, which is an add on to AppleWorks. I read it makes a good competitor to MS Office.

 

[RichieZ]

more ram, i never used my ibook w/ 256 upgraded to 768 myself b4 i ever turned it on, but i hear its slow with 256

 

[Cerb]

My own mini review, since the thread hasn't become a set of flames yet .

It comes in a nice box with no nasty new electronics smell.
Power cord, power brick, CDs, basic start guide, and DVi->VGA adapter.
Negative:: Apple included a DVI->VGA adapter, but no 2xPS/2->USB adapter, which would have allowed their merketting to be accurate, about using your current parts.

Plug it in, do some basic setup, and it runs. It normally runs in a non-root context, and your user's password works as the root password (point 1 for coolness). Not as controlled as a typical *n*x environment, but that would still be able to beat 90% of spyware and virii, and also is simple enough that you don't need to explain it to non-techies.
Tada, it works. It's awful quiet, too. Doing normal tasks, even SPCR guys would call it quiet.

Video is very nice (it's on a KVM, a V3 and GF2 GTS powering the other boxes). Not noticeably blurry (1280x960 on a 21" trinitron), but not as crisp as the Voodoo 3. Gotta give Apple props, there. Even today, beating a Voodoo3 at moderate resolutions (1280x1024 or less) seems to be quite a task.

Performance-wise, I am suprised at how responsive it is, having a 5400 RPM HDD. Checking with top (point 2 for coolness: full command line at your fingertips) shows most of the RAM in use, so it may do a lot of RAM caching, as it keeps about 90% in use from starting it right up to having many apps open. I was not impressed w/ 256MB RAM, but if I can pick up a 512MB or 1GB stick and plug it in, that's not a big deal.

OS X and stuff in general:
Software is a bit of an issue. Winamp 0.71 works fine, but that's the best audio player that actually works.
Camino works great.

Get Quicksilver ASAP if you are a keyboard junky. It makes using the thing almost as easy as my Windows box (which I have a command line, using Litestep). However, it is odd to configure (it's typical FOSS...options are placed based more on how the app actually works than how it is to be used)

Finder: it is a fully featured file manager, similar to Explorer. You can browse from your home directory, mount network shares, etc. Browsing the windows network is as easy as with Xandros (one of Xandros' proprietary bits is a filesystem/browser app to make samba use transparent).
In Windows, I often use dFileman. it is a file manager that is nothing but a window with a titlebar.
Finder has this sort of thing built in. Fantastic. This is an OS X feature that's great. The little button on the top-right removes toolbars from the current window. Finder can go, with a click, from having a sidebar and toolbar, with search box, home folders, drives, etc., to just the current working directory.
Spring-loaded folders also rock. You have to use them to really get it, but they do.

NeoOfficeJ works fine (OpenOffice with the UI rebuilt for OS X). You can also get X working, and use real OpenOffice.

Changing file associations is a bit tricky.

The dock sucks. I've stated why in other threads, and it is still true. Apple should have a more useful alternative (the dock is good for advertising, but sucks for real use).

The included DVD player works wonderfully, with a far more polished and intuitive interface than PowerDVD or WinDVD. The sound quality is good enough that I didn't notice it lacking. I haven't tried it in a quiet environment, or done any close listening, but it is definitely good enough for 99% of people.

All-in-all, this a cool piece of equipment, able to do low-end server work (firewire ) and basic desktop stuff on a normal budget, primarily because you can just pop a Apple keybaord ($30), any mouse ($20--let's go with ahigh quality, cheap, logitech), and any monitor ($150 for a decent 19"), rather than Apple's "cheap" $1000 monitors, or the use of a LCD/CRT in the machine itself.

 

[halfadder]

A few additional notes:
Mac Mini comes with 10.3.7 preinstalled as well as the iLife 2004 application. The new iLife 2005 comes on a DVD and requires installation.
There are two other included discs, one is the OS Installer / Bundled Applications Installer / xCode 1.5 Installer / Bootable Hardware Diagnostics combo disc. The third disc contains Mac OS 9 support files to enable the "Classic" Mac OS virtual machine (ick).

Quicken 2005 is nice and has a million features, but a few of its windows won't let me use my scroll wheel.

Marble Blast Gold is simple but fun, reminds me of a similar game for the Dreamcast.

Nanosaur 2 looks like it could be a lot of fun and has some nice graphical effects, but I had to run it at 800x600 for best performance. Also, it wouldn't let me enable 32 bit color, only 16 bit color, so some of the textures were dithered. I have emailed the author to see if the limitation is in software, or with the Radeon 9200, or with the 32 MB of gfx RAM. Still, it plays better than any 3D game I've seen on a system with integrated shared memory graphics.

I will try UT2004 and WoW tomorrow, and perhaps America's Army once the 700+ MB download finishes!

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: Thin Lizzy
Or, if you dont want to use Office 2004, you can get iWork, which is an add on to AppleWorks. I read it makes a good competitor to MS Office.

I have Office 2004 for my PowerBook, I will try it on the Mini tomorrow. I will post the results (compare it to my PowerBook and to Office 2003 on my PCs).

iWork looks interesting, but I already have Keynote 1.0 on my PowerBook and Pages is mainly a page-layout / publishing application and is beyond my needs. Having used AppleWorks, MS Word, and others, I prefer Nisus Writer Express for word processing on the Mac. I still use Appleworks from time to time because it has a nice simple spreadsheet, a good database, and the drawing/painting functions work great for basic illustrations and diagrams. I look forward to the day when iWork is a *full replacement* to Appleworks.

In about a month I will be giving this Mini to my grandfather to replace his ancient PC. It will be a drop-in replacement once I find a cheap PS/2 -> USB adapter. (Or maybe I'll just buy him a nice new keyboard and an optical scroll mouse to replace his oldschool 3 button ball mouse). At some point in my testing / playing I will upgrade to 512 MB or more just to see how the performance differs. From what I have seen today, as long as you don't run iMovie or iDVD, you can easily live on 256 MB with good performance. At least for a basic home user.

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: Cerb
OS X and stuff in general:
Software is a bit of an issue. Winamp 0.71 works fine, but that's the best audio player that actually works.
Camino works great.

iTunes is ok, but I also like Audion

I think you have posted these before, but they're worth mentioning again...
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/
http://mbencher.ilnm.com/camino/
(The PPC 7450 version is what new G4 users need... and Camino seems to run faster than Firefox.)

Some sites I enjoy browsing for software:
http://www.macgamefiles.com/
http://www.macupdate.com/
http://versiontracker.com/
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/
http://www.apple.com/games/

 

[Eug]

Or, if you dont want to use Office 2004, you can get iWork, which is an add on to AppleWorks. I read it makes a good competitor to MS Office.

Well, iWork is good for what it is, and I use Keynote (now Keynote 2 in iWork) exclusively now for my presentations, but iWork is no substitute for Office at this point, even if Notes is in some ways nicer than Word. Plus iWorks includes no spreadsheet.

Software is a bit of an issue. Winamp 0.71 works fine, but that's the best audio player that actually works.
Camino works great.

Bah. iTunes and Safari of course. . Actually, if you like Camino, you may also want to try Firefox.

Apple included a DVI->VGA adapter, but no 2xPS/2->USB adapter, which would have allowed their merketting to be accurate, about using your current parts

I'm kinda glad they left out the PS/2 to USB adapter. I tried some old PS2 keyboards with a PS/2 to USB adapter and it was hit and miss on OS X. OTOH, PC keyboards that are natively USB usually seem to work fine.

The dock sucks. I've stated why in other threads, and it is still true. Apple should have a more useful alternative (the dock is good for advertising, but sucks for real use).

I like the dock a lot. But to each his own I guess.

P.S. Springloaded folders are nice, but I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Exposé yet. Exposé is truly awesome.

 

[Cerb]

Audion wouldn't do playlists well (files would play, but not show up in the list).
iTunes is NOT OK. It is as bloated and annoying in OS X as it is in Windows. I use FB2K in Windows, and can settle for Winamp, but iTunes is imply not acceptable. So far, Winamp 0.71 works the best, but still, won't handle FLAC. XMMS is an option, and I will try to get it working at some point (it will require X to be installed and configured).

I'll check the sites out (already been getting stuff from versiontracker ).

 

[imported_Lucifer]

iTunes works well for me!

 

[Eug]

In about a month I will be giving this Mini to my grandfather to replace his ancient PC. It will be a drop-in replacement once I find a cheap PS/2 -> USB adapter. (Or maybe I'll just buy him a nice new keyboard and an optical scroll mouse to replace his oldschool 3 button ball mouse).

Trust me, spend the $29 to get the Apple keyboard. It's good quality, and it includes a built-in 2-port USB hub.

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: Eug

The dock sucks. I've stated why in other threads, and it is still true. Apple should have a more useful alternative (the dock is good for advertising, but sucks for real use).

I like the dock a lot. But to each his own I guess.

I'm OK with the dock, but that's mostly because my first experience with a Unix machine was with a NeXTstation running NeXTSTEP. I wish the Dock was more flexible, and I think it should have been overhauled long time ago for 10.2. But I'm OK with it.

This is kind of handy, but a little bit of a kludge:
http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/XShelf/XShelf.html

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Eug

Or, if you dont want to use Office 2004, you can get iWork, which is an add on to AppleWorks. I read it makes a good competitor to MS Office.

Well, iWork is good for what it is, and I use Keynote (now Keynote 2 in iWork) exclusively now for my presentations, but iWork is no substitute for Office at this point, even if Notes is in some ways nicer than Word. Plus iWorks includes no spreadsheet.

Software is a bit of an issue. Winamp 0.71 works fine, but that's the best audio player that actually works.
Camino works great.

Bah. iTunes and Safari of course. . Actually, if you like Camino, you may also want to try Firefox.

That's why I got Camino: I'm used to FF. I may try actual FF, but Camino is good for now.

Apple included a DVI->VGA adapter, but no 2xPS/2->USB adapter, which would have allowed their merketting to be accurate, about using your current parts

I'm kinda glad they left out the PS/2 to USB adapter. I tried some old PS2 keyboards with a PS/2 to USB adapter and it was hit and miss on OS X. OTOH, PC keyboards that are natively USB usually seem to work fine.

Several adapters claim compatibility...I'd try them. The main issue is that you can't get an IBM Model M USB. The current solution was to get the Apple keyboard. However, it's spongy.

The dock sucks. I've stated why in other threads, and it is still true. Apple should have a more useful alternative (the dock is good for advertising, but sucks for real use).

I like the dock a lot. But to each his own I guess.[/quote] Identical icons look identical. Minimized window images look close enough to the same. An interface with text for each window would be superior. My disagreement with the Dock is more that there is no alternative from Apple more than it is how the dock sucks (hence why I'm not really going into it). There is no effective way to replace it that I know of.

P.S. Springloaded folders are nice, but I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Exposé yet. Exposé is truly awesome.

Expose is neat, and I did mention it in the other thread ($499 mac mini released). Setting it up to fully use the mouse made it really great. If I use the keyboard, I may as well alt-tab (yes, dammit, it's alt-tab ).

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Eug

In about a month I will be giving this Mini to my grandfather to replace his ancient PC. It will be a drop-in replacement once I find a cheap PS/2 -> USB adapter. (Or maybe I'll just buy him a nice new keyboard and an optical scroll mouse to replace his oldschool 3 button ball mouse).

Trust me, spend the $29 to get the Apple keyboard. It's good quality, and it includes a built-in 2-port USB hub.

...and a Logitech optical mouse. $18 or less shipped from newegg (depending on your preference of white/red or black/red).

 

[halfadder]

While searching for WinAmp 0.71, I ran across this neat software site:
http://mac.softpedia.com/

 

[halfadder]

Hmmmm, this looks helpful:
http://mac.softpedia.com/progS...u-Screenshot-6717.html

Although FruitMenu does basicly the same under the Apple Menu we already have:
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/fruitmenu/

 

[Eug]

ALT-TAB is fine but the cool thing about Exposé is demonstrated by Anand's video. If you're in Photoshop, Exposé tiles all the loaded photos too.

...and a Logitech optical mouse. $18 or less shipped from newegg (depending on your preference of white/red or black/red).

The local stores have the OEM Logitech optical mouse for about US$12.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

I purchased a 4 button Logitech Click! mouse from my local Wal Mart for 18 dollars. There is also the Application switcher button on the mouse which acts as the command+tab key combination. Works awesome!

 

[halfadder]

I (heart) Logitech MX300

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Eug
ALT-TAB is fine but the cool thing about Exposé is demonstrated by Anand's video. If you're in Photoshop, Exposé tiles all the loaded photos too.

I'm not saying expose isn't great, but that it is not quick and easy to use with the default keyboard shortcuts. Sure, anyone can learn them, but if your right hand is on the mouse, it is not convinient to use the right-side f-keys. However, there are three corners that are unused for anything else, making for perfect expose hotspots.

...and a Logitech optical mouse. $18 or less shipped from newegg (depending on your preference of white/red or black/red).

The local stores have the OEM Logitech optical mouse for about US$12.

I'm used to Best Buy and CC being the local stores...$12 on clearance after rebates, maybe .

 

[fuzzyuu]

Hey, what HD's came in your Mini's? I read that they were all supposed to be 4200rpm HD's.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Cerb
Audion wouldn't do playlists well (files would play, but not show up in the list).
iTunes is NOT OK. It is as bloated and annoying in OS X as it is in Windows. I use FB2K in Windows, and can settle for Winamp, but iTunes is imply not acceptable. So far, Winamp 0.71 works the best, but still, won't handle FLAC. XMMS is an option, and I will try to get it working at some point (it will require X to be installed and configured).

I'll check the sites out (already been getting stuff from versiontracker ).

Install Fink and getting xmms should be a snap.

And if you haven't tried it yet, open up a document or webpage and try the Speech functions. Sometimes it talks too much if you are listening to a messageboard page, but every now and then I get a kick out of it. You have to admit its kinda cool having your computer talk to you in the voice of the computer in War Games, or Stephen Hawking.

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: fuzzyuu
Hey, what HD's came in your Mini's? I read that they were all supposed to be 4200rpm HD's.

I ordered the base model (1.25 GHz, 256 MB, 40 GB). I'm away from home at the moment and don't have the exact model, but it's a Seagate 5400 RPM 8MB. Feels quite a bit faster than the 80GB 4200 RPM 2MB in my year-old PowerBook.