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Mon. Aug 08, 2005

The First Mini Week

I’ve had my Mac Mini for a bit over a week now, and have so far used it for the things I initially thought I would. Of course, I got my first PC nearly a decade ago expecting to use it to surf the Net and play Doom. But it quickly became a tool for much more than that. I’m sure this will also be true with the Mac.

But for now, it’s performing perfectly at the things I initially thought I would use it for: an 8GB music jukebox using iTunes, a chance to explore Mac-only software, and a browser testing platform for web development (in this area alone, it has nearly already paid for itself).

However, I’m still getting the hang of this MacSociety. Apparently the second generation of Mac Mini was not quite revolutionary enough for some people:

So, the recent revision of the Mac mini line was mos def evolutionary, not revolutionary. So we’ll have to start our own revolution, people. Get together, try and love one another, and tell us how you’d change the Mac mini.

Engadget: How would you change the Mac mini?

Following that there are currently 137 comments, with about a 1-10 signal-noise ratio. We primarily learn two things. One, the age-old Mac versus PC war has not weakened one byte, but it has evolved. It’s now Apple versus Dell (it’s good to make your flame wars as specific as possible). And, two, people would like to be able to spend $499 and get a Cray Supercomuter. With a keyboard, mouse, and LCD monitor.

People want a G5, a bigger hard drive, a GB of RAM, more this, more that. More capabilities. Essentially, they seem to want a tower system crammed into 6.5×6.5×2 inches. The reality is that the Mac Mini is meant to be a low-end entry level system. It’s meant to provide you with a low cost and quite capable system, and hook you into the Mac lineup … if you want more. In drug dealer terms, the Mini is pot, the G5 iMac is coke, and a dual processor G5 tower is heroin. If you want to really fly, well, the Mini isn’t meant for that.

It’s the same way with the $500 Dell that some in the comment thread are arguing is a better buy than the Mini. I would never dream I could buy a $500 Dell, then run Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Filezilla, Word, two browsers, and iTunes all at once on two monitors, and expect it to run for weeks without crashing or requiring a reboot. If you want that kind of performance in a PC, you need to spend about $2000 for a Dell Precision workstation loaded up on memory. If you try to get it from a $500 Dell Dimension, you’re just buying frustration.

It’s the same with the Mini. Rather than complain that a $500 machine lacks the 64 MB of VRAM, dual monitor video, and optical outputs you want for high end video editing, you need to buy a G5 tower with tons-o-memory and quit expecting Apple to make miracles. They make computers. And this one’s a helluva bargain.

But people always want more.

So how about some realistic options for the next version of the Mini? My thoughts would be to keep the lineup they’ve got, and then add a MaxMini (hey, oxymoronic branding!). Don’t alter the exterior design, simply increase the form factor perhaps 20%.

This would allow a host of improvements. You could then fit a 7200rpm 3.5 inch hard drive in it rather than the current 4200rpm 2.5 inch hard drive. This slower smaller drive appears to me to be the real Achilles Heel of the Mini. Yes, you can get an external Firewire drive, then swap your boot disk to it to get that speed increase. But by increasing the Mini’s size enough to include a 3.5 inch drive by default, you’d not only bust that speed barrier, you’d have a much lower cost hard drive (as well as larger options than 80GB), allowing improvements in other areas.

Like a slightly better video card that has dual monitor outputs (this article has already been hit hard by people Googling for a dual monitor Mini solution). One VGA and one DVI would seem ideal. More space would allow a means of accessing the interior that doesn’t involve a putty knife (I’m serious). Or at the very least, a trap door on the bottom to allow user upgrade of RAM, because even the new default of 512MB is a bit limiting. In fact, that 20% increase in form factor ought to include room for a second slot for RAM, making it even cheaper for the user to increase the performance of the machine.

And if the back panel was 20% larger than it currently is, you could probably fit 4 USB ports and two Firewire ports (maybe even Firewire 800), rather than the somewhat limiting current configuration of 2 USB and 1 Firewire. The enlarged front panel would be big enough for an eject button on a potentially tray loaded disc drive. Or at least the old paper clip emergency eject hole that the Mini currently lacks.

And I think that’s as much as you can ask for in a machine of this design intention. If you need more, you need to spend more. Personally, I’ve had not a single disappointment from this Mini. And whatever it lacks in features or hardware options, I expect them to be mostly remedied when they release a Mini with a Mac-Intel processor in the next 18 months or so.

Yes, I intentionally bought a computer with built in obsolescence. I figure when I replace it in two years, it will break down to a usage cost of $300 per year (my PC hardware cost is more like ~$700 per year of use). In my younger days, I used to spend more on beer. But judging from the comments at Engadget, people want champagne for that price.