Apple Store is up now. Update mini and air

[runawayprisoner]

The base mini only has 2 gig of ram? Is that even enough to run OSX smoothly?

Apparently yes if you have enough processing power, and if you're only running OSX.

 

[lokiju]

Why can't there be a mini option with quad core and AMD video card?

 

[BD2003]

Why can't there be a mini option with quad core and AMD video card?

I have to imagine thermal limitations.

 

[BD2003]

Looks like I'm buying the stock mini tomorrow. And of course upgrading to 8GB of ram immediately....I cant believe how cheap memory is nowadays and theyre putting in only 2gb?

I was hoping they'd drop the optical drive, since its basically going to be completely vestigal for my usage, and was pleasantly surprised to see that they not only dropped the drive but also the price.

I was hoping for a more reasonably priced quad core and SSD option, but it looks like that'll have to wait another generation or two. I've gotten accustomed to the SSD in my rig for the past 2 years or so. My only real gripe is that upgrading the drive in the new minis appear to be far more difficult than it should be. At least the memory isnt soldered to the board.

As much as I'd like a more "proper" mac desktop that isnt bolted on to the back of a monitor, I have to say it's quite impressive what they squeeze into that little box. I'm not blown away by the specs or the value, but I've long since given up on PC gaming, and the hackintosh thing is just getting to be a little too much to deal with.

I figure it's time to move on to a reasonably powerful, and not to mention easily re-sellable little box.

 

[ViRGE]

I have to imagine thermal limitations.

Bingo. The dual-core Minis are using 35W CPUs. Intel's quad-core CPUs start at 45W. So that's an extra 10W of heat that has to be dealt with; given the compact design I doubt they could take care of that on top of a dGPU.

 

[Kaido]

Too bad they took the DVD drive out of the Mini. Kind of kills it as an HTPC in my opinion, unless everything you've got is already ripped. Apple really needs to jump on the Blu-ray train.

Eh, Plex doesn't have integrated DVD playback anyway (if that's your HTPC software, that is) - it launches the Apple DVD Player app separately for discs. And the new Bluray player for Mac isn't integrated either:

http://www.macblurayplayer.com/

Which is a shame, really, with everything that Plex has to offer - adding disc playback would make it *perfect*.

I almost want a Mac Mini with an integrated SSD a la the Macbook Air - almost a disposable machine, you know?

 

[AnthroAndStargate]

Do y'all think the i7 1.8 is worth it over the i5 1.7?

 

[Eug]

The base mini only has 2 gig of ram? Is that even enough to run OSX smoothly?

I think it's foolish to get a Mac with only 2 GB in 2011 unless it's just for an HTPC or something or unless you plan on upgrading it immediately.

BTW, I have a 2 GB MacBook Pro. I hadn't upgraded it because I was thinking of just buying a whole new machine, but it turns out this MacBook Air isn't what I wanted so maybe I'll just keep the MacBook Pro longer.

Do y'all think the i7 1.8 is worth it over the i5 1.7?

No, for most people. But then again, it's only $100.

 

[BD2003]

I don't think lion would run poorly with "only" 2gb of ram. That's still a pretty hefty amount if all you have is a web browser and a few basic programs open.

OTOH, with these slow ass 5400rpm 2.5 drives in the mini and notebooks, anything you can do to increase the size of the disk cache to speed loading of apps is going to be worthwhile. And with a 4gb ddr3 sodimm running $25 shipped online, you'd be crazy not to max it out.

I was hoping that at the bare minimum they'd at least moved on to some sort of hybrid drive at this point At least solder a few gb of NAND onto every mainboard. Solid state really does make a massive difference in terms of how fast a PC feels.

In a generation or two, intel will probably have their chips being full SoCs, with much faster graphics, so all that will be needed is a single chip. Optical drives are already dead, SSD will be standard very soon. We'll basically be able to fit a full powered desktop in our pocket at that point, where's it's size is more determined by the external ports than the hardware. Crazy.

 

[CptObvious]

I was seriously considering the base Mini, but even with the $100 price drop there's a pretty hefty premium for the small form factor and OS X. Add 4GB RAM, Apple wireless keyboard and mouse and it's $775+.

I decided to buy...a Dell for my next computer. I got an XPS 8300 with i7-2600 for $730 (~$600 after I cancel the extended warranty). I'll miss OS X and a couple programs (Keynote, Garageband) but I think the difference in performance is too large to ignore.

 

[BD2003]

I was seriously considering the base Mini, but even with the $100 price drop there's a pretty hefty premium for the small form factor and OS X. Add 4GB RAM, Apple wireless keyboard and mouse and it's $775+.

I decided to buy...a Dell for my next computer. I got an XPS 8300 with i7-2600 for $730 (~$600 after I cancel the extended warranty). I'll miss OS X and a couple programs (Keynote, Garageband) but I think the difference in performance is too large to ignore.

Yeah, it's definitely not the leader in value, but it's not terrible either. I am willing to pay the premium for OS X, and the performance should be enough. For my own personal usage I can't think of enough scenarios that I'll require more than a speedy dual core, and I know that's true for a lot of people nowadays.

I was considering an older Mac mini, but the resale value is so high that it's not worth buying used. And that's a huge factor in my decision - 2 years from now that mini will still be worth something, but it's much more difficult to sell and you get far less for your average PC.

 

[Eug]

I don't think lion would run poorly with "only" 2gb of ram. That's still a pretty hefty amount if all you have is a web browser and a few basic programs open.

That's why I said it'd be fine for an HTPC or something. However, if you have multiple browsers with multiple tabs (esp. since browsers tend to be memory hogs), MS Office, and a couple of other things opened up, 2 GB becomes a limitation. 4 MB is fine unless you have heavy duty needs. As you said with RAM as cheap as it is there is no point in limiting yourself here.

 

[mugs]

At least it's not like the old Mini where you had to pop it open with a putty knife and disconnect a ton of crap to get to the memory. After doing that once I never want to do it again. Especially because I left my sound card disconnected the first time I closed the case. Some of those internal connectors are ridiculously small and delicate.

 

[BD2003]

At least it's not like the old Mini where you had to pop it open with a putty knife and disconnect a ton of crap to get to the memory. After doing that once I never want to do it again. Especially because I left my sound card disconnected the first time I closed the case. Some of those internal connectors are ridiculously small and delicate.

Yeah, if I had to do that to upgrade the memory it would basically be a deal breaker.

Even though I find that specs matter less and less these days, they still do matter. I still would trade the size for better specs and flexibility. But I'm just not willing to go back to windows at this point in time, not willing to deal with hackintosh issues anymore, and not replacing my monitor with an iMac until they give me a reason like high dpi.

It's unfortunate that the choices are so limited, but the times are changing.

 

[runawayprisoner]

That's why I said it'd be fine for an HTPC or something. However, if you have multiple browsers with multiple tabs (esp. since browsers tend to be memory hogs), MS Office, and a couple of other things opened up, 2 GB becomes a limitation. 4 MB is fine unless you have heavy duty needs. As you said with RAM as cheap as it is there is no point in limiting yourself here.

2GB becomes a limitation only if your disc drive isn't fast enough to catch up from my experience.

I have a 2.66GHz Macbook Pro 13" 2010 model with 8GB of RAM, and it doesn't feel as fast as the 1.86GHz Macbook Air 13" 2010 model that I just got. In almost everything.

Doing simple tasks on both machines actually feels more responsive on the Macbook Air. It's almost like many applications are still written with light RAM usage but heavy disc usage in mind.

 

[Aikouka]

The only unfortunate thing is how OSX Lion still doesn't support TRIM on "non-Apple" SSDs. :| Well, at least that's what Anand tweeted earlier.

 

[AnthroAndStargate]

I think it's foolish to get a Mac with only 2 GB in 2011 unless it's just for an HTPC or something or unless you plan on upgrading it immediately.

BTW, I have a 2 GB MacBook Pro. I hadn't upgraded it because I was thinking of just buying a whole new machine, but it turns out this MacBook Air isn't what I wanted so maybe I'll just keep the MacBook Pro longer.


No, for most people. But then again, it's only $100.

Dang I just realized, you can't get the 15" with the 150GB SSD and upgrade to i8. You have to pay 300 dollars extra for the 250 then another 100 to upgrade. Yet you can get the cheaper 11" and not upgrade the SSD but upgrade to i8. How does that make any sense?

 

[TheStu]

Dang I just realized, you can't get the 15" with the 150GB SSD and upgrade to i8. You have to pay 300 dollars extra for the 250 then another 100 to upgrade. Yet you can get the cheaper 11" and not upgrade the SSD but upgrade to i8. How does that make any sense?

Do you mean 13", 256GB, and i7?

 

[Eug]

Dang I just realized, you can't get the 15" with the 150GB SSD and upgrade to i8. You have to pay 300 dollars extra for the 250 then another 100 to upgrade. Yet you can get the cheaper 11" and not upgrade the SSD but upgrade to i8. How does that make any sense?

Assuming TheStu is correct about what you mean... That's normal for Apple, for the upsell.

Usually I just wait longer until the stuff I want trickles down into the lower priced machines - a year or so later.

2GB becomes a limitation only if your disc drive isn't fast enough to catch up from my experience.

It's true that an SSD is way faster than a hard drive, which makes things seem much snappier. However, 2 GB is still not ideal. If you're gonna spend that kind of coin on a machine, you really should get it with at least 4 GB. Luckily these days it's relatively cheap to do so, with 3rd party RAM.

 

[BD2003]

So picked up one of the stock low end mini's today. Overall a nice piece of a kit, but completely forget what I said about it running fine with 2GB of ram. It's running at near full memory capacity as soon as you open a few apps. Not completely unusable, but far, far from optimal. My newegg memory can't come a day too soon.

 

[silverpig]

So picked up one of the stock low end mini's today. Overall a nice piece of a kit, but completely forget what I said about it running fine with 2GB of ram. It's running at near full memory capacity as soon as you open a few apps. Not completely unusable, but far, far from optimal. My newegg memory can't come a day too soon.

Uh, you WANT it to use all the RAM possible. That being said, 2GB isn't much nowadays, but considering that I'll likely just use it as a plex box, it should be fine. It should also do fine for the "browsing + email" crowd.

I always used to laugh at those people with the RAM cleaner programs

 

[BD2003]

Uh, you WANT it to use all the RAM possible. That being said, 2GB isn't much nowadays, but considering that I'll likely just use it as a plex box, it should be fine. It should also do fine for the "browsing + email" crowd.

I always used to laugh at those people with the RAM cleaner programs

I understand that free memory is wasted memory. What I'm saying is that it hits near max with nearly zero effort. I thought it would be a decent amount to breathe, but youre swapping to disc before you hardly get a chance to open a few programs. As far as I know OS X doesnt have any sort of superfetch-like preloading like windows, so it's just a really heavy weight OS.

Dont get me wrong, everything is running fine with 2GB, but I dont like the idea of a brand new, relatively expensive computer being forced to constantly swap to disc when doubling the memory would add $10 to the cost.

 

[manly]

Do you mean 13", 256GB, and i7?

what's a few numbers between friends?

I understand that free memory is wasted memory. What I'm saying is that it hits near max with nearly zero effort. I thought it would be a decent amount to breathe, but youre swapping to disc before you hardly get a chance to open a few programs. As far as I know OS X doesnt have any sort of superfetch-like preloading like windows, so it's just a really heavy weight OS.

Dont get me wrong, everything is running fine with 2GB, but I dont like the idea of a brand new, relatively expensive computer being forced to constantly swap to disc when doubling the memory would add $10 to the cost.

If Lion is indeed "heavier", that doesn't bode well for my older Mac capped at 3GB RAM.

Where can I get 2x2GB for $10, please?

 

[lokiju]

Posting from my 13" base and have to say I'm very happy with it. Only extra I bought was the USB ethernet adapter for $30 so I could transfer large amounts of files much faster and also use it in my office at work if I want since we don't allow wifi.

 

[SAWYER]

lol, specs whores

my older minis with an intel 1.8 2 gigs ram and an intel 2 ghz 2 gigs ram ram sl just fine