Introduction
The Mac Mini is, at once, a radical change in direction for Apple Computer Inc. and the quintessential Macintosh.
More than two decades ago, the original designers of the Macintosh envisioned a $500 appliance computer that exemplified simplicity. The Mac Mini is just that, at exactly that price. Mac OS X has lost some of the software elegance and consistency of the original system, but the Mac Mini is still the finest example of those principles on the market today.
As the lowest-cost personal computer ever sold by Apple, the Mini also represents a big change in Apple's business model. We discussed this concept at length two years ago in our iCheap pages, and it was the core of a raging debate back in 1997 over the termination of Mac OS licensing.
When Steve Jobs killed licensing, it propped up Apple's profitability, but Mac OS market share slid into decline. The first iMac - a wildly-successful, modestly-priced appliance computer for the Internet age - helped save the company.
Now we have a new Apple appliance for a new decade of personal computing, one of declining costs and margins symbolized by IBM's sale of its PC business to China. The Mac Mini, built in Taiwan to Apple's specifications, has the potential to boost Apple's business again, just as the iMac did in the 1990's. The market (and Apple's future development of the Mini) will decide.
The Mini, like the iMac, represents a radical re-packaging of technology, rather than the revolution in technology of the original Macintosh. Yet, this sort of repackaging can change the market dramatically, if hordes of people buy it, or if a "killer application" transforms it, the way VisiCalc transformed the Apple II and iTunes transformed music distribution.
The Package
What we have today with the Mini is simply the most accessible Mac yet. $500 is a critical price point, but that's only a third of the story. The second third is the remarkably friendly design of this computer. People don't want big, noisy, power-hungry boxes, as Apple realized after shipping the notorious "wind-tunnel" Power Macs and early Xserves. Whether you're in a home or office or server room, compact size, quiet operation and low power usage are all real benefits. And the Mac Mini excels in all those areas.
The final third? Software. Mac OS X, despite its funky Finder and a variety of other bugs and issues, is far and away the best general-purpose operating system in the world today. And it's amazingly free from the worms, viruses, spyware and malware that plagues PCs running Windows. Apple's applications, despite a few software glitches of their own, are remarkably useful, friendly and extensive, adding significant overall value.
Combine all these benefits, and the $500 Mac Mini is a great deal, with its software bundle and its 1.25GHz processor, CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, 40GB hard drive, modem and combination analog/digital video port, which can handle any number of big, beautiful monitors with 32 MBytes of dedicated video memory driven by an ATI Radeon 9200 chipset. To save money, you can also use cheap 17" and 19" CRT monitors while still getting plenty of display space. And if a monitor breaks, you don't have to give up the whole computer, as you do with an iMac or eMac.
Apple also sells a $600 Mini that's a reasonable upgrade for the money, doubling hard drive space to 80 GBytes and boosting processor speed to 1.42 GHz.
With a measly 256 MBytes of SDRAM, neither model is equipped with adequate memory for heavy work, but Apple will double the memory for an extra $75, a wise investment. (Apple itself recommends 512 MBytes for its own iWork and iLife applications and requires 512 MBytes for iMovie HD features.)
Apple's 1-GByte memory card, though, is $325 even after a price reduction, while reliable third-party vendors (such as MacInTouch sponsor Ramjet) are selling one for $250 or less.
Memory is specified as PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM. PC3200 memory also works but offers no extra benefit. The Mini's internal bus speed is 167 MHz, and there's a standard Level 2 cache of 512 KBytes on the G4 processor chip to bolster performance.
You can upgrade to a DVD-writing SuperDrive (DVD+/- R/RW) for an extra $100, a modest premium compared with Apple's pricing for some other Mac models. Boosting the hard drive from 40 to 80 GBytes is an extra $50 (which might better be allocated to a faster, larger FireWire drive).
Apple can add Bluetooth or AirPort Extreme cards at $50 and $79, respectively, or $99 for both [updated after Apple's January 25 price reduction]. The AirPort price is reasonable if you need that capability. Bluetooth can be added externally via USB at a lower price.
Notes and Impressions
The Mac Mini's packaging is beautiful, very iPod-like, but not too ecologically friendly, with plenty of the usual styrofoam and plastic wrapping involved. The computer comes packed in a cute clamshell box with a handle on top and a four-panel quick-start guide printed on the box's side.
The computer is very compact, about the size of a Seagate FireWire drive, but heavier, so it feels substantial. Clearly designed for horizontal placement, the Mini has a big rubber pad on the bottom, although an Apple note says it can be placed on the side, instead. The user's guide notes: "Don't place anything on top of your computer. Objects placed on top of the computer may keep the disc from ejecting." It also warns that objects on top can interfere with wireless operation.
You shouldn't place the computer on a carpet or anything other than a hard surface, in order to keep the vents clear. (A similar caution applies to keeping vents clear in a vertical orientation.)
There is a built-in speaker, but it's so tinny, we can't imagine anyone wanting to listen to much audio through it.
The shiny white, 85-Watt power supply has a cord about 5 feet long that reaches to the Mac Mini, ending in a plug that's uncomfortably similar to a FireWire plug. (It doesn't latch very securely, which could be an issue, if it pops out by accident.) A separate, non-standard, 3-conductor cable connects the brick to your AC outlet. A round push-button power switch is on the back of the computer near its ports.
The Mini offers a DVI video output for Apple Cinema Displays and similar monitors, plus a small, solid video adapter for plugging in a standard, D-sub analog video cable. Apple's 30" Cinema Display isn't supported, since it requires a special PCI card. An Apple DVI-to-Video adapter is an extra-cost option if you need S-video or composite video output.
DVDs comprise an iLife '05 disc; an install disc holding Apple Hardware Test, Mac OS X 10.3.7 and bundled applications; and a Mac Mini Mac OS 9 install disc. (You can't boot into Mac OS 9, though.) Applications include AppleWorks 6.2.9 and Quicken 2005. The operating system version is a non-standard 10.3.7 variation (7T21) with a Darwin 7.7.1 kernel and QuickTime 6.5.2.
The Mini is almost silent (quieter than an iMac G5 and as quiet as an iBook). We couldn't hear it at all in a room with a few other quiet computers until we put an ear to the back of the Mini.
At an ambient temperature around 70 degrees F., the Mini felt very cool to the touch, even while running processor-intensive tests. The computer draws air from the bottom and exhausts it out vents at the top of the back - we could feel a very slight, cool breeze there from its fan.
There is no Processor Performance option in Energy Saver, a welcome relief from the hassles of trying to trade performance and longevity against heat and noise with iMac G5s and laptop Macs.
Access and Expansion
Apple's iMac G5 broke new ground in accessibility and support. The new iMac is wonderfully easy to open, and the internals are all laid out for easy access. In addition, Apple created a new self-service system online to streamline problem diagnosis and repair. The Mac Mini is different.
The Mini is not designed to be opened by typical buyers, nor is it easy to open. When I searched Apple's support site, there wasn't even a support page dedicated to the Mini. (Hopefully, one will show up soon.)
Mac hackers, however, quickly disassembled the new computer with the help of an Apple QuickTime movie and tips from others. (See our Mac Mini Reader Report.) This opens up extra options - for example, you could replace Apple's 256-MByte memory card with a third-party 1GB card at a reasonable cost, or you could upgrade Apple's hard drive to something faster or bigger, if you're very adept with computer hardware.
Hacking the Mac Mini, however, is a lot trickier than it appears, and if you break the computer, Apple may decline warranty repairs. Here's what we found when we finally cracked open this Chinese puzzle to install a faster hard drive:
- The Mini is fitted together with incredible precision. To open it, you must place it upside down on a soft-covered table, then insert a very thin, flat, strong tool (such as a kitchen spatula or putty knife) into a miniscule crack between the aluminum side/top housing and the bottom/back platform.
- The tool must pry the bottom section's plastic fingers inward to release their catches on the side section, as you simultaneously pry up the bottom section away from the aluminum section. Not easy.
- Once you've disengaged the two sections, the memory card was fairly accessible in our Mini, which lacked AirPort and BlueTooth cards, and the optical drive was positioned on the top of the open computer. The hard drive, however, is buried at the bottom of a plastic unit holding storage and fan, screwed onto the motherboard, and connected by various wire harnesses taped into place.
- To actually replace the hard drive involves completely disassembling this unit, with its plethora of different-sized, difficult-to-access Phillips screws. The final hurdle is removing the fan to get access to the last screw holding the hard drive.
- If you're crazy enough to take on the challenge, special procedures could make the difference between success and disaster. Try using a muffin tin to hold the different sets of screws, with PostIt notes or something to label the sets. Make sure to have a big variety of high-quality Phillips screwdrivers with long shafts. It's all too easy to ruin the screw-heads because they don't quite fit a particular screwdriver. Taking good digital photos of each step may be critical to re-assembling the computer.
- The fan screws into place (although you might think it clipped into place).
- Re-assembling the computer can be very tricky. Assuming you get all the screws and wire harnesses and tape back in place correctly, the final reunion of the two major housings is still very challenging, with delicate metal fingers all over the place and an incredibly precise fit that will highlight your clumsiness if you make the tiniest mistake. The trick seems to be first ensuring that none of the fingers is out of place, then sliding the bottom/back housing almost vertically into the top/side housing, rather than trying to tilt it first one way and then another.
So, like the original Mac and the original iMac, the Mac Mini is very specifically designed for external upgrades, not internal ones. It offers two fast USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 400 port, Ethernet 10/100 and analog audio output via a 1/8-inch stereo jack. That should cover most applications you might have, although the Mini really needs the performance of a FireWire 800 port (apparently included in the original design specifications).
For audio input, you'll need a FireWire or USB adapter, like Griffin's $40 iMic. If you have several USB devices, which is common, you'll need a USB 2 hub, such as Kensington's 7-port Dome Hub, which supports both low-speed and high-speed USB devices.
One of the great advantages of the Mac Mini is its video support. You can buy almost any monitor you want, from dirt-cheap CRTs to huge digital displays, including Apple's 20" and 23" Cinema Displays. And if the display breaks, you don't have to give up your computer, too, a huge advantage in our book.
Performance
Performance was one of the biggest questions with the new Mac Mini. Would it be crippled somehow, to prevent "cannibalization" of Apple's more expensive models? Would there be design compromises as a consequence of its compact form?
We ran our standard series of benchmark tests on the new computer, as soon as we got one. It was a 1.25GHz model with a Combo optical drive (Matsushita "CW-8123"), configured with Apple's optional 4200-RPM, 80-GByte hard drive ("Toshiba MK8025GAS") and 512 MBytes of memory. (A MacInTouch reader subsequently provided Xbench results for a 1.42-GHz model.)
You can see the results in our Mac Performance Comparison, in which we added Mini results to previous tests of the iBook G4, eMac and iMac G5.
(You can also compare these results against additional Mac models, such as a Power Mac G4 and iBook G3, using results from our iMac G5 Performance comparison and a previous Power Mac G5 analysis.)
The good news is that the Mac Mini performed well. It's not crippled and there don't appear to be any major design flaws affecting performance. The one significant issue is disk speed.
The Mac Mini uses a 2.5-inch laptop hard drive, like an iBook or a PowerBook, and these drives are not as fast as the 3.5-inch drives used in Power Macs, iMacs and eMacs. Not surprisingly, the Mini fell behind the desktop systems in our benchmark tests, performing on par with an iBook G4 in disk performance.
This isn't terrible, because the iBook G4 isn't that bad. We've successfully recorded live, stereo 44.1KHz, 24-bit audio to a similar iBook G4 using a Digidesign Mbox and ProTools, even though the company recommends using a separate drive for recording. The performance limitation won't bother you for word processing, surfing the Web, running a mail server or name server, or any of a hundred other normal applications.
However, if you're trying to run a high-performance database application or get a big multimedia job done on deadline, you may find the internal drive a bit too slow. Also, it's limited to 80 GBytes, which isn't a whole lot nowadays.
What can you do? We tested a fast, external, 3.5-inch, 160GB Seagate hard drive with USB 2.0 and FireWire connections. This certainly offers you plenty of extra capacity, and the FireWire drive offered a small boost in performance but still lags behind desktop storage systems. USB 2.0 was about 50 percent slower than FireWire or the internal drive, making it unsuitable for all but cheap backup-type storage. It's unfortunate that the Mini lacks FireWire 800, which could have solved the disk performance problem.
There are a few 2.5-inch drives on the market that promise more performance, and we ordered the fastest one we could find, the "Travelstar 7K60", a 60GB Hitachi drive with an 8-Mbyte cache and 7200-RPM drive speed, which cost about $175 plus shipping and tax.
Miraculously surviving the challenge of swapping internal hard drives, we formatted the fast drive and cloned the contents of the original Apple drive, newly housed in a FireWire enclosure. (The Mini didn't provide enough bus power over FireWire for the external drive, so we had to use an external power supply with it.)
The "Fast 60" drive improved performance by about a third in our benchmark tests, putting disk performance on par with that of an iMac G5, although at a much lower capacity. (This improved level still lags behind a 160GB Apple/Seagate drive in the eMac, and it can't compete with a striped RAID duo in a Power Mac.) To our relief, the new drive was also quiet, like the Apple drive.
Other than the disk issue, we found Mini performance actually exceeded that of the similar eMac and iBook G4 models. The Mini seems to take advantage of a faster memory bus and graphics controller, and the 1.42-GHz model apparently offers a useful boost over the 1.25 GHz version. You probably couldn't tell the difference if you switched from one to the other, but over time, or in demanding applications, the 1.42-GHz model might save enough time to be worth a little extra money. (The 1.42-GHz model may also run a little hotter and a little louder than the almost-silent 1.25-GHz Mini, but we haven't been able to test that yet.)
Display Issues
Following the original publication of this review, MacInTouch readers identified a serious problem with the Mini's support of VGA analog monitors, in which the display would be darker and fuzzier than normal. The problem affects certain monitors and not others - we didn't see it on the analog (VGA) flat-panel monitor we used, but it can affect both CRT and LCD screens, depending on the display.
European readers noted an explanation in the German computer technology magazine, C't [translated to English here by Patrick Machielse from 2005 issue 4, page 70]:
During our measurements of the analog signal quality of the VGA adapter another weakness (besides low 3D frame rates ed.) came to light: the peak voltage measurements stayed below 530 mV and therefore outside of the VESA norm. This leads to washed-out pictures on many displays, especially when using higher resolutions. Good analog monitors with high contrast ratios can compensate for this to a large extent, but using the digital connection will lead to much better picture quality.In addition to this problems with analog video output, a number of MacInTouch readers also have reported problems with random "green dots" on digital displays, varying with the display and the resolution setting.
Comparisons/Application
We looked in detail at the differences in performance among current Mac models in our Performance Comparison page, and we won't repeat that here. But what are the implications of those differences? Who should buy a Mac Mini and who a Power Mac G5? When is the eMac better than the Mini and vice versa?
We think the Mac Mini is a perfect solution for normal home and office applications. Do you have a relative with an outdated PC who needs a new computer to surf the Web, exchange email, print digital photos and listen to iTunes? Buy a Mini.
Do you have an expanding business taking orders, handling bookkeeping and processing email? Buy a few Minis and whatever displays you can afford. If a display or a Mini breaks down, it's cheap and easy to fix or replace.
Do you have a school full of old computers with monitors and keyboards? A bunch of Minis could be the perfect upgrade. (We fully expect Apple to sells tons of Minis to the educational market.)
Are you running a webserver, a name server and an email server on a big, noisy, power-hungry computer in a crowded closet? Replace it with a Mini.
If you're doing professional video, audio or database work, you probably need a Power Mac or 15"/17" PowerBook as your main system; they are the only options for maximum disk performance (via multi-drive RAID configurations and FireWire 800 on these PowerBooks) and support for multiple monitors. For high-demand servers, an Xserve may be the answer, if you've got the money, and you'll need an Xserve or Power Mac to host multiple Ethernet ports. The Xserve is the only Mac to offer ECC (error-checking and correcting) memory, which suits mission-critical applications.
It's the middle ground where things get a little tricky. The all-in-one eMac and iMac offer a little better disk performance than the Mac Mini, and the Mini starts to approach their prices when you add on a new monitor, extra memory and some more storage in an external case. On the other hand, the bigger Macs can't be popped in a briefcase and carried to another location on a whim, as the Mini can, and you lose the whole system if one component breaks.
Conclusions
When buying a Mac, you ultimately have to analyze your own individual needs and resources (keeping an eye out for bargains as prices vary from time to time). But what Apple has given us with the Mac Mini is an elegant, useful, novel new option - a new choice at a new low price that we never ever had before.
And it's not just an extra choice, it's a great choice that's right for a wide variety of applications and needs. The Mini, as far as we can see right now, is a wonderfully useful, friendly, attractive Mac that exemplifies the best principles of the original Macintosh vision.
We hope, and believe, that the Mini will be a great success, helping Apple expand both its mission and its market, amidst intense competition. But for the best success, Apple needs to recognize and address the two most significant issues in its first Mini iteration: substandard analog video output and the lack of FireWire 800 support. (And neither improvement would justify raising the price.)
By Ric Ford
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