Apple stealthily revised the Mac mini. Get the full story here, but the part I think is the most interesting is that they designed in a removable panel on the bottom to make it easy to replace the RAM yourself. It shows a rare bit of flexibility from Apple when it comes to their hardware.
As for the rest of the device:
- No more power brick? Nice!
- Tons of ports (including HDMI).
- SD card slot
- No Blu-Ray? Rats. ”Bag of hurt” or no, that would have been nice.
- The price bump from the previous version of the Mac mini seems a bit steep.
The original Mac mini was the first computer I ever bought from Apple.
My friend Sandro read this Slate piece yesterday and wrote this blog entry in part about enthusiasts and users. I think his concern that today’s computer science students seem to be more users than enthusiasts is very legitimate, since they’re some of the people we’re counting on for the next advances in the field of computing and innovative new products. The similarity he sees between advances in automobiles and computing is an interesting one. I agree with him up to a point about commoditization, but I see real benefits to certain things becoming commodities. He touches only briefly on case mods in the PC space, but commodity hardware (RAM, hard drives, video cards, etc) has made it a lot easier for the technically-inclined to build entire PCs themselves, instead of buying whatever Dell or HP is selling this week. Commodity hardware and operating systems are what enable a product like TiVo to exist (along with less-capable imitators). We have commodity hardware to thank for the XBox 360, and commodity operating systems to thank for XBMC. This doesn’t mean that a ton of people will avail themselves of the option to build their own PC, or their own home theater PC, just that the option is definitely out there for those who want to.
I suspect it has always been the case that the vast majority of people would rather use something cool than build it. As much as those of us in the U.S. love cars, very few of us will be building our own Rally Fighter anytime soon. I enjoy photography as a hobby, but I haven’t been in a darkroom to develop my own film in years (nor did I ever spend enough time in one to get really good at the process). At least with computers, there came a point for me where fiddling around inside the guts of a computer to get something working again got to be too much of a hassle. This could mean I’m gotten lazy, but I really like it when things just work. There’s definitely something to be said for having the ability to fix something or hack it to do something beyond its original purpose. I’ve always admired people like that, and I think they’re responsible for a lot of the great advances we benefit from today.
I think human nature is such that we won’t run out of enthusiasts anytime soon. As long as there are magazines like MAKE and sites like iFixit, enthusiasts will continue to do things that make users jealous.
Thanks to a pre-order from Amazon on August 3, a copy of Snow Leopard arrived on my doorstep August 28. The install was uneventful–typical of Mac OS X installs. I put in the DVD, clicked through a few dialog boxes, went to run a couple of errands. When I got back, I logged in as usual.
So far, I haven’t noticed many differences between Leopard and Snow Leopard. The few of note:
- Hard drive space. Before installing Snow Leopard, I had around 14GB of free space. After installing Snow Leopard (and the latest version of XCode) I have 27GB of free space. It’s quite a bit more freed space than the 7GB Apple advertised
- Printing. I have a HP LaserJet 1022. I had to re-install it after upgrading to Snow Leopard and use an Apple driver. It still works just fine.
- Battery Status. Apple added information on battery health. Since my MacBook Pro is closing in on 3 years old, the “Service Battery” message is most likely correct. Apple Support already has a thread about it. Another thing I’ve noticed which may also be new to Snow Leopard is that I’m getting battery life percentages for my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse as well.
- Character/Keyboard Viewer. A new widget in the upper-right of the screen. I haven’t found any particular use for it yet.
- Mail. When I first started it, the app prompted me for some sort of upgrade. Once it was done, the notes from my iPhone showed up under a Reminders item.
- Quicken. I’m still using Quicken 2007 for Mac, so I saw a little prompt about Rosetta when I first launched it. What I really need to do is get out of Quicken 2007 into something else, but that’s a subject for another post.
I can’t say I’ve noticed any speed differences one way or the other so far–but it’s only been a couple of days.
A very interesting take on Universal offering DRM-free music directly instead of through iTunes. I think the writer is on target in describing the motives of Universal in cutting Apple out as a distribution channel.
If memory serves, the big record companies tried to push Apple into variable pricing not long ago. That move didn’t seem to work, as the 99-cent single is alive and well on iTunes.
The idea of Apple signing artists directly is an interesting one, but I don’t see Apple signing artists anytime soon. Artist management is quite far afield from what they do best. It might violate their recent deal with Apple Corps too. That said, if Apple could make it easier and cheaper for indie bands to put their music out without violating that deal, they’d probably make some money they aren’t currently getting. It might even help them sell more iPods (which is really the whole point of iTunes anyway).
I came across an old MacWorld tip while searching for a quick way to compare an iTunes folder on a backup drive with one on my new laptop. FileMerge turns out to be quite a capable tool for comparing folders as well as files. It made it a lot easier to figure out what was missing from the laptop and sync it to the backup drive. It took awhile, since we’re talking about gigabytes of music files, but it worked.
According to Antwerpen VW, Volkswagen says that the way the iPod adapter hooks into the stereo disables the channels that display additional information during satellite radio broadcasts 
I wonder if any of the after-market solutions have the same issue.
The Mac mini I ordered online back in February finally arrived tonight. The only real problem I’ve encountered so far is that it had trouble detecting my Linksys router from upstairs. What I’m not certain of is whether this was because I had MAC address filtering enabled initially. Once I disabled that and set everything up closer to the wireless router, Internet access worked fine.
Software installs were very simple. For the most part, I’d just download a file and drag it to the applications folder. Very easy, very clean.
I still have plenty of configuration work left to do though. If the mini can’t access the Internet wirelessly from a distance, I may spring for an Airport Express to see if that will boost the signal enough. If I can get a DVI cable, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for less than the Airport Express, it may be worth it to hook it up to my HDTV & stereo instead.
Networking it with my Win2K server will be another challenge.
Update: I moved the mini upstairs and turned everything on again. Now it’s connecting wirelessly with no trouble at all.