[Dan Frakes]

 rob53, on 03 August 2011 - 05:52 AM, said:

Couple things. Replacing the hard drive is not something a typical user should try even using iFixit's instructions. They give it an 8 out of 10 but I've seen the hard drive removed and there are cables with very small connectors that have to be removed and replaced very carefully. Other than memory, buy what you need.

I think if you're averse to taking things apart, sure. (Although then you might consider buying a FireWire drive instead of BTO-upgrading the internal.) But replacing the hard drive on this model is pretty tame, in my opinion—tame enough that if you feel comfortable opening up your computer, you should be fine.

 jowie, on 03 August 2011 - 07:03 AM, said:

I've noticed that the 2.5 GHz option with Radeon has an option for a 750 GB + 256 GB SSD. Does this mean the Mac Mini actually has two internal 2.5" SATA bays? I thought it was only the Server model that did. If I could buy the cheapest Mac mini and add two drives myself, I'd be really tempted!

Both models have the extra drive connector. (Check out the iFixit teardown, linked in the article, for images.) The problem is there's no cable or drive sled/harness inside for a second drive if you don't order the mini with a second drive. A MacRumors reader evidently found the cable: http://www.macrumors...-2011-mac-mini/

[schoonerman]

Upon the death today of both my iMac (Early 2008) and Mini (Late 2009) I would go with the higher-end Mini, likely with a hard drive upgrade. But neither machine seems to be about to die--I don't know what I'll do when both do eventually die.

I'm not particularly interested in all-in-one machines (although I'm happy with the iMac). I don't want to toss a working computer because of display death or toss a working display because of computer demise.

[jazzace]

I'm not going to wade into the inevitable matte/glossy debate, but for those who wish to choose a matte display for their desktop computer, the new Mac mini with a discrete graphics chip is a quantum leap above the previous model. I'm interested to see what Macworld's tests show when they re-jig Speedmark for Lion. In our own internal testing, the late 2009 Mac mini (the first model we deemed usable for our University computer labs) was close to the performance of original Mac Pro (both with 4 GB RAM) but nowhere near our 2008 Mac Pro 8-core machine. The 2010 Mac mini gave us incremental gains but the 2011 model might just eclipse an 8-core Mac Pro.

The other often overlooked feature of the Mac mini is that it sips power (rather than guzzling it). Our campus recently went through an energy audit and when they came to my Lab, they found that a Mac mini drew the same power or less than a professional 24" LCD display (which is our basic setup). The Mac Pros drew far more power than either. Lower electricity bills are a feature when you don't need top-of-the-line performance.

[palane]

It's worth noting much cheaper options for external DVD writers. Samsung has a few available for around $40.

We'll give this consideration. Our current setup has a 22" DisplayPort monitor on the desktop with a MacBook (or MBP) on a shelf underneath. The mini would work just fine and we can put a DVD drive underneath with it.

BB

[wardoggie]

 ChrisLicata7njs, on 03 August 2011 - 06:15 AM, said:

I just don't understand why people want matte displays so much. They distort color and have a washed-out look to me. It's fine that you like what you like, but I think there are not many people who would rather have matte than glossy, and they appear to be very vocal. As for being "glare proof" they aren't, not at all, maybe not as bad a glossy can be, but they have glare too.

Actually, the reverse is true; glossy displays tend to oversaturate colors. People love them because "ooohhh, the colors look so vibrant!" And if you're watching a DVD or playing a video game, that's fine, which is why glossy screens are so popular. But if you're doing anything for print reproduction, you probably want an anti-glare monitor you can calibrate so that what you see onscreen is as close to what comes of the press as possible. This holy grail of "soft proofing" is not 100% accurate, but it's getting pretty close.

And this doesn't even get into the personal preferences for glossy vs. anti-glare.

[Christian]

A plus to no optical drive I haven't heard anyone mention in either Mac Mini or Air reviews is that is leaves users the option of getting an external Blu-ray capable drive, since Apple seems not to want to market one. In these days of bandwidth caps, Blu-ray remains the best option for high def video.

[schafdog]

Does it support 12.5mm drives? The article mentions 9mm, but linkes to a 12.5mm. Does it support two of them, if?

[ColonelV]

 Christian, on 03 August 2011 - 11:26 AM, said:

A plus to no optical drive I haven't heard anyone mention in either Mac Mini or Air reviews is that is leaves users the option of getting an external Blu-ray capable drive, since Apple seems not to want to market one. In these days of bandwidth caps, Blu-ray remains the best option for high def video.

Yes, but the problem is that Apple has refused to build Blu-ray video support into the OS. You can buy an external Blu-ray writer and software that will allow you to burn Blu-ray discs (either data or video), but even then you cannot pop in a commercial Blu-ray video disc and have your Mac play the disc properly with on screen menus, etc. unless you want to run Windows on it.

Count me as one longtime Mac user who disagrees with this 'optical drives are obsolete' stance Apple seems to be adopting (by not shipping a DVD version of Lion, not updating DVD Studio Pro and not including an optical drive bay in the new Mac Minis, not offering Blu-ray drives as a build to order option on any Mac, etc.) I still believe optical discs have their place, especially for video and agree that Blu-ray is the best option for high def video.

[vconeil]

I am interested in the mac mini for editing HD video. I took my SDHC card into an Apple Store to test playing 25fps 1920HD footage from my Nikon D3100. The 2gb 2.3GHz MacMini started promisingly but then began stuttering. I repeated the test on another 2gb 2.3GHz box which began stuttering at the same point.

The same file played fine on a 4gb 2.3GHz MacBook Pro and the cheapest 2.5GHz iMac.

Is it the 4gb that made the difference and a 4gb 2.3GHz mac mini would be ok?

Despite the benchmarks is the MacMini actually underpowered when faced with real world tasks such as this?

Interestingly - but sadly for us Mac fans - my wife's £330 3gb i3 HP laptop played the same file fine via SDHC....

[Jon Seff]

 ColonelV, on 03 August 2011 - 12:30 PM, said:

 Christian, on 03 August 2011 - 11:26 AM, said:

A plus to no optical drive I haven't heard anyone mention in either Mac Mini or Air reviews is that is leaves users the option of getting an external Blu-ray capable drive, since Apple seems not to want to market one. In these days of bandwidth caps, Blu-ray remains the best option for high def video.

Yes, but the problem is that Apple has refused to build Blu-ray video support into the OS. You can buy an external Blu-ray writer and software that will allow you to burn Blu-ray discs (either data or video), but even then you cannot pop in a commercial Blu-ray video disc and have your Mac play the disc properly with on screen menus, etc. unless you want to run Windows on it.

Count me as one longtime Mac user who disagrees with this 'optical drives are obsolete' stance Apple seems to be adopting (by not shipping a DVD version of Lion, not updating DVD Studio Pro and not including an optical drive bay in the new Mac Minis, not offering Blu-ray drives as a build to order option on any Mac, etc.) I still believe optical discs have their place, especially for video and agree that Blu-ray is the best option for high def video.

There are ways to play Blu-ray. Rip using something like MakeMKV and then use VLC to watch, or this software, which was terrible when I wrote about it but got a little better after an update.

[Dan Frakes]

 schafdog, on 03 August 2011 - 11:37 AM, said:

Does it support 12.5mm drives? The article mentions 9mm, but linkes to a 12.5mm. Does it support two of them, if?

The Seagate drive at Newegg is 9.5mm. It looks like I linked to the wrong WD Scorpio Blue—I'll fix that, thanks!

[steve333]

 Purpleqsoo, on 03 August 2011 - 05:56 AM, said:

The problem is, for people that want a Mac desktop with a matte screen monitor -- who aren't professionals that require the grunt of the Mac Pro -- the Mac Mini is the only option. And so these specification compromises further limit the options of people needing a matte-screen Mac desktop. There are lots of people who need matte screens with their desktops - see the petition at http://macmatte.wordpress.com

The base Model should have 4Gb RAM and the Optical Drive for that price.
The $799 Model is worth it for the better graphics and those that may not need a drive.

Based on this I think the $799 Model is the better buy.
The Base Model is a joke-2Gb RAM? Apple should be ashamed of themselves

I agree about the matte monitor. I don't want to look at a mirror

[robco]

I would like to know where Apple buys VRAM. Apparently it's made from platinum, truffles and the dust of unicorn horns. Or maybe there is another reason why they're so stingy with it. The iMacs should come with 1GB, the 2GB on the top of the line model should be standard, not optional. The base 15" MBP only ships with 256MB, just like the new mini. For a company that is pushing its 27" display, this doesn't seem logical. 256MB is barely enough to drive OS X's visual effects at that resolution, much less handle any games. While I'm glad to see dedicated graphics return to the mini, most PC vendors offer 512MB minimum these days - most cards, even the low-end ones, ship with 1GB. For a company pushing OpenCL, it doesn't seem to make much sense.

[Carmissimo]

I was going to look into a Mac Pro when the update is released but when I saw what Apple had done with the new Mini I placed an order immediately. I've had the fully-loaded version for about a week and so far I'm pleased with the performance.

To me, there is no question that in terms of bang for the buck, the Mini lags behind many other products yet the way I see it, if you are committed to a separate set-up (I have a recent vintage Cinema Display) and you are committed to Mac (been using Macs since the early 1990s), the choices are simply two, namely the Mac Pro and the Mini. So my reasoning in buying the Mini is that it would be enough machine to suit my needs and yet come in at hundreds maybe thousands less than the Mac Pro. The SSD is the high-cost element of this equation. If you put an SSD in the Pro, buying from Apple directly, that means right now that the price for the base Pro with 6Gb of RAM a 500GB SSD and a 1TB 7200 RPM drive would be $4,124. It's true that if you were to forgo the SSD, it would lower the price to $2,724 yet take the SSD out of the Mini equation and it drops from $2,046 (including a Superdrive+magic trackpad+wired keyboard) down to $1,446.

No matter how you work this, if you feel like you need more than 3GB of RAM, drives being as close to equal as possible, the Mac Pro adds more than $1,000 to your final bill before taxes.

So the real question is, how much computer is enough. For me, from what I've seen, the new Mini is enough. I threw a demanding Handbrake job at my old Mini (a 2.53Ghz model with 4GB of RAM) and threw the same assignment at the new model (2.7Ghz+8GB of RAM+SSD). It took the older model about 18 hours, 30 minutes to complete the file with no other work being done at the same time. I let the new machine perform the same task, also not taxiing the system, and the new unit completed the work in about 7 hours, 15 minutes. The new unit fires up from a cold start in about 20 seconds. It ran a massive Civ 5 campaign and only in the final stages did it start to bog down running at high graphics settings and with a massive map with many leaders. I wouldn't even consider trying to run Civ 5 on the older Mini. Period. In the Open GL Cinebench testing the frame rate on the new machine is around 24.5 and the old more like 5.9. The CPU test produced a score of about 1 with the old and around 3 with the new.

An even bigger payoff comes down the road when some significant Thunderbolt external storage solutions come along. The old Mini has been rather unstable running external drives via Firewire 800. My hope is that Thunderbolt will change that dramatically.

I'm not a professional. I consider myself to be a serious hobbyist, doing a lot of Photoshop and now and again tackling video projects. I do a video every year that is presented to an audience numbering in the hundreds, shoot family footage that I like to try and work into polished finished video projects, and so on and so on. For me, my needs do not justify spending an extra $1,000 unless I believe that not doing so would result in an inadequate package. I had come to the conclusion that the old Mini just wasn't enough machine for my needs and was prepared to consider spending around $3,000 for a new Mac Pro. As such, when it appeared to me that Apple was now offering me an adequate package closer to $2,000, I was ecstatic and rushed my order in.

So far, for what it's worth, I have no regrets. The new Mini is a fine little computer packing serious muscle, as I have it configured. I can't speak to what will happen over the long haul. Maybe a year from now I'll decide that the machine isn't good enough after all. Maybe issues will crop up, as they did with the old Mini. Yet so far, I have to say, Bravo Apple. Finally a Mini that has some serious capabilities, giving those of us longing for a mid-range Tower a decent option.

By the way, when I pull a DVD out of the old Mini, it's hot to the touch and from the external on the new set-up stone cold. Taking out the internal DVD drive is a far more significant move than many realize. Without that change, none of the substantial performance gains would have been possible.

This post has been edited by Carmissimo: 03 August 2011 - 03:40 PM