Actually, the powerMac G5 (first one) is 1499 $$ so at 1451$ yes, the maxed out mini is a bit out of price as the G5 is much better. But that’s largely due to RAM (single 1Gb are still costly and Apple is notorious to take huge margins on RAM, I have always bought mine elsewhere). with only 512 price it is 952$ and without applecare, this is quite a good price for Apple and the specs.
Remember that G4-G5 procs speeds is very different than a PC, so a 1.4 Ghz is already a fast comp (roughly similar to a P4 in the 1.8-2.8 Ghz range, depending of the task)
As for the software included, PC often comes with microsoft works and bundles. Apple own bundle is good, but i’m not sure it is the best one available.
But, and that’s quite a but, only mac have Mac Os X where is the real added value.
Even at the time where macs were 2x slower at twice the price than a PC (which is no more the case), i never hesitated and stayed on the platform only for this.
This is a nice offering for windows people interested in Apple products but would no make the step due to the price of the imacs.
Or for an old customer of the fruit company, whose computers are aging and dont have the money for a Dual G5 before 6 months or so. I’m seriously considering the mini to fill the gap, an accelerator card for my G4-400 is roughly the same price without giving me a new computer.
actually with my experiences (on a dual 1.8Ghz G5 running 2Gb ram) i have not seen this evidence.
assuming this computer is only running one of its 1.8ghz cpus it performes slower than my 2.4Ghz. if you count the second CPU then i am really worried at apples claims.
we have G4’s here (both dual and single CPU) and they were not running photoshop nearly as well as i could at home on a PC with the same ram and such. so no i don’t think these claims of CPU grandure hold true.
yes they may be faster, however the claims of increased performace i feel are largly exagurated.
a 1.4Ghz mac IMO might be equivalent to a 1.6Ghz intel.
the p4 at the same clock as the p3 is much slower, but the p4 was built to be clocked much higher
comparing processcors is almost always apples-to-oranges
for example, what guarntee do you have that photoshop is optimized just as well on both intel and powerpc architectures? Intel has a really nice compilier [which they’ve been working on for years] which out-does gcc optimization wize nearly always [and by a significant margin]. From what I can remember, gcc is used [by apple] for the g5, but is there something that optimizes as well on that platform as Intel’s compilier on theirs?
also, “feel” isn’t a good benchmark…
well anway, from my experience with them, I’d say the differences in performance aren’t something that should lean you towards a mac [or away from one]. The differences in cost and software, however, are significant enough to lean one way or the other.
… uhh, I’m making this a flame war aren’t I?.. guess I’ll have to shut up
I don’t think many software vendors (adobe included) have spent much time optimizing for the G5 architecture. I heard somewhere that the next major revision of the development tools are supposed to make optimizing for the architecture a LOT easier.
To give you an idea of what the g5’s can do with properly optimized code you would have to probably look to apple’s own applications as an example. Final Cut Pro supposedly handles complicated multilayered, film rez editing at insane speeds. In Motion you can layer dozens of procedural effects with thousands of particles and glows and other crap while keeping the framerates well within the ‘interactive’ range as well. I don’t know how much of the stuff Motion does is video card dependant though.
actually with my experiences (on a dual 1.8Ghz G5 running 2Gb ram) i have not seen this evidence.
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You will notice i provided a range.
Besides Apple claims, there is numerous studies about that.
I’ve personally tested on a custom scientific application that the mac was 50% faster than the PC running at same speed and without altivec. But that means nothing, it is one particular case even if it was timed, not feeled.
As far as photoshop is concerned, only some plugins are accelerated AFAIK and it dont use second processor. Apple tests of course use this particulars plugins and outburst PC in this cases but only those.
On the PC, if it is Hyperthreaded, this may change things (one way or the other).
What it means, is that it’s very difficult to compare different archictectures (and compilers) speed in general but you can still consider the G4 a bit faster (how much ?) than the equivalent frequency intel. this can vary a lot especially when considering float/doubles. The G4 shines on doubles precisions float number and is bad on single precisions ones unless altivec is involved. G5 the same.
Now, for the intended use of the imacs mini, 1.4 Ghz is already fast enough especially if you consider that for all video related work, which is likely the most strenuous task those comps will handle (familial use), altivec will kick in (altivec benefits are greater than SSE/MMX ones but need special complex code while intel ones are automatic if correct options are choosen at compile time).
well, its better than the iPod shuffle. i love how they play off its lack of a screen as “fun to guess which song is going to be randomly selected next!”
you mean they couldn’t just include a little four line display?
I recently bought one of the G5 iMacs (flat screen) for about $1,400 and am delighted with it. This darned thing looks like a flat-screen monitor only a little thicker. It’s got a superdrive, all the parts fit onto one flat motherboard, it’s a snap to open, and “it’s all there.” You don’t need to purchase anything else. (The RAM was simply bought off-the-shelf at the computer store, by the Apple rep; it’s a non-Apple part.) Looking inside the box ot certainly looks like a dual-CPU configuration is possible although I haven’t checked.
There’s an awful lot of wisdom in Apple’s strategy of always selling hardware and software together, as one tightly integrated unit. Everything can be easily tested and made to fit together properly at the factory, and you don’t have to worry about “does it work properly with this video-card or that sound-card…” For the unit which I bought, everything, up to and including the gamma of the monitor, has been pre-set, correctly. I like that. A lot. Instant productivity: plug it in, turn it on, produce.
Could a slave drive be put in and use that one as linux operation systom, I mean hey, you still get the mac OS but would linux see it when it installs and boot up ?
I don’t belive there is enough room in either the mac mini or the imac for a second hard drive
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Dude, dremel and duct tape %|
Or, just find a live linux cd that supports mac…
$15,798.00 = maxed out G5
$38,458.00 = higher end BOXXtech
The Mac mini has a FireWire port and 2 USB 2.0 ports (one for K+M) so you can plug in external HDs or DVD-writer. Buy registered RAM and plug it in. You don’t have to buy all of your upgrade through Apple. The only add-ons you need to buy through Apple are the 80GB HD and the Superdrive but as I mentioned, you don’t need them to be inside the case.
Way back on page one, lukep wrote: "Mac Os X is Unix. you can run any linux app on it.
there is absolutly no need of linux"
Linux is not Unix. OSX, which is Dawrin (BSD based) + Aqua, is not Unix. They are completely different code bases from each other and Unix. You cannot natively run Linux programs on OSX, or vise-versa.
Unix is a spec. BSD 4.4 with Mach Kernel fits all the spec. There is differents flavours of unix, and while linux says it is not unix for legal reasons, it is only one of the available flavours like BSD (who is a more direct offspring BTW).
And Darwin is not BSD based but one of the BSD. the difference with freeBSD is the mach kernel, but this is hardly a new thing and has been around since a loooooooong time and was used by others flavours too.
the user space above kernel is keeped in sync, with apple both integrating new features from freeBSD and reporting back its changes (one of the main devs of freeBSD is fully paid by Apple). You can say many things against Apple, it is a private company after all, but it does play well the open source game, despite GNU integrists may think. It does play it BSD style, for obvious reasons.
Aqua (and many other components, aqua is only the GUI part, the most important is foundation) is Apple only and the real Os X system. but the kernel of Os X is Unix, no more no less than linux.
Linux codebase is different (well not so much) but the interfaces are the same.
You can run any app writen for linux if you compile the source and it was written properly (iow to run on any unix). Of course you cannot run a linux binary but those are very seldom PPC friendly and only available for the X86.
I persist and sign, there is absolutly no need of linux on the mac
Might have known that AllTaken wouldn’t want one. I have to agree with what he said though. The spec in the Mini is low - mainly because it’s only a G4. They are a lot slower than the G5 because of the system buses. I think the fastest G4 had a 333MHz bus but the G5 jumps to 1GHz. The system bus makes a huuuuge difference in speed. Not to mention when Tiger comes, the G4 can’t take advantage of the 64-bit architecture.
Maybe Apple have some old G4 stock just lyin’ around that they want to bump off onto unsuspecting PC users by putting it in a pretty box, muhahaha.
As for general Mac speed, I also agree that older Macs ‘feel’ slower because they are bogged down with a really nice interface (and the system bus again) but both G4 and G5 should see much better software performance with the new dev tools like zarf said.
Having said all that though, it’s cheap and it is certainly comparable with a low-end PC assuming you don’t build the PC yourself. Also assume you don’t up the spec using Apple products. My brother bought an Apple keyboard for £60 and I nearly stupidly kept an Apple one-click myself for the same price. £60 for a mouse?!? I don’t think so.
With all 3rd party add-ons and a mini, you can get a decent everyday machine. One other thing to remember is that low-end PCs tend to have rubbish graphics cards (check the small print) like Intel Extreme or whatever. Apple always tell you what you get - even if it’s junk:
“Mac mini sports a fully-fledged ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB of dedicated DDR SDRAM over an AGP 4x bus.”
They sugar coat stuff with words like ‘fully-fledged’ but they at least tell you that you only get 32MB VRam. The 4x bus is ok because only faster cards need the 8x. As for performance, the Radeon 9200 is about the same as a GeForce FX5200. Capable but like I said pretty low end.
For general use it’s totally fine - I still putter along with my now ancient ibook g3 and the mini will be much faster than that.
For general use it’s totally fine - I still putter along with my now ancient ibook g3 and the mini will be much faster than that.
How in the world did I ever manage to create and edit videos, animate in 3D, and survive with my old 840av, I wonder?
Sorry to jump in like this, but as an old fart I can’t help but to look at a new piece of gear like this (the mini-mac that is) and drool. It wasn’t -that- long ago I was using a render farm of networked 486’s for 3D work. I’m glad to see the new Mini Mac and if I had a spare $500 lying around, I’d pick one up.
I believe the Mach kernel it uses is a derivitive, or rather direct offspring from Next. Jobs owned next, when apple came crying back to him he braought next, and the idea of reviving Copland (the new mac os, was supposed to be 8 (with a new name), but it suffered from second system effect badly), or rather re-inventing copland, by injecting Mac os’s core features into next, and then making it look pretty.
In the end it’s still BSD derivitive, it’s just got a very long history.
the only real reason being that i want to make my own mini computer.
i have been following Via for over 2 years. then Apple mysteriously comes up with a total package of “the same size” probably in a matter of months (apple does have the cash to throw around)
but for me i am wanting a 100% fanless/ 100% silent computer.
