Mac mini All About Movies? 787
bikerguy99 writes "Robert X. Cringely, who had a good nose for the Mac mini from the very beginning, has published another bit of his thoughts on PBS. This time he speculates that Mac mini is all about movies - his thoughts on the subject are quite logical and provide intriguing insights into Apple's interest in producing a cheap headless Mac in the first place."
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:2, Insightful)
A DIY shuttle-like PC would crush the mac mini in ever respect.
But if it REALLY must be mini, you can probably find a suitable mini-itx system somewhere. Just google for it.
Cringley = The Shotgun Approach (Score:3, Insightful)
Could work well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure Cringely's HD movie service would catch on either. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would be very successful. One thing is certain though, a lot of people are going to have a lot of fun and do some cool stuff with their Mini Macs.
--
Join the Pyramid - Free Mini Mac [freeminimacs.com]
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:1, Insightful)
Will not be able to record HDTV (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want a nice machine to run an HD recorder, look elsewhere.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there is support, do you want to do this or would you like help with it.
Ease of use. If you want a Nix then the Mac is something you can use and the wife. Can't say that of many.
Then there is size. It seems pretty hard to beat on the size front.
The Dell for instance will be large and noisy in comparison.
Re:Could work well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Processing power, storage space and download time (Score:2, Insightful)
The processing power for playing back those touted AVC H.264 movies should be borderline on the Mac Mini as this advanced media format is quite processor intensive. MPEG/ITU-T marketing papers have indicated that AVC/H.264 roughly takes 4x the decoding power for real time playback as MPEG-2 and AVC/H.264 offers the same quality at half the bitrate as MPEG-2. Using new builds of mplayer that support AVC/H.264 playback take up 70% of my G5's processor time at 420p, although other implementations take up less time as Apple claims 1080p is capable on a dual 2GHz PowerMac G5. It's hit or miss on a G4, depending on the extent of optimizations used and the bitrate of the encoding.
Apple has used a bitrate of 7.5mbps on their WWDC showcase of the 720p Troy trailer in H.264 and this quite a hefty amount of data to store locally and transfer over the internet as this article makes clear that "this is the year of HD." Doing the math, a 90 minute HD movie encoded at 7.5mbps should take roughly 5GB and on a 40GB drive you can store around 5 movies, 10 if you have an 80GB drive. These drives seem to be lacking in this department. As for internet transmission, if you were lucky enough, you'd have Optimum Online's 10mpbs download and a clear unobstructed path between the two endpoints you may be able to watch this in real time as if this is a variable bitrate encode, action scenes will require considerably more bandwidth to download in real time. I doubt the national average for broadband is near what Optimum Online provides.
An online store with HD H.264 movies may be wishful thinking for those with a Mac Mini, although my one problem with the Mac Mini as a media center is the lack of digital audio output. An M-Audio Sonica should take care of that...
I am itching to see what Jobs & Co make of this.
I find it amusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I'm as guilty as the rest, but has anyone stopped to consider that the mini is just a low-cost, small-footprint Mac aimed at potential switchers?
I suspect that deep down, we know that's all the mini is, but we're just trying to find some kind of rationalization for buying one. (I'll admit it: I've been wanting to get one to act as a dedicated server for my iTunes Library, a function I think it'd perform quite well.)
Re:Mini's not for Movies (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, if you assume Cringely is right and that it's for downloads AND that those downloads will be faster than going to the rental store, you're left with only a couple obvious things:
1) Streaming. You'd be buffering for the 15 minutes of going-to-store then play and rely on the buffer.
2) You'll need a big pipe. The rate of 3-10Mbps for a dvd video (dunno about HD video) isn't likely to go down too much more with other compression. On the other hand, with cable companies talking about upping their service to 4Mbps or 6Mbps, and baby bells trialing FTTP that's approaching feasibility.
I'd mark it as more a 2k6 thing than 2k5 but who knows maybe it'll take off as a driving force behind FTTP. I'm sure I could figure something to use my bandwidth there for since I'm not a huge movie watcher.
Re:Mini's not for Movies (Score:5, Insightful)
If the MPAA gets its way, you'll be renting these movies, not buying them.
Re:they don't market it for the movies. (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh huh. Sure thing dewd.
Not what I was saying (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't say that you didn't say what I couldn't say... or something like that.
What I was saying is that a Powerbook 1.25 can seemingly playback an 720P signal with no dropped frames. Unknown yet if a full HDTV signal would work, but it's very promising given that using the Elgato software the video for that same 720p is an unwatchable mess, and the higher end Mac mini is 1.42 GHz.
I'm just saying there is actually a lot of hope for getting playback to work, and if it is possibly you know that Elgato is not stupid and would do everything it can to support hardware accelleration for the Mac mini, given that it could be a killer app for the product they sell (which otherwise I do not see many Mac owners buying).
Elgato had these devices out long before the mini, I think they just stumbled into a really successful market if they play the cards right.
Re:Mini's not for Movies (Score:3, Insightful)
Streaming is fine for the latter, but we already have infrastructure for this. It's called your pay-per-view channel, and it's available in HD. (It's too bad the Onion doesn't have old archives on-line any more, or I'd take this opportunity to link to their classic "Gateway Introduces $5000 Computer That Plays Real-Time TV Broadcasts" article.) Remember, just because you CAN figure out a way to use a computer to do something doesn't mean that doing it that way is better.
You make an excellent point about Internet access speeds; downloading one of these is NOT going to be trivial in terms of time. The comment about the hard disk was targeted more at local playback. I'm assuming the end user wants to view the video more than once, which means it needs to be stored. Music playback from an iPod hard disk is not entirely skip-free, and playback of a movie from a 4200 RPM laptop hard disk won't be, either. My DVD player doesn't skip. My VCR doesn't skip. Cable or satellite TV doesn't skip. The consumer is NOT going to accept a video playback device that skips occasionally when skip-free alternatives are already out there.
p
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
AMD *invented* it, and AMD64 just happens to be the name I and a few others such as Linus like to use. It has nothing to do with brand loyalty.
I use Gentoo on three AMD64 machines (a server and desktop at home, and a workstation at my job) and the price/performance value is truly wonderful.
Apple can't hold a candle to it; the only good thing they've got going for them is their OSX software. If they ported OSX to AMD64 I know I would use it on at least one of my machines. But alas, Apple likes to do hardware the Apple and IBM way... non-standard and expensive.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Strange, I just ran a spyware checker on my sole XP machine for the first time in 3 months and didn't find anything but a few cookies.
Perhaps it is because I use decent [mozilla.org] browsers [opera.com] ?
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:0, Insightful)
way to miss the point dude
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only does MAC not make the Mac Mini (Apple does), MAC is an acronym, not to be confused with Mac(intosh).
I don't know *why* this bothers me so much, but it does.
Re:Unlikely (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, I watch video just fine on my lowly 850 MHz computer with 384 MB RAM. All codecs. (Usually the only problems I run into is WMP requiring 11ty billion MB of RAM just to run) I'm sure the 1.25 GHz Mac Mini will have no problems. Needs more RAM though.
Re:Really (Score:1, Insightful)
If you've already wasted so much money on those programs, there's not much use switching. If you're already committed to your path, inferior as it may be, there's no use switching until your software becomes outdated and there's not as many downsides.
As for this OS X problem, don't buy a 5 year old Mac then, k? A Mac you buy today will run the next major version. Will it run the major version after that? Probably not, but that's many many years from now. Does this happen with Windows? Yes. Look at Longhorn for example. Most computers out there today won't be able to run it.
The Mac Mini is for ______ (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is aimed at exactly the sort of people who claim to know what it is for. It's a computer, so of course there are a bunch of things it could be used for, and the small form-factor gives you the all of the usual non-desktop options that SFF systems are used in. All of these people who are saying "it's for $foo" are really just projecting their own ideas, and will likely go out and buy one and use it for $foo. Those who are saying "oh wait, it can't actually be used for $foo, because it lacks $bar" will probably go out and buy one anyway, and buy the add-on required for $bar.
The "it's for $foo" people must be working out great for Apple, as free advertising. All of the pundits out there (including Cringely) are collectively declaring more uses for the Mac Mini than Apple's marketing department could ever dream up, and spreading the word more widely than Apple's advertising budget could ever afford.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Never heard of AMD64? He's talking about the AMD chips (Athlon and Opteron) that are 100% compatible with x86 (think "Pentium") but are faster in just about every regard, no more expensive (sometimes cheaper), and also happen to run 64-bit code if you have any (think: more than 4 GB of RAM).
I'm sorry, but being excited about AMD64 is not a leet fanboy thing. They really are awesome processors, and they're beating the socks off of anything from Intel these days for the vast majority of high-end computing users.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think by crush he was speaking in terms of decibels. I'm picky when it comes to computer noise (think, Zalman) so when I sit down next to one of those Shuttle cubes all I think of is freight trains.
Re:I don't think so ... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) well, are there any actual disks shipping yet? Besides, I don't see DVD's dying anytime soon.
2) remote, yep there it is.
3) probably not, but I'd love to see a mac mini running a mythtv front end, with a big file server hiding somewhere else out of earshot.
4) component video, yep there it is.
And you can even get 5.1 or DTS to your receiver.
Re:Cringley = The Shotgun Approach (Score:2, Insightful)
It must be nice to be cringely. Just make a different totally random prediction every week, and you'll be hailed as a visionary because just by the law of averages at least some of your predictions will turn out to be true, sort of, eventually.
To be fair to him he makes fairly specific predictions, for a specific timeframes (although he clarified a few 2005 predictions [pbs.org] because delays burnt predictions from 2004), and he sets out his reasoning for his speculation. His reasoning is sound, and his prediction definite, so-much-so that if there isn't a major announcement about Apple and streaming movies with Sony and Mini-Mac, in the next 3-12 months, he'll have to write this prediction off. That's pretty tough.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:2, Insightful)
It makes my job as a computer technician very likely never to go away when more and more of you decide to remain ignorant brand-loyal asses about anything having to do with computers.
While you are at it you should not care about VOIP, OLED displays, HDTV or any other emerging tech that is better than the aging standard.
Re:mac mini server (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you say so? Imagine a small home network. It's quite obvious that in a home network, a silent machine running 24/7 might come handy - to share the printer among all home users, to share the internet connection via Airport/WiFi, to share the common iTunes Music Library for all the home users, to serve as a firewall for home network, to serve Apache to the outside world etc. Why do we rarely see setup like this in non-geeky households? Because it requires geeky skills on both Windows and Linux. That's why you think that servers don't need to be easy to setup and configure - because non-geeks don't even TRY. But if you use Mac Mini, you can setup all the services described above with a few clicks on intuitive icons ("Enable Web Sharing", "Enable Firewall", "Share iTunes Music Library", "Share Printer" etc). Plus - it's silent, so you don't need "server room" in your household, Mac Mini can provide all these services, like, anywhere you want. And just connect a keyboard/monitor whenever you want to change some services or configurations.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Browse on http
2. email, but many find MUAs too difficult (POP server config: witchcraft!) and stick to webmail.
3. Type crap on Word.
4. Occasionally tinker with cretinous software bundled with the new crackpipe-inkjet priner.
5. Indulge in CD/DVD duplication.
6. Games, but apart from computer literates & fanatics most don't care or prefer simple consoles.
All these activities have OsX equivalent programs that do the job with excellent quality. Not everybody enjoys spending the weekend trying shareware off a PC mag CD/DVD and most of the PC software "abundance" is better described as "redundance".
If your price/performance relevance was correct BeOS on PPC would be king by now. Instead people run crappy, cheap, loud and power hungry P4 with MS Winders; wasting half CPU on some McAfee UI nightmare, downloading definition updates and grinding the disk for the latest infections.
The best analogy would be: "Driving your shiny monster SUV right into a gridlock and sit there alone for 2 hours". Some enjoy it, others don't.
e
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it's not. You can't run software compiled for the G5 on this "AMD64" blah-blah whatever, nor can you drop an AMD64 whoozit into place behind an Apple system controller. Saying the two compete is like saying that PAL competes with NTSC. The two things never intersect.
Despite what Jobs about the G5 being the first 64-Bit workstation on the market
He never said that. This is rapidly becoming an "Al Gore invented the Internet" thing. What he said was that the G5 was the first 64-bit personal computer, a statement which is entirely true.
So, are you saying you don't give a shit about 64-Bit computing at all?
I wrote software for the SGI Power Challenge back when having a 32-bit processor on your desk made you somebody special. Having done it for years I can say without reservation
So no. I do not give a shit about 64-bit computing. And neither do you, not really. You do, odds are, care about the latest buzzword. Just keep on sucking down that predigested marketing pap. It'll make you a better consumer.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to go way the fuck out on a limb here and say "yes." I'm going to say "yes," that verbally masturbating over the number of dizmos on the wizzle bus is mind-bogglingly stupid when the fundamental differences -- like what software runs on each --so galactically outweigh the kinds of angel-counting in which you're engaged.
As for the operating system, that's getting off-topic
Look up, you colossal dumbass.
Not if that "carburetor" makes that "sports car or SUV" only work on 5% of the roads.
That's depressingly typical. You make an analogy, but you never bother to think it through, so you don't see that it actually serves the other side of the argument.
You want an analogy? Let's make an analogy.
You can choose between two cars. One car runs on (just to pick a number) 95 percent of the roads, but the roads are all paved with gravel. For most destinations, there are many roads that lead there, but they're all long, circuitous and hazardous to both car and driver. They're jammed with traffic, choked with pollution and periodically targeted by wandering bands of roadside gangs that pull people out of their cars at random, mug them, shoot them in the leg and steal their cars.
The other car runs on only 5 percent of all roads, but those roads go to every destination in which you're interested, including some destinations that aren't accessible by the other 95 percent of all roads. And they're all twelve lanes wide with no speed limits and paved with concrete that's smooth as glass.
The first car is cheaper, sure. But if you spend a little more on the second car, you can get everywhere you want to go in speed, safety and luxurious comfort.
And just last week, the company that makes car #2 released a new car that sells for considerably less than the price of car #1.
There's your analogy. Yes, the Mac uses different software in many cases, but the software that's available lets you do the same tasks
Yes, it costs a little more
How do you like your analogy now?
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Name one such part costing around $150, and show me where I can buy one of them along with a compatible motherboard that has SATA and FW800."
Dude, you can get a Gamecube for $99, and it's already got the PowerPC in. LOL!
It's not about what YOU as an individual can buy processors for, it's what they cost manufacturers who make computers and electronics. And they can certainly get more bang for the buck with PPC, which is why Sony and Microsoft are both joining Nintendo in using PPC for their next gen consoles.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:4, Insightful)
What fucking hardware compatibility? Everything is USB or Firewire these days and you know what: You can put the same PCI and PCMCIA cards into PCs and Macs.
You might miss a software driver, but guess what: Linux isn't there, yet, either.
By the way: This comes from a former Linux user who had Debian installed exclusively on my iBook 2.2 (arguably best Linux-supported PPC laptop) for more than 18 month until finally I gave up and dumped Linux for Mac OS X. Never looked back.
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the mini-Mac is not a cpu, and doesn't use a G5. But from recent testing [macintouch.com], it's close enuf for mundane purposes.
The weakest links I see are the notebook hard drive (I'm guessing the Cube fiasco prevented them (politically) from a slightly different form factor with a "real" HD), and they could have spent the extra buck and added a second Firewire port.
Looking at the mini-Mac as a computer system, rather than as a cpu, I'm hard pressed to come up with a single comparable product (and yes, I include the operating system in the context of "computer system") anywhere else in the marketplace, While it would be nice to see an x86 "Cube" with a more substantial 3.5" HD quietly sporting an AMD64 cpu, Firewire (USB2 has about half the throughput for sustained data transfer), USB2, and 802.11_+Bluetooth capability, it ain't gonna happen -- except as some bizarre sort of artificial fireplace log, merrily heating the room.
Due to the "small AND quiet" constraints I have imposed on my definition of this market niche, you're going to be looking at an Intel-based cpu, probably the recently announced Sonoma Centrino [arstechnica.com], which has a couple of low-power variants (low power means less heat to dissipate) of adequate performance.
If Intel would mass-market a Sonoma set-top box with 802.11_, Firewire (connect to camcorders and external HDs), a BT keyboard+mouse/trackball, BT media remote, component video, DVI, and HD tuner + disc player (HD disk burning is not really necessary for the consumer market, IMHO), THEN there would be some SIGNIFICANT competition in this (very large) market niche.
But I don't see this happening anytime soon for two reasons:
Intel's pathological fear of Firewire will make it push USB2 and miss the camcorder video crowd
Where are they gonna get software to match OS X and iLife? From Microsoft (and still be cheap)? Linux-based OS and GUI solutions are feasible, but where are the INTEGRATED, easy-to-use consumer apps for Linux?
Re:mac mini server (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with the grandparent, this is something my mom could set up.