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It would be a great small form factor and be very small and quiet hooked up to my lcd. Is it going to happen soon? Or should I just add a blu ray or hd dvd to my small form facor already connected to my tv?
Anyone know if a macmini will get blu ray soon?
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We have loved the mini since its release. However, it's increasingly clear that the mini has become the bastard stepchild in the Apple product lineup, as Apple dvd player.app has been to iTunes; it has been speculated that Apple is afraid the mini will cannibalize (the likely underwhelming) aTV sales further if it were any better. It's still waiting for a C2D, still waiting for official "n" wireless support, etc.
So I think if you're at all waiting for officially-supported Blu-ray to come to the mini you'll be waiting for a very very long time. The mini might not even be around anymore after Blu-ray first filters down through the ranks of Apple's favored Macs--the ones Apple wants to upsell you to.
So I think if you're at all waiting for officially-supported Blu-ray to come to the mini you'll be waiting for a very very long time. The mini might not even be around anymore after Blu-ray first filters down through the ranks of Apple's favored Macs--the ones Apple wants to upsell you to.
Apparently - $800 - You can install a blue-ray drive on your current mini now. (just have to do it yourself)
http://fastmac.com/slim_bluray.php
But I would wait until we get support in the new OS. (Blueray-DVD player playback)
http://fastmac.com/slim_bluray.php
But I would wait until we get support in the new OS. (Blueray-DVD player playback)
No, Apple hasn't released anything yet, it had an opportunity to mention aTV unit sales at several media & shareholder events recently, there was a conference call not too long ago where they mentioned unit volume for other products--but declined to mention any aTV specifics except "it's off to a good start." That's been interpreted by many Apple faithful one of two ways: that it isn't worth commenting on any sales figures since the device had only been available for a few weeks or if sales were strong and trending upward it would have been mentioned, so since it wasn't, sales must be underwhelming.
aTV is unranked in Amazon's Electronics best seller list--the suspicion is Apple has pressured Amazon not to rank the device if it wants to keep its rebates going.
aTV no longer shows up as a "Top Seller" at the Apple online storefront.
There have been anecdotal discussions of sluggish sales on the net, though, all along, I'm not breaking any new ground.
(By the way, saw the aTV in Costco yesterday for $289. Nice deal since you have the generous Costco return policy behind you.)
aTV is unranked in Amazon's Electronics best seller list--the suspicion is Apple has pressured Amazon not to rank the device if it wants to keep its rebates going.
aTV no longer shows up as a "Top Seller" at the Apple online storefront.
There have been anecdotal discussions of sluggish sales on the net, though, all along, I'm not breaking any new ground.
(By the way, saw the aTV in Costco yesterday for $289. Nice deal since you have the generous Costco return policy behind you.)
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I am not disputing that Apple has been neglecting the Mini, but if anybody at Apple has been sabotaging the Mini for fear of cannibalizing AppleTV sales, they need to have their heads examined immediately. The aTV sells for $299. Period. The Mini *starts* at $599 and depending on features can be much more. (I spent >$1000 on mine maxing out RAM, HD, etc.)
Secondly, someone can buy an aTV and stay a Windows user. Every MacMini sale adds to the OS X userbase. It just makes no sense -- unless Apple is braindead, they would be ecstatic if they sold 2 million Minis and zero aTVs...
Apple may legitimately fear Minis cannibalizing iMac & MacPro sales. After all, the Mini blows any G4 and most G5s out of the water. If someone figures they can upgrade their 2.5K DP G4 would a $800 MacMini and be very happy for the next 2-3 years, THAT may be a concern to Apple...
I am not disputing that Apple has been neglecting the Mini, but if anybody at Apple has been sabotaging the Mini for fear of cannibalizing AppleTV sales, they need to have their heads examined immediately. The aTV sells for $299. Period. The Mini *starts* at $599 and depending on features can be much more. (I spent >$1000 on mine maxing out RAM, HD, etc.)
Secondly, someone can buy an aTV and stay a Windows user. Every MacMini sale adds to the OS X userbase. It just makes no sense -- unless Apple is braindead, they would be ecstatic if they sold 2 million Minis and zero aTVs...
Apple may legitimately fear Minis cannibalizing iMac & MacPro sales. After all, the Mini blows any G4 and most G5s out of the water. If someone figures they can upgrade their 2.5K DP G4 would a $800 MacMini and be very happy for the next 2-3 years, THAT may be a concern to Apple...
It's not a function of sabotage, it's a function of focus and mindshare and, likely, long term profit.
Why? You don't think that aTV sales will have major bearing on pending content deals at iTS? And that future sales of the aTV are integrally tied to iTS offering up 720p content? And that perhaps the profit margin on a mini is no greater than that on an aTV? And that someone with a mini instead of an aTV is significantly less likely to download said iTS content, especially since it is less than SD at the moment and the mini could actually play the dvd? I could go on...
Someone can buy a mini and stay a Windows user, too. Remember Ryan? And again, Apple wouldn't be ecstatic if the mini outsold the aTV because the margins/markups aren't necessarily known--plus an owner with which device connected to their HDTV do you think would buy more video content from iTS--the mini owner or the aTV owner? Methinks aTV, by a large margin...
In the case of the plain jane mini eating into iMac sales--and the presumed higher profit margin of the iMac--again, that's practically taken as gospel even within the most Mac faithful. Apple wants to sell iMac and Macbooks and NOT the mini. There's no other explanation for why the mini has lagged so far behind, except of course if you also believe that the aTV needs all the help it can get right now.
This is also why we haven't seen a "maxi-mini" yet, either--it's to force users to either stay with the iMac or be upsold to the Mac Pro. How many folks do you think would jump all over a headless "maxi-mini" if it were given just some beef and flexibility? No, Apple seems very happy gouging users who want a pro machine--and funneling everyone else into a laptop or iMac path.
The mini is the forgotten stepchild. The aTV has the weight of the world on its shoulders because it is supposed to mirror the success of the iPod.
It's not a function of sabotage, it's a function of focus and mindshare and, likely, long term profit.
Why? You don't think that aTV sales will have major bearing on pending content deals at iTS? And that future sales of the aTV are integrally tied to iTS offering up 720p content? And that perhaps the profit margin on a mini is no greater than that on an aTV? And that someone with a mini instead of an aTV is significantly less likely to download said iTS content, especially since it is less than SD at the moment and the mini could actually play the dvd? I could go on...
Someone can buy a mini and stay a Windows user, too. Remember Ryan? And again, Apple wouldn't be ecstatic if the mini outsold the aTV because the margins/markups aren't necessarily known--plus an owner with which device connected to their HDTV do you think would buy more video content from iTS--the mini owner or the aTV owner? Methinks aTV, by a large margin...
In the case of the plain jane mini eating into iMac sales--and the presumed higher profit margin of the iMac--again, that's practically taken as gospel even within the most Mac faithful. Apple wants to sell iMac and Macbooks and NOT the mini. There's no other explanation for why the mini has lagged so far behind, except of course if you also believe that the aTV needs all the help it can get right now.
This is also why we haven't seen a "maxi-mini" yet, either--it's to force users to either stay with the iMac or be upsold to the Mac Pro. How many folks do you think would jump all over a headless "maxi-mini" if it were given just some beef and flexibility? No, Apple seems very happy gouging users who want a pro machine--and funneling everyone else into a laptop or iMac path.
The mini is the forgotten stepchild. The aTV has the weight of the world on its shoulders because it is supposed to mirror the success of the iPod.
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I can't argue with your thesis (except I would insist that the average Mini sale, when you add possible AppleCare/.mac/software purchases has a categorically higher profit margin), for the rest -- time will tell.
But I wouldn't be so sure about aTV owners being the top of the video content purchase heap. After all, iTunes TV sales have been a roaring success without any aTVs out there. I can use myself as anecdotal evidence -- I am Mini power user, with 2.5GB of disk space and an EyeTV 500 going full blast, yet I just bought a missed TV episode yesterday. And despite the lower iTunes resolution (on my soon to go back 1080P display), I greatly enjoyed not having to skip through the endless commercials. Or worry about EyeTV crashing my Mac.
And even people like Ryan would come back to the fold, if Apple spent less time on aTV R&D and more time enhancing Front Row & Apple DVD Player. Not to mention that for every Ryan, there is a Ron (from HTF) who gets his first Mac and becomes a full time Mac evangelist.
I am not suggesting Apple should ditch aTV, far from it, but they should support the Mini even more.
I can't argue with your thesis (except I would insist that the average Mini sale, when you add possible AppleCare/.mac/software purchases has a categorically higher profit margin), for the rest -- time will tell.
But I wouldn't be so sure about aTV owners being the top of the video content purchase heap. After all, iTunes TV sales have been a roaring success without any aTVs out there. I can use myself as anecdotal evidence -- I am Mini power user, with 2.5GB of disk space and an EyeTV 500 going full blast, yet I just bought a missed TV episode yesterday. And despite the lower iTunes resolution (on my soon to go back 1080P display), I greatly enjoyed not having to skip through the endless commercials. Or worry about EyeTV crashing my Mac.
And even people like Ryan would come back to the fold, if Apple spent less time on aTV R&D and more time enhancing Front Row & Apple DVD Player. Not to mention that for every Ryan, there is a Ron (from HTF) who gets his first Mac and becomes a full time Mac evangelist.
I am not suggesting Apple should ditch aTV, far from it, but they should support the Mini even more.
Yes, totally underwhelming. Year-old chipset. Same 2 year old OS. With RAM prices for RAM and 2 1/2" hard drives plunging (I just bought 1 GB RAM sticks for my MacBook for $27 yesterday and a 100GB 7200 rpm Hitachi for under $100 too), and the entry C2D being roughly the same price as the original MacBook's CD, this is nothing but an attempt to stretch out the MacBook's original ROI even further. The base model still has a combo drive--give me a break. All this new lineup for Apple does is extend a product with an even larger profit margin.
The comments in the article above add greatly to the suspicion that Apple may have originally tied the Santa Rosa platform to Leopard. And now that that is delayed, we won't see another meaningful revision to the MacBook until October. And what does this all mean for the Mini? One would have thought that Apple would have updated it before the MacBook, as it is the product most in neglect. But no.
Two things come to mind. Either Apple had planned to have a significant update to it tied to Santa Rosa (maybe even a redesign), which now won't happen till fall, or it really is deliberately holding back on the model so that it doesn't compete with the appleTV. Either way, Apple's continuing failure to make any significant progress with the Mini, except for improving its profit margins from the plunging prices for the commodity components it uses, illustrates Apple's stumbles in its quest for the living room.
Look to Apple's 2nd quarter to have even greater net revenues squeezed out of a hardware lineup increasingly tied to less than cutting edge (except for the octo-MacPro) components that are significantly cheaper than the original BOM they were introduced with. Apple's charge to the front of the pack with its original Intel Core Duo offerings, now has assumed a 6-month behind the times profit-lapping conservative profile.
BD drives? CTO maybe someday (but not for the Mini), and then only for a high end (and high cost) CTO for the MacBook Pro, 24" iMac or MacPro. Heck, Apple is still jamming bargain bin combo drives into Mini's, MacBooks, and iMacs as fast as they can. Why introduce a high cost (read: low profit margin) new product that they perceive as having little use, given no OS support for HD--except in the pro content production sphere, where drm isn't an issue?
Oh, the cynicism grows as the underwhelming incremental hardware updates trickle out of Cupertino, and a new business model becomes apparent. Yes, the new era of Apple riding the coat tails of commodity component pricing created by PC makers' quest to compete on a hardware level is telling.
With PC hardware sales lower than predicted due to Vista's failure to drive sales, and overproduction of anticipated components driving prices down, Apple shareholders are the ones to reap the benefits today. Apple is competing on an OS level, and for many, Tiger is "good enough." Apple doesn't need to ride the crest of the hardware wave anymore to compete with the likes of Dell and HP, because Tiger gives it enough of a competitive edge to produce significant overall growth in market share. It seems that Apple is content with what it has, and the slow speed with which it is moving forward, as long as profits are up and market share numbers improve.
Blah. Good job milking it, Apple. [/rant]
Yes, totally underwhelming. Year-old chipset. Same 2 year old OS. With RAM prices for RAM and 2 1/2" hard drives plunging (I just bought 1 GB RAM sticks for my MacBook for $27 yesterday and a 100GB 7200 rpm Hitachi for under $100 too), and the entry C2D being roughly the same price as the original MacBook's CD, this is nothing but an attempt to stretch out the MacBook's original ROI even further. The base model still has a combo drive--give me a break. All this new lineup for Apple does is extend a product with an even larger profit margin.
The comments in the article above add greatly to the suspicion that Apple may have originally tied the Santa Rosa platform to Leopard. And now that that is delayed, we won't see another meaningful revision to the MacBook until October. And what does this all mean for the Mini? One would have thought that Apple would have updated it before the MacBook, as it is the product most in neglect. But no.
Two things come to mind. Either Apple had planned to have a significant update to it tied to Santa Rosa (maybe even a redesign), which now won't happen till fall, or it really is deliberately holding back on the model so that it doesn't compete with the appleTV. Either way, Apple's continuing failure to make any significant progress with the Mini, except for improving its profit margins from the plunging prices for the commodity components it uses, illustrates Apple's stumbles in its quest for the living room.
Look to Apple's 2nd quarter to have even greater net revenues squeezed out of a hardware lineup increasingly tied to less than cutting edge (except for the octo-MacPro) components that are significantly cheaper than the original BOM they were introduced with. Apple's charge to the front of the pack with its original Intel Core Duo offerings, now has assumed a 6-month behind the times profit-lapping conservative profile.
BD drives? CTO maybe someday (but not for the Mini), and then only for a high end (and high cost) CTO for the MacBook Pro, 24" iMac or MacPro. Heck, Apple is still jamming bargain bin combo drives into Mini's, MacBooks, and iMacs as fast as they can. Why introduce a high cost (read: low profit margin) new product that they perceive as having little use, given no OS support for HD--except in the pro content production sphere, where drm isn't an issue?
Oh, the cynicism grows as the underwhelming incremental hardware updates trickle out of Cupertino, and a new business model becomes apparent. Yes, the new era of Apple riding the coat tails of commodity component pricing created by PC makers' quest to compete on a hardware level is telling.
With PC hardware sales lower than predicted due to Vista's failure to drive sales, and overproduction of anticipated components driving prices down, Apple shareholders are the ones to reap the benefits today. Apple is competing on an OS level, and for many, Tiger is "good enough." Apple doesn't need to ride the crest of the hardware wave anymore to compete with the likes of Dell and HP, because Tiger gives it enough of a competitive edge to produce significant overall growth in market share. It seems that Apple is content with what it has, and the slow speed with which it is moving forward, as long as profits are up and market share numbers improve.
Blah. Good job milking it, Apple. [/rant]
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You're right. I just can't believe this. I'm still holding back with buying a mini...
It's becoming more than obvious that it's the forgotton stepchild. This sucks.
Dino
You're right. I just can't believe this. I'm still holding back with buying a mini...
It's becoming more than obvious that it's the forgotton stepchild. This sucks.
Dino
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360 Posts
Wildrock:
http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070420PR208.html
As far as the mac mini goes, just do your own upgrade (processor, hard drive, memory)...it's not difficult.
Wildrock:
http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070420PR208.html
As far as the mac mini goes, just do your own upgrade (processor, hard drive, memory)...it's not difficult.
Holy COW! Where did you get that deal for the RAM. I've (oops, I mean my wife) has been struggling with the stock 512MB on her Macbook. I'd ... er.. she'd love to be running at 2GB.
ft
Just to keep it on topic, I would love to have a mini at the same specs as the Macbook, or even the just replaced Macbook. My plan was to use it as a PVR with EyeTV, but I really wanted to wait for the C2Duo chip for the pre-N wireless.
I got tired of waiting and bought a Sony HD DVR instead. No regrets yet.
ft
Holy COW! Where did you get that deal for the RAM. I've (oops, I mean my wife) has been struggling with the stock 512MB on her Macbook. I'd ... er.. she'd love to be running at 2GB.
ft
Just to keep it on topic, I would love to have a mini at the same specs as the Macbook, or even the just replaced Macbook. My plan was to use it as a PVR with EyeTV, but I really wanted to wait for the C2Duo chip for the pre-N wireless.
I got tired of waiting and bought a Sony HD DVR instead. No regrets yet.
ft
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133 Posts
Well, yes, but that's not the point. The point is, as I think was been pointed out by chefklc in the mini thread, that the mini is totally overpriced now considering its hardware (Core duo, the old integrated graphics card, etc etc).
Well, yes, but that's not the point. The point is, as I think was been pointed out by chefklc in the mini thread, that the mini is totally overpriced now considering its hardware (Core duo, the old integrated graphics card, etc etc).
I didn't say PC shipments weren't up. They just haven't reached the levels that were predicted pre-Vista launch. Hence component deliveries didn't meet projections. Component glut=lower prices. There's stories about it all over the web.
i'm not talking about custom upgrades or mods here. Sure, we can do that. I'm talking about the general consumer market.
"margin-enhanced" --Apple dictionary for the new Intel era
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I didn't say PC shipments weren't up. They just haven't reached the levels that were predicted pre-Vista launch. Hence component deliveries didn't meet projections. Component glut=lower prices. There's stories about it all over the web.
i'm not talking about custom upgrades or mods here. Sure, we can do that. I'm talking about the general consumer market.
"margin-enhanced" --Apple dictionary for the new Intel era
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