Intel-a-go-go: Mac mini 3.0
Barely a year after the introduction of the Mac mini and mere months after announcing the switch to Intel processors, on February 28, 2006 Steve Jobs unveiled the first major upgrade to Apple’s smallest desktop. The 3rd generation mini sports some significant interior changes without losing its sense of identity. Let’s break it down:
Speeds
With the switch from the long-in-the-tooth Motorola G4 to Intel’s rather sexy new Core processor family, comparing old and new processor speeds is a bit of a challenge. The quick-and-dirty answer is that, clock for clock, the Intel Core will handle those day to day tasks better than the G4 – thanks to much faster 1.5GHz Core Solo and 1.66GHz Core Duo processors in the respective $599 (MA205LL/A) and $799 (MA206LL/A) offerings, as well as a much more respectable 667MHz front-side bus. Those who make heavy use of audio and video processing aren’t in much better shape, however, as we lose the highly capable AltiVec engine in the exchange. But Apple throws a real curve ball in the Intel mini by delivering their first Core Solo processor in the low-end, and a Core Duo processor in the high-end. This breaking ball makes the high-end mini much more competitive with the new Intel-based iMacs, and delivers a significant performance benefit to audio and video users who pony up the bucks.
If the processor speed was Apple’s curve ball, the introduction of integrated video is a balk. The 32MB ATI Radeon 9200 (64MB in the silent-upgrade 2.0 model) is history, replaced by a 64MB Intel GMA950 graphics processor. 64MB should be better, right? Well, sort of. The GMA950 should outperform the Radeon 9200, but many mini owners were bemoaning 3D graphics performance to begin with, and the GMA950 likely won’t quiet those voices. While the GMA950 fully supports Core Video and will play World of Warcraft better than the Radeon, it still won’t play it anything like the iMac and it’s unlikely to play the next generation of Mac games terribly well. This is no threat to an XBox 360 by any means. Another downside is that integrated video sucks 80MB clean off of your system RAM (you lose some to overhead). Apple follows this with a slider, serving up two SO-DIMM slots for a maximum 2GB of RAM. Integrated video isn’t that surprising really, as it’s pretty standard in low-end systems; the ability to add system memory is a decent trade-off.
So, where does all of this take us? For mom and pop, the Core Solo mini will deliver nicely on teh Snappy™. If you’re looking for a cheap computer to take home and do Quicken and web, feel confident in a $599 lay-out. If you’re doing some casual gaming (and we do mean casual), the Solo will probably suffice as well - most games will make some use of the Duo’s second core for audio and other tasks, but overall performance shouldn’t be substantially better. (Better yet, take that extra $200 and make a down-payment on a PSP or XBox.) For the home theatre crowd, the Duo is likely to be more useful; most audio and video encoding will use the second core and you’ll see a near two-fold improvement in performance. For decoding, we expect the Solo to handle 720p without much trouble, and the Duo to pretty much cover 1080p.
Feeds
Obviously, this revision is mostly about the introduction of the Intel processor, but this is no simple speed-bump here. A few things remain unchanged. Bluetooth 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate and Airport Express (802.11b and 802.11g) are now standard across the board. DVI video remains the same, but we’ll reserve judgement on quality until we see the results for ourselves.
On the storage front, $599 delivers pretty much the same combo drive as the G4 mini. However for $799 or BTO, the new Superdrive is dual-layer enabled (2.4x DVD+R/DL) with specs comparable to the MCE dual-layer upgrade for the G4 mini. The hard drive is still the same 2.5” laptop form factor as before, but the drives are now Serial ATA. Standard sizes are 60GB at the low-end (up from 40GB), retaining 80GB at the high-end; new BTO options yield 100GB and 120GB drives. Drive speeds are a confirmed 5400 RPM, and we understand that they support Native Command Queueing (NCQ). Altogether, we should see a nice uptick in disk performance.
Addressing specific user concerns, Apple increased from two to four the number of USB 2.0 ports, added optical audio in and out (shared with analog line in and out), and as previously mentioned expanded from one DIMM to two SO-DIMM slots, thereby allowing users to upgrade RAM in a more reasonable fashion. We’ve also confirmed that the mini now supports memory interleaving, so if you install equivalent SO-DIMMs in each slot you’ll see a memory performance increase of perhaps ten percent. (Given the use of integrated video, memory interleaving also means faster video processing.) In the tussle for space, the on-board modem is a goner; online neanderthals should include a $49 USB modem on their accessory list. Gigabit ethernet also debuts on the 3rd generation mini, making the Core Duo mini an attractive option for small distributed processing efforts.
The big new feature, though, is a boon for the home theater crowd - Front Row. While there is no tuner or video recording as many had hoped for, Front Row now supports Bonjour content sharing, allowing the mini to function very nicely as a TV set-top box. This new version of Front Row will pull shared audio from iTunes on your home network, pictures from iPhoto, and finally, finally, video streaming across your home network. Plop your mini on top of the TV, hook up a DVI cable, hook the digital audio into your stereo, grab a beer, point your Apple 6-button remote and click your way to digital home theatre goodness.
Odds and Ends
The mini retains its overall form-factor, so your old mini-matched accessories should fit in just fine. The new mini also sports a 110W power brick, replacing the 85W brick in the G4 versions - a little extra juice for the Core Duo CPU. Apple is now bundling iLife ‘06 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand), Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive, iWork (30-day trial), Quicken 2006 for Macintosh, Big Bang Board Games, Comic Life, and Omni Outliner.
Analysis
Where Apple’s mantra in the no-go days of the early-to-mid ’90s was “third party opportunity”, today’s Apple tiptoes into new markets and reacts quickly to the market’s needs. We saw this phenomenon in the Xserve’s introduction when Apple executives actually used the word “humility”. The product was originally developed for the video production market, but when it gained unexpected traction in research and computation, Apple reacted with the Xserve G5, Xgrid and Xsan.
The original Mac mini was created when customers were dogpiling on Dell’s end-of-quarter deals and Apple was roundly criticized for not playing in the shallow end of the price pool. But a funny thing happened on the way to the $499 home computer – Dell discovered the bottom of the low-end price market, most mini owners added options well over the introductory price, and a number of people wanted to use the mini as a home theater PC.
Thus, we have the new Mac mini with the $599 introductory price. Where the original mini aimed for the low-end of the home market, this model bundles the most common add-ons (wireless and RAM) and contains a number of upgrades to improve the user experience (SATA disks, more RAM capacity). As a result, the new mini serves up a number of usability enhancements and comes in at a price most consumers were already paying.
Most interestingly, in this release we see Apple responding to the HTPC market. HTPC has largely been a nascent market with a chicken-and-egg problem in both hardware and software. Front Row establishes a very usable beachhead on the software and interface front, and we hope to see that grow to a full occupation. While the video chip isn’t up to our WOW dreams, it should do quite nicely with the HDMI goodness, and of course the mini’s form factor and integrated IR remote are perfect for the media cabinet.