Finally an under $500 Mac
 

The Mac Mini
http://www.apple.com/macmini/

Cheap iPod too
http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/

iTunes coming to Moratoria cell phones this summer too.

Some other new stuff announced today as well.
http://www.apple.com/home/
http://www.apple.com/iwork/
http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/

Finally charging what they are worth, eh? |jester|

|couch| |escape|

It's real cute... and affordable :)

I may pick one up for my living room so that I don't have to use my laptop as my music server.

I want to see what the Cell phone/iTunes player is like. It would be nice not to have to carry a phone and an iPod when I'm working out. Knowing Motorola it will suck and crash a lot, all my Motorola phones have.

But it is not only a music server is it?

It is a full Mac, faster then the laptop I'm using actually.

Now that is cool. It's teensy, it packs a punch.. very cool.

Might be a nice lil unit to stick on the plasma tv or something in the living room.. hmm damn thats an idea.

|spam|

|couch|

i guess the rumors were true about the sub $500 mac. Very very very nice.

I love the macs - except for the price.. May have to look into one of these for the sidekick. Then again, I have a Powerbook and a Desktop right now... nice machines though.

New iLife looks awesome.
B

|jester|

i have to agree with you bstrawse! MAC is a very nice but it's quite expensive though.

Too bad I travel too much to not have a laptop or I would snatch one of these up quick like. I converted completely from Windows recently to SuSE linux on my laptop. It was a tossup between Xandros and Suse and I went with SUSE, although Xandros is better for the beginning unix user. I am at least taking a step towards the macs :)

I am sure by the end of the year I will have a nice powerbook. Bad part is I have to buy 2 of anything I get so the wife has the same thing :)

Andy

I'm definately one of those Mac snobs. It's the only thing I use. Have been since college way, way ago. Actually, In my "other" life, I design brochures and magazines for advertising agencies, so Mac is all we understand. I've been doing my web stuff from my G4 Powerbook and have been wanting an extra desktop. I think Mac Mini will work. Besides I like the name and the look of it. That's very important in computer buying for chicks. Almost like a new handbag.|jester|

I'm thinking that it would make a really great media server for my living room.

I would have to add the bluetooth/wifi option but the default RAM would be enough. I think the SVideo adapter is included.

Hook up a big FireWire drive to it and RIP all my DVDs to it. Move my music collection which is now taking up 20 gigs of my laptop's drive to it too.

You could also add TiVi type software to it as well.

TiVO type software? Who has something like that for Mac or Unix for that matter? I was thinking about looking into this after seeing the windows media centers. I know TiVO uses Linux on their boxes but not sure of software that does it. If you know of something I will hook that shit up to my tv :)

andy

EyeTV
http://www.elgato.com/eyeTV/
It is a piece of hardware that plugs into the USB port to get the signal in and software to use it.

It comes in some flavors.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/searc...=1&incimage=on


Also to RIP your DVDs to your HD and remove that annoying copy protection. (free)
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/mo...8599&vid=90308

Wish they sold it in Europe too where people use 220V and not 110.. a mac is not something you use with a converter :(

All the Macs that I've seen are 110 or 220 and even give a different plug that I guess is for use in Europe.

When they use a double click and two button mouse I'll take a look.

Hey, look, you can add a 20" display and triple the total cost!

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...More=M9177LL/A

In theory, it should use any monitor, keyboard and mouse (including the multiple button ones), but I would have to see it at work to think that there might be enough horsepower in this thing to do real work.

Alex

Macs can use a two button mouse. Just plug it in and the right click and scroll wheel work as expected. I have additional drivers on mine that allows me to assign key strokes to my mouse buttons. I use a 3 button Kensington mouse.

They also use any VGA or DVI monitor.

You can also use a Windows keyboard but it is a little strange because the windows key becomes the apple key and they are backwards of how they should be, but it works just fine.

The Mac mini is a bit faster then the 2 year old design 17" Powerbook that I use now. The Mac mini is the slowest computer that Apple makes now but it is still plenty fast for most.

So in short - in 5 years - nothing has really changed.
Mac will be good for graphics etc..
Windows will good for biz apps.

Even if Linux becomes a strong #3. ie 15% market share. It still won't change anything for years to come.
As all home PC makers are making machines for windows.

Another Mac story to add to the recycle bin |violin|

I tell all my friends to buy PCs. I also think that all my competition should also use PCs.

Unfortunately there is two types of computer users, those that use a Mac and those that haven't yet.

It has been over a year since I have crashed. I don't run any virus software or have any reason to. Other then an occasional hardware failure like a drive going bad I've done zero maintenance. I sit down, do my work, getup and do something else. I never shut down, restart or anything.

Really every time that one of my friends tell me that they are switching to a Mac I cringe. It just means one more person calling me up asking how something works or something.

I'm gonna get one for the family...

Take the old 500Mhz Celeron they use and put Linux on it and make it a media server... (that way I don't have to buy a new monitor keyboard and mouse...)

Damn, too many people are switching to Macs…

I have an EyeTV - it's on my desktop g4. Great little tool.

WIth Toast you can burn TV shows onto DVD. Rocks!
B

Do you have the USB one or the Firewire one?

USB.

I got it in December 2002 or so.. so it's probably a couple versions ago... newer ones have more options ;)
b

From what I understand the FireWire ones will do HD but until Apple releases the APIs in Tiger so that the drivers can be properly written the hardware requirements are horrendous. Right now the software developers don't have access to the APIs that they need to offload the video from the CPU the way the Apple apps do like their DVD player.

Tiger will be the first version of Mac OS X where the video APIs are completed. Not that I really understand it but
H.264 is going to bring some wonderful things from what I read.

Apple is suing a local guy because on his website he has posted information that was leaked to him from Apple employees apparently.

Evidently he posted on his website about the release of the new ipod thingy and the under $500 'puter before Apple announced it. The guy says he simply did good journalism like any journalist would, and spoke to sources who gave him the information he asked for, so he put it on his site.

He can't afford a huge lawyer fee to defend himself, so is hoping for some pro-bono law firm or lawyer to help him out because he feels it falls under first amendment protection of speech.

It seems there is some bad apple working for Apple who violated their own agreement not to leak any secret information..

I feel for the guy.. he doesnt work for Apple himself afterall.. so how can he be accused of anything at all? He promotes Mac's on his website apparently though.. says it paid for his schooling (he's in Harvard now)


Anywho, vely intelesting.(or not)

Old news actually.

This is his website.
http://thinksecret.com/

Should be interesting to see how he was able to get Apple's trade secrets.

Ahh ok, figures. It was a blurb on my local news and they always call past events "news" lmao.

Thats true, it'll be interesting to see who it was that really gave the information. He says he got them by simply asking people who work there.. Chances are probably good that the real issue is he refuses to release the source, lol.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/ = $499
http://www.apple.com/uk/macmini/ = approx. $678

That's $179 more. :(

Oh.. and in some countries it is even more expensive, about $730 US.

Edit: must be VAT....

Wow it's like so 1984
http://www.php-schmiede.de/1984macintro_2.mov

I love the bow tie on Steve Jobs

I will never switch to a Mac!
Blasphemy! :-)

Looks like ALOT of folks are considering using it for a home emedia center... Saw an article on Cnet , will cost about 1500 for everything to make it work... Cheaper that Winows based home media centers without the bugs, crashes, and virus problems... |shocking|

They don't crash or have viruses this is true. :)

I personally tell all my friends to buy a Dell but then I make the mistake of letting them use my 17" Powerbook. :D

I am going to get one of these Mac minis for my living room but I'll probably wait and see what the next update is and then either buy the older model discounted or pickup the newer whatever. Also if I wait until this spring I'll get Tiger with it. Mac OS does not have serial numbers so there is nothing stopping someone from using the installer to install it on whatever you feel like, not that you are suppose to do this. lol