Limitations of the Mac Mini?

B

Brad Gamma

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 9, 2008
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Hey I am contemplating switching, and the first device I want to do it with is a Mac Mini. If i were to get one, I'd get the 2.0ghz core 2 duo and maybe open it up and stick an extra gig of RAM inside (is there a reason they charge £90 to add in a gig of ram?).

I would just like to ask what the limitations of the mini would be, mainly because of the lack of a dedicated graphics card. I would ideally want to hook it up to my 24" 1920x1200 monitor, and use it for web browsing, media use (Where I will probably view HD video at some point), and web design (Using flash mainly, with no heavy photoshop work).

Having just bought a screen, there is no way I'm going to buy an iMac and I could never justify buying the Mac Pro. I don't want to buy a Macbook yet, as my laptop isnt too old and this mini would sort of be a trail that may convince me to get a macbook when i upgrade. The mini looks like a really nice little machine, and I'd snap it up in a second if it weren't for my fear about the on board gpu.

So would this be a wise purchase? A good way to play around with a mac for the first time?

p.s. just bought a gaming rig, so I have a brute force machine for games and super intense apps.
 
I don't see why it wouldn't work, I mean usually when you go to the Apple stores they have the Mac Minis hooked up to their big 30" monitors and they look great..
 
It might have trouble playing HD video, but I doubt it... Depends on the resolution/format/bitrate etc.

It will be fine for all the other things you said... Perfectly fine.
 
alexfort93 said:
I don't see why it wouldn't work, I mean usually when you go to the Apple stores they have the Mac Minis hooked up to their big 30" monitors and they look great..
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I thought the mini couldn't be hooked up to the 30" monitors? :confused: or can they just not use the full resolution? Or am I very misinformed?
 
Arcygenical said:
It might have trouble playing HD video, but I doubt it... Depends on the resolution/format/bitrate etc.

It will be fine for all the other things you said... Perfectly fine.
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Yea the HD video is the only thing I would be worried about.
 
Hmm not sure if they were 30" but they were pretty big. Where did you see that they couldn't use the full resolution?
 
alexfort93 said:
Hmm not sure if they were 30" but they were pretty big. Where did you see that they couldn't use the full resolution?
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Just checked the apple site "DVI video output to support digital resolutions up to 1920 by 1200 pixels; supports 20-inch Apple Cinema Display and 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display;" The 30" monitors are 2560x1600.

For hd content I doubt I will be viewing loads of HD content, and if I did it would probably only be 720p rather than 1080p. Its just nice to know that it can. Im finding lots of people online who say they play 1080 trailers on their mini so hopefully things will be okay. If anyone could tell me their experiences with it would be great. Santaliqueur, what res/format hd trailers were you playing?

Looks like I'm probably getting a Mac :)
 
Its integrated video is probably faster than the X3100 in OS X for the time being, because Apple's driver is so poor. I believe decoding video at 1080p is possible, but it will bring it down to its knees.

Other than that, keep in mind the mini is basically a laptop in a computer form factor, which means the 5400 RPM hard drive will be the bottleneck.

An iMac may be a better solution for you (the base model is $999 right now in the refurbished store), so you're effectively paying $200 more for a monitor, a faster hard drive, a faster video card and you get the ability to upgrade the ram without voiding the warranty.
 
Hey Brad Gamma, I am running an Intel Core 2 1.86 GHz Mac Mini and am having no issues running HD video. Only changes I made to the Mac was an upgrade to 2GB of RAM for multitasking, but even on 1 GB of RAM, 1080p movie is fine.

Desktop.jpg


(I resized the image to 1280x720 so it wouldn't be too large and cumbersome for most monitors)
 
B. W. said:
Its integrated video is probably faster than the X3100 in OS X for the time being, because Apple's driver is so poor. I believe decoding video at 1080p is possible, but it will bring it down to its knees.

Other than that, keep in mind the mini is basically a laptop in a computer form factor, which means the 5400 RPM hard drive will be the bottleneck.

An iMac may be a better solution for you (the base model is $999 right now in the refurbished store), so you're effectively paying $200 more for a monitor, a faster hard drive, a faster video card and you get the ability to upgrade the ram without voiding the warranty.
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The iMac does look good, but here in the UK the starting model of the iMac is £300 ($600) more than the mini. Also after buying a 24" monitor a few weeks ago, I won't buy an iMac out of principle, also I feel a bit safer the less "all-in-one" my pc is. I wish I could get the iMac for a £100 more though, that sure would tempt me to stuff another screen on this desk. The hard drive doesnt bother me too much, Ive been using my laptop as my main PC for a while (only just bought my gaming rig). Would it bottleneck video playback at all? Does it limit what bitrate of vids i can view?

Thanks vgame64 :) thats a great informative screenshot

EDIT: Just checked out the refurbished mac uk store (didnt know what one was) and while things are cheaper, the difference is still £300+ (comparing refurbished iMac price too refurbed mac mini price)
 
I think the Mac Mini should suit you just fine.

It's kind of intended as a first Mac for someone that already has a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It should do all of the things you mentioned just fine. I used to work at an Apple store and I never saw any issues with HD video playback on the Mini. (and I used to play around with it quite a bit---I wanted one for a while but my mother gave me her 17" iMac G5 and upgraded to a 24" iMac C2D so it's not really necessary anymore)

As stated, it doesn't work on the 30" ACD, only the 20" and 23" (and I presume similarly sized 3rd party monitors.) That's probably your only limitation. I'd personally consider the Mini a fairly versatile machine. You can mess with it quite a bit.

I don't know if you're interested in only purchasing it from Apple directly but there's something to consider if you're a bit flexible on purchase places. You might want to try and find a really basic Core 2 one on eBay or Craigslist and just upgrade the processor, RAM, and HDD yourself. Some people might not feel comfortable with doing that themselves but if you are it's something to consider. It seems like those upgrades may be beneficial to the sort of work you're doing so I figured I'd suggest it. You could make the Mini a little screamer for a few hundred bucks. If you're interested, search around the web a bit, there's tons of guides on doing what I mentioned.

Good luck with whatever you choose, enjoy it!
 
This may sound horrible but I'd really want to get the Mac Mini for my music on the go. I have a Mac Pro but when I went to a concert and saw BT come in with his mac mini and a display and saw him work his magic, I didn't need to know anything else other than that's what I want.

It proved it had the power right there to do live music dj-ing and live music creation. If I wasn't an enthusiast that demanded the power of the Mac Pro, I'd be perfectly fine with the mini.
 
you should be able to view ripped 1080p video files. the real question is whether you will be able to view high def content through digital download. watching blu ray or hd dvd retail disks require a hdcp compliant gpu. downloaded hd content is likely encoded in h264 but won't necessarily require a hdcp gpu. you can torrent hd content ripped in h264 now, where the poster has disable the hdcp check, but playback my not be as smooth as possible because the format is a bit of a resource hog.
 
RLich8 said:
I don't know if you're interested in only purchasing it from Apple directly but there's something to consider if you're a bit flexible on purchase places. You might want to try and find a really basic Core 2 one on eBay or Craigslist and just upgrade the processor, RAM, and HDD yourself. Some people might not feel comfortable with doing that themselves but if you are it's something to consider. It seems like those upgrades may be beneficial to the sort of work you're doing so I figured I'd suggest it. You could make the Mini a little screamer for a few hundred bucks. If you're interested, search around the web a bit, there's tons of guides on doing what I mentioned.
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Yeah I thought about putting a t7600 or something in the base model :D but prices add up and theres always the chance I'll fuck things up royally. I'm still at university so I get a student discount if I go directly to apple, which is nice.

@EGGO
I'm not the music editing type of guy, but thats the sort of versatility my girlfriend would be interested in. If all goes well, maybe I can convince her to switch after a while.

@rennyf77
I think vgame64's screenshot shows him playing a 1080 h264 vid without any trouble. I might scan around for other peoples results. I probably won't be using that much ripped video though, I'm not too big on torrenting movies and programs and stuff, and the only stuff I'd rip myself would be my DVDs.
 
I'm finding it hard to find the answer to whether upgrading the RAM yourself voids the warranty or not. I'm sure that damage caused while tinkering yourself is not covered by the warranty, but does just opening it and installing RAM void it?

For example the apple intel mac mini manual says
If you open your Mac mini or install items, you risk damaging your equipment, and such damage isn’t covered by the limited warranty on your Mac mini.
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If opening it and installing ram voided the warranty wouldn't it say that instead? Rather than saying that damage caused while opening is not covered?

Wikipedia says:
While opening the case does not actually void the Mac mini warranty, anything broken while the case is open is not covered
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I know wiki isn't the most solid of sources, but still.

To confuse me even further, I popped into my local apple store and asked and was told that it isnt possible to upgrade the mini. The guy seemed surprised however when I told him you could even open the mini, and then told me it would void the warranty. I can't help feel that I was better informed than him.

Anybody have any real good information about this, from some Apple source?
 
Brad Gamma said:
Anybody have any real good information about this, from some Apple source?
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It is illegal for them to void your warranty over opening the case for the purpose of performing upgrades. There was some Supreme Court case that covered this, and no, sorry, I don't have a link. If you break anything, THEN your warranty is void.
 
Zinn said:
It is illegal for them to void your warranty over opening the case for the purpose of performing upgrades. There was some Supreme Court case that covered this, and no, sorry, I don't have a link. If you break anything, THEN your warranty is void.
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if you conduct an upgrade that damages your system, then bring it into a mac store for service, any clear intrusion into the machine will immediate be noticed by the service technician. the tech can then check to see the history of the machine. if its been in service before any indication of intrusion will likely be disregarded and service will continue as usual. i can see a technician denying warranty service for a machine that has no service history and looks like it had been opened. its easier to get into mac laptops and towers, but the mac mini requires a thin putty knife to pry the shell off. id don't know anything about the legalities of denying service, but what is lawful and what apple trains its techs maybe two different things.
 
santaliqueur said:
The trailers were 1920x1080, and played without stutter.
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its 1080p, ok, but what about bit rate, frame rate, audio quality? they all factor in, if its decent quality and frame rate, i highly doubt any onboard video will handle i properly, also are any frames dropped? you dont notice stuttering but that doesnt mean it isnt dropping frames.
 
I just watched a couple of the high bit rate 1080p trailers from Apple's site and Quicktime and VLC handle them without dropping any frames or having any stutter.

I will try to get my HD DVD drive working with the Mac to see how that works as HD DVD's 29.4 Mbits for video would strain the Mac a great deal more.

fpsshot.jpg
 
Honestly, I feel that the mac minis are not a good value. They are the one part of the Mac hardware lineup that I actively dislike.

Objectively they are the cheapest Mac you can get but dollar for dollar the mini is a worse value than even the cheapest iMac. I just can't buy into it, and it is a shame because IMO Apple really needs a compelling sub-$1000 desktop. With the mini you are basically paying for a small enclosure, something that sacrifices quite a bit of performance to keep the price in line.

Have you considered running your existing monitor into an iMac and going dual screen? The other thing to keep in mind is that the 20" iMac LCD is very high quality. In the case of the 24" (which I KNOW is out of your range), it uses the same LCD panel as the NEC 2490WUXi, a monitor that costs over $1100 by itself.

So yeah, just stuff to consider. I've built my own PC for over ten years and the iMac I have sitting next to my PC is literally my favorite computer I have ever owned. It is great.
 
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