Comments on: Rumor roundup: iPad to ship March 43rd, HDMI coming to some Macs, Netflix coming to iPad/iPhone

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:21:16 +0000

March 43rd? Wow… that is a long wait!

By: Tranceaddict420

Tranceaddict420 — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:50:50 +0000

C’mon Doc,

I LOVE my Mini-I actually own four. The current release (actually mine was last March) is VERY USABLE. The nVidia chipset makes most game playing reasonable. The thing fits in the palm of my hand, and I upped the RAM to 4GB and swapped in a 500 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. Along with my 1.5 TB Newertech external, I can do 95% of what a Mac Pro can.

By: darrell

darrell — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:21:15 +0000

hopefully we won’t have to wait for the iPad past the 26th – so much hype for the product and for it to miss it’s launch date would really screw up apple’s lead on Tablet PCs before Dell makes a knockoff.

By: Micah Woods

Micah Woods — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:34:50 +0000

@Dan

The “headphone jack” doubles as an optical audio out port. Apple has been doing this for years on all of there product line.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html

I think the mac mini has taken a turn in the right direction as a server device. Max the memory and add an external drive and you have a great home/media server device. Plug that into your TV and you have something. In fact if all your media was stored on a mac mini, you could use iPad throughout your house, without need of a desktop (unless for work).

Steve is on the right path if this is true. To bad the iPad has such adverse affects on the software community (Appstore).

By: Nano Byte

Nano Byte — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:35:14 +0000

I have 3 Mac Mini’s, one of which is the SL Server edition. I love them all. The MM Server is more than powerful enough to handle my 40+ domains, DNS, email, etc.

My older Mini at home (2ghz Duo2) is plenty powerful for my desires in that it streams 1080pHD content from my Drobo’s onto a 27″ LCD without frame drop or delay. The oldest Mini (1.6ghz Duo1) I use at work in IT. It’s not the fastest champ in the world but it gets the job done and it dazzles the other techs. They’re amazed at what it can do for being so compact.

I don’t know what more you’d want from it unless you’re a hardcore gamer in which case why use a Mac at all? I can see specific needs for power but that’s hardly the norm of most users. I was a huge fan of the Cube (still have one) and am more so for the Mini. I love the small footprint and near-silence. It’s beautiful. I’ve recommended it to several friends that now own one and just adore it.

By: Loweded Wookie

Loweded Wookie — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:09:47 +0000

The HDMI rumour sounds crap to me. I would think it would be more that there will be an HDMI adaptor for DisplayPort because adding a third video port just doesn’t make any sense and considering HDMI is really nothing more than DVI with sound it makes more sense it will be an adaptor.

Also I disagree with the comments about the Mac Mini. It is now a really powerful machine in fact it is the same power as a MacBook with the added advantage of technically supporting 3 monitors and 5 USB ports as opposed to 2 monitors and 2 USB.

The Mac Mini server is also really cool and will be on my list of purchases this year as well as the 3G iPad.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:36:53 +0000

As far as the iPad goes, I think Apple needed to announce it a couple of months in advance so developers could have a chance to test their apps with the new SDK, and also be able to develop some new apps for the new form factor. You can’t sell a new product like the iPad without a decent number of apps for it.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:43:34 +0000

The Problem with HDMI Only

HDMI may be great for going to your TV, but about people who have a separate sound system? Apple solved that problem by letting sound go through HDMI and RCA-out connection simultaneously on the AppleTV. If the Mac Mini is really supposed to be so media-consumption savvy, do we expect to see some other sound I/O options besides a headphone jack?