If K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider were a Windows-hating Ford Focus with a Mac mini for a brain
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Mac mini, Microsoft Bashing, design
I’m not sure if they will solve as many ridiculously unimportant, driving-related crimes as Michael Knight and K.I.T.T. did on the original 1980’s Knight Rider series (I mean, how many corrupt racing competitions can you bust up?), but faithful Swedish Macenstein reader Sascha and his Mac mini-powered Ford Focus, or F.O.X. (Focus ‘0 siX) will certainly be able to launch iTunes while trying.
F.O.X doesn’t do windows.
That’s right. Thanks to the power of OS X, Sascha now has both music AND a clock in his car while driving, two things even H.G Wells couldn’t have imagined. Truly the future is NOW!
Writes Sascha:
Since i am a huge fan of Knight Rider (80’s and 2008 version), i decided to have my own “KITT”.
No, it’s not a Pontiac Trans AM. And not a Ford Mustang either.
But it’s the Mustang’s little brother: Ford Focus.and it’s called F.O.X. (Focus ‘0 siX).
For the car’s “A.I.” i put a Mac Mini (1 GB ram, 1,66GHz, Mac Os 10.5.8) in the glovecompartment.
I wanted to use the Mac as a multimedia center (video/dvd/mp3/ tv for long trips); now many people would say, this is not very special…But i can talk to it. And it can talk back!
I use the speech recognition from Mac Speech Dictate (the Mac Os own wouldn’t work on the mini btw) and only AppleScript to build up conversations.A good example of my .. ehm.. “A.I.” would be this:
If i say just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without a context, the computer talks back with “you are quite positive, right?” (or negative).
But if “he” suggest me a program to run, “he” would react correctly to the short answers of “yes” or “no”.
And maybe in the future i install a small camera to use the face recognition of iLife 09
I must say F.O.X could benefit from a snobby, effeminate British accent (And Bonnie, of course), but aside from that it seems F.O.X is every bit the chick magnet K.I.T.T. was. Plus the Ford Focus has a bigger back seat than the Trans Am so it can hold MULTIPLE chicks with feathered hair styles.
Worse than being sent to the Spice Mines of Kessel
Oh, the humanity! Such a fate should not befall any droid, let alone a Mac mini.
Above: You should see their bidet Well, on the plus side, at least using the Mac mini as a toilet paper dispenser ensures that the toilet paper is delivered in the proper, “overhand” method, instead of that ridiculous “underhand” style that some lower functioning people sometimes use.
Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader Vonspace for the tip!
[via Macity]
What the hell is Best Buy selling?
What is this monstrosity?
Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader Bryon for the tip!
Apple apparently moving to “All Yellow” packaging
So, what is the deal with spy photos and white balance? If this yellowish spy shot (sent in to Mac Rumors) is legit, it could mean we’ll be seeing a new Mac mini soon, possibly as early as tomorrow.
Hmm… that box doesn’t look big enough to have a keyboard and mouse… I guess people like me who bought the first mini only encouraged Apple’s ridiculous BYOKD&M mentality. Well, if this is indeed the mini’s new box, I’m glad to see Apple so prominently promoting the fact that the mini still has WiFi. But where’s the picture of the power cord? Surely that is a big selling point too. Personally, I’m hoping everyone’s got it wrong and this is actually a shot of the new Mac Pro. It’s long overdue for a makeover as well, and this mini seems to have the same 5 USB ports as the Pro. Hmmm, 5 USB ports… That means I can bring TWO of my own Keyboards, and THREE of my own mice! Thanks Apple!
DIY iMac
When faithful Macenstein reader Joven wanted to buy a new iMac but found himself coming up short on funds, he did what any good Mac Geek would do – he built his own!
Joven already had an LCD monitor he was happy with, but loves the “Where’s the computer” design of the iMac. So he purchased a Mac mini, drew up some brackets in SketchUp, and headed to the garage for some good old fashioned aluminum bending!
“You can bend aluminum strips by hand. What I did was, first measure everything according to my design ( I posted the plan here: http://www.protodojo.com/downloads/ProtoDojo_BIGMac_final.pdf ). I drilled the holes using my drill press and cut the raw strips down to size with a hacksaw. Then placed the strip in a vise and bent it by hand. You also could use a rubber mallet instead. After that, it just screws in to the standard VESA mount holes on the back of the LCD.”
Joven says he wanted to avoid the $50 cost of commercially available VESA mounts, but I know for me, once I factor in the cost of buying a Drill Press, hacksaw, and a new LCD after I somehow ruin the first one, odds are I could have afforded 2 iMacs. Still, if you are handy, and not a total spaz like me, feel free to download Joven’s blue prints and have at it.
OK… how about THIS one…
Filed under: Mac mini, Rampant Speculation, Rumors, design
[UPDATE: OK we have confirmed this one as fake, but we're leaving it up for discussion's sake. The other one with the weird vent hat thing still has potential.]
Another day, another Mac mini “leak”. I’m not sure why we’re getting all these, but I find them interesting, so here you go.
Click to embiggen.
I’d love to believe this one is real, but it looks like someone took all the criticisms of the last Mac mini post and created a new, slightly more plausible/boring design.
At this point I have to assume we are being jerked around, as this has the same “The world’s smallest desktop computer” tag as the last one, but loses the top bezel thing, moves the power LED to the right and makes it white, like the current mini. To top it off, it’s been thrown onto the Apple homepage for an extra dose of “authenticity”. Still, if I were to envision what a new Mac mini might look like, this would be it.
Besides, it came from France, and we all know imported rumors are better than US ones).
Apple sold at least 5 Apple TVs last year
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Apple TV, Hardware, Mac mini
Well, good news for AAPL stock holders – it looks like Apple sold at least FIVE Apple TVs last year.
That’s right, these guys are streaming music and video from one poor little Mac mini to FIVE Apple TVs simultaneously. That’s pretty impressive, if not from a technological standpoint, then surely just for the sheer amount of Apple gadgetry in that house. Well, now we know which dorm to rob this winter break!
Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader Josh for the tip!
The Mac mini is the “Nelson Muntz” of the Apple product line
Anyone looking for further evidence of Apple’s rampant neglect of the Mac mini (aside from, you know, the obvious signs like the whole “431 days since an update” thing) need look no further than the Mac mini’s product page.
Oh sure, the web guys tried to freshen it up with a new keyboard and headphones, but check out that 5th gen iPod! If the mini were a Simpsons character it would be living in a shack with an chain-smoking alcoholic mother and wearing a tattered blue vest.
Thanks to our friends at Mac Soda for the tip!
What? No mouse? Slacker…
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Mac mini, Mods, Photos
Check out this awesome pics sent in to Steampunk by the amazingly talented (and apparently amazingly pussy-whipped) Dave Veloz.
That’s right, that is a Mac mini, all decked out in 1800’s finery, and served up to Dave’s new bride as a wedding gift.
Not sure where the coal-powered mouse is, but I assume one is in the works.
[via Gizmodo]
OK Apple, WTF is up with the combo drive?
Filed under: Mac mini, MacBook, Opinion, WTF, whining
One of the many items I am considering using to funnel my $100 iPhone rebate back into Apple’s pocket is a new MacBook. I’m basically looking for something simple to use as a blogging device, as I’m tired of spending countless hours in my basement office, ignoring the family while writing my lame articles. My hope is that a laptop would allow me to ignore my family from every room in my house, not just the basement.
To that end, the MacBook seemed fine. As a graphics “professional” I often have a hard time buying under-powered technology, but I figured I have a Mac Pro in the office for “real” work, I just need a word processor with internet access, so no reason to drop an extra grand on a MacBook Pro. In fact, I was actually looking forward to getting the lowest-priced MacBook out there, figuring the $100 credit could land me to the mythical “sub-$1000 Mac Laptop” scientist have theorized might exist in a dimension that parallels our own.
But my fingers could not type the letters “W-T-F” fast enough when I realized that Apple is still including COMBO drives in their low end MacBooks. That’s right, COMBO drives. As in, “why would anyone want to burn a DVD?” combo drives. Considering Apple is pushing iLife so hard, the lack of a DVD burner makes iDVD useless, cripples iPhoto and GarageBand, and even iTunes’s backup features are left asking “WTF?”
Now yes, in theory if all I will be doing is blogging, I don’t NEED to burn DVDs off the machine, but I would like to be able to use the software that comes with it (and which I am in theory paying for). Neither the mini nor the MacBook, both of which have iLife listed among their included software, have even an asterisk warning you that some features, such as iDVD, would be useless without purchasing additional hardware. To its credit though, the iLife description says:
iLife ’08 suite for creating photo projects, making movies, designing DVDs, building websites, and composing music
Great. Because that’s what I want to do. I want to design DVDs, and then… delete them? How about sharing them with friends and family without driving to their house with my new MacBook?
The only other computer Apple offers a combo drive on is the low-end Mac mini, and here too, this seems like it has to be a typo. This is an $1100 laptop and a $600 computer (without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor) that don’t even have the OPTION to upgrade the optical drive to a DVD Burner for $25. You can upgrade the RAM, the hard drive… what makes the optical drive off limits? It’s the cheapest of the 3 to upgrade? At this point it would almost seem as though it should cost Apple more money to offer the combo drive instead of unifying their parts orders with SuperDrives across the line.
Apple saw that the floppy drive’s 1.44 MB capacity was all but useless in the age of CDs, and led the way in ditching the technology with its original iMac. Pretty much all PC manufacturers eventually followed suit, dropping the floppy drive or making it an optional add-on. But now it seems it is the PC manufacturers that are leading the way, as across the board you can upgrade a combo drive to a DVD burner for about $25, even on the lowest of low $399 desktops and $499 laptops.
So c’mon Apple. 700 MB ain’t what it used to be, and CDs don’t cut it. Kill the combo drive.
