Mac mini meant to house built-in iPod Dock?
posted Mar 2nd 2005 9:20AM
So the same dude who overclocked his Mac mini continued to tinker, and has uncovered an unused FireWire bus in the Ultra ATA-100 riser card that connects the mini's optical drive to the motherboard. What's up with this vestigial FireWire connector? Leo thinks the riser was designed to feed an iPod Dock connector built in to the top cover of the mini. Whether the feature was originally built in and then dropped, or whether this foretells the advent of an iPod Dock-enabled Mac mini (or whether this is all pure shinola, for that matter), is unknown. Although, considering that nary a single iPod now ships with a Dock as a standard accessory, it wouldn't surprise us to see the next Mac mini revision sporting just such a convenience. And wouldn't it make a great holster for a video iPod?
The old g4 motherboards had the same unused firewire port soldered to the motherboard. never figured out what those were for either.
i doubt they would have included a built in dock - there are now 3 completely different iPod form factors using firewire and it's doubtful they could have supported the iPod mini, the "classic" and iPod photo(thicker) with only one dock. had they chosen one model over another, it would have likely alienated owners of the unsupported models. if anything they may have wanted to add an extra firewire port on the back or front (for hooking up a DV cam or capture device without having to disturb the chain that people would likely add external storage or other peripherals ) but just couldn't make it fit without sacrificing the design.
"i doubt they would have included a built in dock - there are now 3 completely different iPod form factors using firewire and it's doubtful they could have supported the iPod mini, the "classic" and iPod photo(thicker) with only one dock."
Lots of accessory manufacturers include replaceable plastic divots that'll fit any iPod. I don't see why Apple couldn't have done the same or similar.
1) they'd probably have to license the removable divot concept since they don't make their docks like that. because they don't make their docks like that now, they'd probably not start with the mini. when you consider the margins on sales of docks when not bundled w/ an iPod - it's much more profitable to sell them seperately. future iPods will undoubtably require different fittings for the dock. some households own both a mini and another iPod - swapping divots would probably lead to damaging the dock.
in short, it's just not Apple's style to do something like this.
2) not all iPods use firewire, and so this is only solving part of the problem. shuffle uses USB 2.0
3) a dock would have screwed up the design and made the mini taller or wider than it is - the strongest purchase factor outside of the price/OS is the size.
4) as #1 pointed out, the same firewire exists on most g4 boards
Here is a completely ignorant question. Could this port be put into use?
Maybe it's for a TiVo, or a Large screen iPod for viewing your shows on the go.
uForgot:
5) iPod mini, iPod, and iPod photo use different dock sizes.
WSTE_M
did you read ANY of this? i addressed that with the first response i made and also in the second response with the idea of using plastic inserts as someone had suggested
"they'd probably have to license the removable divot concept since they don't make their docks like that."
Quit smoking that crack. There's no patent on removable plastic inserts that Apple would have to "license" from an accessory maker, for god's sake!
"not all iPods use firewire, and so this is only solving part of the problem. shuffle uses USB 2.0"
The Shuffle's got a dock built in on the Mac Mini as it is. It's called a USB port.
All other iPods use Firewire.
The Shuffle form factor doesn't require a dock. The separate "dock" that Apple sells is literally a bare piece of flat plastic with a USB port sticking up out of it. They are quite literally charging $30 for an external USB port. It's not a "dock" in the sense that the other iPods dock. Not even Apple really thinks of it this way; even they call the iPod connector a "dock connector", but the iPod Shuffle connector is just called a USB connector.
Regardless, it's freakin' semantics. None of your reasons are any hindrance whatsoever to putting an integrated dock into the Mac Mini, and I'm fairly confident that a later revision of the system will include the option.
is it normal for random parts that don't do anything to left on components or motherboards?
fransisco,
yes, it's quite common to have vestigal connections. most g4 motherboards have the exact same port. this becomes more common as companies spec mobo's before they're completely finished with the design of the rest of the system and case. the mini was likely too cramped to make use of the connector, or it carried over from other g4 boards.
Jeff,
i call bullshit - adding a dock will still make the mac mini bigger than it is...i'm sure you've seen how cramped it is inside that tiny case. i doubt apple is willing to make it any bigger than it already is...if anything they'd make it smaller. in addition, it would destroy the overall design of the case which is quite beautiful. apple cares a lot about the look of their products - an integrated dock would make it look cluttered at the very least. and you still can't convince me that removable plastic pieces are the way to go - they'd mean more chance for damamge to the connector, and the need to swap them if you wanted to load another type of iPod, many households have more than one iPod. and yeah - the shuffle has a dock, the USB port but if they're going to add one, they may as well be consistent, which is why they even bother to offer one in the first place when really you don't need one.
put it this way, if apple wanted to include a dock, they would have. it was absolutely within their power to do so. it wouldn't have added to the price at all considering how cheap the dock is for Apple to produce and how simple it would have been to integrate if the mini wasn't so tiny. maybe at one time they thought of it, and spec'd the board for the extra port but once they actually saw how cramped it was and how it could affect things like stacking them, the form factor change and even cooling things effectively they ditched it. i'm sure apple considered the stacking issue because you could easily cluster these things and people buying them for clusters probably don't care about docks and do care about being able to stack. if anything this is just a left over from g4 boards they shrunk to fit, or an extra firewire out for temporarily connected devices and they couldn't find space on the back to fit. plus apple makes money off the dock(especially now) so including it isn't in their best interest financially - yeah that's being greedy, but i still doubt we'll see the next rev with a dock when selling the dock seperately makes them quite a bit of money. when you consider that the margins on the mini are extremely low, it makes even more sense for apple to try and recover some profit by keeping things seperate.
but feel free to continue on with fantasies and what-ifs, they won't bring an integrated dock to the mac mini.
I can confirm that in the development phase, the Mac mini was slated to have an iPod dock built in. However, Steve Jobs didn't much like the idea so had it removed. The connector, however, remains.
Can you say video digitizer board?
The Mac Mini would be a great video/tivo/replay type device if it had video tuner and digitizer. Firewire would be the easiest way to add this to a whole line of computers.
The firewire port isn’t there for a built in dock but for a front mounted firewire port. A convenient place you could plug your iPod into. But because that’s about all the average Mac Mini owner may possibly use it for and its much cleaner looking with out it, they left it out.
Using the iPod Photo... home on iPod.. plug your iPod into someone elses Mac mini, and their mac mini looks like YOUR mac mini.. you'll be able to access all the your stuff..(This would, of course, mean, just like the way iTUnes asks you to pick playlists.. you would decide what kinds of files to include on the iPod..)
Besides.. if it doubles as an iPod dock, then it should be pretty much up to date, no?
It's coming...
The idea of docking your iPod in your Mac mini.it syncs all your game files and music and movies.. then you take it to a friends place, where you dock it there, and then you can watch the movie.. sounds cool, huh?