Switched On: New Mac mini a mixed Apple TV alternative
By Ross Rubin 
posted June 20th 2010 6:07PM
posted June 20th 2010 6:07PM
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
As TVs and Blu-ray players increasingly feature internet connections, content partnerships, and now even open operating systems, they're turning up the pressure on of standalone devices such as Apple TV and the Roku player. Indeed, Steve Jobs has said the demanding existence between the rock of the connected television and the hard place of the closed cable system is what's relegated Apple TV to "hobby" status.
In the Windows world, several companies in the netbook space such as Asus, Acer and Lenovo have popped Atom processors into slim desktop enclosures, dubbing them nettops. Dell has gone a somewhat different route, opting for more powerful desktop components in its chunky Inspiron Zino HD desktop/home theater hybrid. And now, the Mac mini has taken a step toward this role as Apple, which has been a strong backer of DisplayPort, has adorned its only display-free Mac with an HDMI port.
As Switched On discussed at the launch of Google TV, the increasing breadth of top-tier TV programming available online is combining with convincing standards-based user interfaces to make the notion of throwing powerful hardware at Web programming more compelling than ever. However, that doesn't mean that even as attractive and quet a computer as the aluminum-clad Mac mini will usurp Apple TV as the company's strongest foray into the living room.
First, while the low-profile computer may have power to spare for pumping local 1080p video to an HDTV and a simplified overscan control for adjusting output onto a television, it lacks the telltale integration that characterizes Apple's push into a consumer behavior. Front Row -- the Mac user interface layer that preceded Apple TV , hasn't evolved much since its inception, although alternative Web video user interfaces such as Hulu Desktop and Clicker.TV are alternative portals to Web video.
Second, while Apple may have succumbed to the licensing fees of HDMI, it maintains the seal on the "bag of hurt" that is Blu-ray licensing. Of course, the company's iTunes store competes with physical disc distribution, and most Windows-based nettops lack any optical drive. Nevertheless, Dell offers Blu-ray as an option for its Zino.
Finally, even without a Blu-ray drive or any integrated DVR capabilities, Apple's consolidation of the Mac mini baseline configurations into a single $699 product continues the upward pricing push for Apple's least expensive Mac. That's double the price of some nettops, three times the price of AppleTV, and seven times the price of the Roku player.
The new Mac mini's HDMI port will streamline connecting to an HDTV for commercial applications, presentations, residential systems integrators, or enthusiasts who have paired it with an Elgato TV recording product. Combined with its mini DisplayPort port, it will also facilitate dual-monitor use on the desktop. But whatever Apple's path to the mainstream living room may be beyond Apple TV, it's not the Mac mini.
Ross Rubin is executive director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
In the Windows world, several companies in the netbook space such as Asus, Acer and Lenovo have popped Atom processors into slim desktop enclosures, dubbing them nettops. Dell has gone a somewhat different route, opting for more powerful desktop components in its chunky Inspiron Zino HD desktop/home theater hybrid. And now, the Mac mini has taken a step toward this role as Apple, which has been a strong backer of DisplayPort, has adorned its only display-free Mac with an HDMI port.
As Switched On discussed at the launch of Google TV, the increasing breadth of top-tier TV programming available online is combining with convincing standards-based user interfaces to make the notion of throwing powerful hardware at Web programming more compelling than ever. However, that doesn't mean that even as attractive and quet a computer as the aluminum-clad Mac mini will usurp Apple TV as the company's strongest foray into the living room.
First, while the low-profile computer may have power to spare for pumping local 1080p video to an HDTV and a simplified overscan control for adjusting output onto a television, it lacks the telltale integration that characterizes Apple's push into a consumer behavior. Front Row -- the Mac user interface layer that preceded Apple TV , hasn't evolved much since its inception, although alternative Web video user interfaces such as Hulu Desktop and Clicker.TV are alternative portals to Web video.
The new Mac mini lacks the telltale integration that characterizes Apple's push into a consumer behavior. |
Second, while Apple may have succumbed to the licensing fees of HDMI, it maintains the seal on the "bag of hurt" that is Blu-ray licensing. Of course, the company's iTunes store competes with physical disc distribution, and most Windows-based nettops lack any optical drive. Nevertheless, Dell offers Blu-ray as an option for its Zino.
Finally, even without a Blu-ray drive or any integrated DVR capabilities, Apple's consolidation of the Mac mini baseline configurations into a single $699 product continues the upward pricing push for Apple's least expensive Mac. That's double the price of some nettops, three times the price of AppleTV, and seven times the price of the Roku player.
The new Mac mini's HDMI port will streamline connecting to an HDTV for commercial applications, presentations, residential systems integrators, or enthusiasts who have paired it with an Elgato TV recording product. Combined with its mini DisplayPort port, it will also facilitate dual-monitor use on the desktop. But whatever Apple's path to the mainstream living room may be beyond Apple TV, it's not the Mac mini.
Ross Rubin is executive director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
No blu ray = no buy.
Hey Steve.. I like the bag of hurt.
@SolidSnake Even if it had BluRay, its over a grand shipped after you add basic things like bumping up to a regular 4GB of RAM (2GB in a 64bit OS in 2010, really?), and wireless keyboard and mouse, which for old Intel stock and an integrated GPU is pretty outrageous.
@Ducman69 thats apple for you, a pc for someone that doesnt research. anyway , pc on my tv? i have a crt 480p it sucks, pc on tv sucks for me (i think i just repeated myself) its fllickery and all that other crap. so useless for me.
@huskie fluff
"Howeve,r" ahah nice one big E
@SolidSnake
"Second, while Apple may have succumbed to the licensing fees of HDMI"
HDMI Licensing is 4 cents per port or $10,000 annually.
Are you seriously claiming that this fee will somehow put a monetary dent in Apple in any quantifiable way whatsoever!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?
BluRay is a different story. Optical Media, in my opinion, is becoming obsolete for consumers. It still has a purpose for data archiving, but really, what do we need optical media for?
I have FiOS at my house -- I can download an entire blu ray disc in about 1-2 hours...and that is just the raw contents on the disc itself without being compressed. With compression, that time can change to 30 minutes, and even less...I have no need whatsoever for optical media...FiOS TV provides Movies \ Shows on demand, and what they lack in their catalog, torrent and other content provider sites on the internet fill in the gaps, and then some.
@Ducman69
The GPU in the Mac Mini is a Nvidia mobility chip, not Intel Integrated. These types of gpu's are par for the course on mini PC's, not just the mini. In fact, there are lots of mini pc's that use intel integrated, which is far worse.
Yeah, the ram offering could be better. But, once again, that amount of ram is par for the course on mini PC's. Most of them can only go up to 4 gigs at max and use ddr2 800's. The mini uses ddr3 1066 and can be upgraded to 8 gigs. On top of that, you can install your own ram now.
@DoctarPeppar - Most BR movies are in the 35GB range, and that of course already includes compression (using the most capable codec available). Compressing if further usually yields garbage, and people with terrible rips that think they're seeing the real thing.
We are years out from average consumers streaming down 35GB movies. Of course there are a lot of services that stream media, but they then badget their sub-DVD quality stream "720p" and somehow people eat it up.
@SolidSnake - No Blu Ray is irrelevant. I'm over physical discs of any kind. The big problem with this box is the price. Windows 7 is not that bad. It's not like they are competing with Vista or XP, like they were when the Mac Mini first came out. This thing has to be $499. Sale are going to disappoint. Hopefully they'll figure that out quickly and drop the price in a few months.
@Liquidmark Intel integrated is worse than Nvidia integrated, but both are obviously substandard to a dedicated Nvidia or ATI laptop video card.
Not that its required, but its only because of the pricepoint that I brought it up. When you hit the four digits mark, my expectations go up.
@dforbes 35GB for a 1080p movie that is compress w/ h.264 is WAY over kill. You could easily bring that to about 10GB with NO noticeable degradation in quality. The only reason studios don't, it because they don't need to. The Blu-Ray spec allows for MPEG2 as well. Some early BR's used MPEG2 and they DID need the space. Bringing the H.264 to about 4-5GB per/2hrs is where you start to see slight degradation, but it's still 1000x better than the HD people are watching over cable and SAT, so most people wont see the difference. At these size/quality ratios, normal consumers will be happy and it's easy enough to stream.
@DoctarPeppar
herewegoagain.jpg
Nice try defending Apple by saying that physical media is obsolete. The day I can get the same level of both audio and video quality from the internet, in a reasonable time, is the day I will call it obsolete.
Seeing how things are going in the US, I don't think it will happen any time soon.
But hey, keep rationalizing your love for Apple.
@Blizaine
Very true, can get great results w/ a bit of compression, but I don't think the average American home has the bandwidth, patience, or equipment.
According to arstechnica, US broadband is currently at 4.8Mbps, or 1.9Mbps if you average in the rest. Too much buffer w/ risk of failure and would tie up an internet connection for quite some time, provided they have the gear.
For the average Joe, popping in one of the three Netflix disks they have at home that week, or picked up while at Walmart or Redbox kiosk (we have em at Krogers, McDonalds, Valero gas stations etc) is more convenient.
@Ducman
It's $937 with 4GB RAM and wireless keyboard and mouse, not "over a grand".
@spin cycle Proceed to checkout homeslice. =p
Its $1014.30 shipped to Houston, TX. As I said, "its over a grand shipped". Price to your door is usually what people care about. Only exception is Delaware and NH right?
@spin cycle Even 699 is too expensive. I'm sorry but this shrinking in size is completely unnecessary. Is it really necessary to cut down the size of your htpc when it's sitting next to comparative mammoths like the ps3/360 and possibly a receiver? And there is no doubt that they're are marketing this device as an htpc device since it now has an hdmi port, which makes it no longer a desktop device.
To be honest, who cares. Even the vastly superior Windows 7 media center doesn't sell well to general consumers as exclusive htpc's. So this thing, with a greatly reduced feature set compared to media center won't sell well as an htpc, nor does it change the htpc market in any way.
@Ducman:
And Alabama, Alaska (Juneau, Fairbanks and Ancorage), Arizona (parts), Arkansas, Colorado (not Denver though), Connecticut, Florida (parts), Georgia (parts), Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois (maybe in parts, probably not though), Iowa (parts), Kansas (parts), Kentucky, Louisiana (parts), Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri (parts), Montana, New Mexico (parts), North Carolina (in theory parts), North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Puerto Rico (parts), South Dakota, Utah (parts), Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (parts).
With a 6.5% or lower sales tax rate, it comes to under $1K.
And did you consider that it is possible to buy the same wireless keyboard and mouse you would buy for a PC and use it on this Mac to save money?
@Ruben:
Yes, $699 is a lot.
It has HDMI, but it comes with an HDMI->DVI adapter and it has a DisplayPort also which can run a 2560x1600 (30") display. So I think the argument that it's no longer a desktop PC is wrong.
Yes, size does matter for HTPCs. And quiet does also and this is quiet.
I can understand this is pricey, but for people for whom the price isn't an issue, it does have some advantages.
I only know one person who actually runs Windows Media Center. Most people I know who want an HTPC want it to view online content (both legal and pirated), not to DVR cable.
@Blizaine
That may be true ... I just have yet to see it. I can notice a difference between my Blu-Ray discs and the same movie that has been compressed in the 8-12GB range.
@Ducman69 Yeah, it's a little expensive, but Jesus Christ, it's not like you can't buy your RAM (or keyboard, or mouse) from ANYBODY besides Apple. The new design makes it a freakin' snap to swap out RAM.
@DoctarPeppar
well consider yourself lucky that you get fios, other places dont have anything faster than cable and even when you pay for for more than 15mb a second or what ever it is we dont get close to that. i think ive gotten like 1mb per second and i think it jumped once to 1.5mb per second. so you can download a blue ray movie in a few hours it takes me at least a day. so physical media still wins out. until i get that sweet fast ass internet everyone keeps talking about
@roflcopter
I don't love apple, I'm just saying that I personally have no use for optical media because of my internet connection.
@roflcopter
An optical drive is obsolete for me because I'm playing uncompressed 1080p content on a MacMini using PLEX. No loss of quality and no need for physical media. PLEX has hooks for Apple's Hardware Accelerated H.264 Decoding and my MacMini laughs at any content I throw at it.
Storage and the MacMini is a pretty steep barrier to entry, but there is a growing community of people supporting this setup, so although this is a small segment, its a group Apple recognizes. This is one of many small uses for the MacMini and many of the other uses doesn't rely on Blu-Ray or optical drives to be successful.
Vinyl is the only physical media allowed in the house. And once again, my music and video content matches the quality of the physical media you're arguing still needs to exist.
@QandNotU:
You are not playing uncompressed 1080p. Uncompressed 1080p would be 20GB/minute (373MB/sec).
@SolidSnake
If they're going to have an optical drive in it then there is no good reason it shouldn't be Blu-Ray.
They need to add 1080p streaming to the app store. Of course still give the option for 720p for those whose connections aren't fast enough.
FrontRow has a lot of room for improvement. It could use its own app store.
Finally iPod touch/iPhone should be used for search text input and remote function.
If I had a large television and apple made the product above then I would buy it.
@Gordon
Still, you can't upgrade the HDD...
@Guimo
I'm not sure I understand the Bluray issue. HTPCs are for people that torrent their stuff. Why should it be an issue?
No ordinary non-geeky person want a full-fledged computer by their TV!
@QandnotU
Dude that is complete bollocks. You are not playing uncompressed 1080HD. The minimum requirement for no dropped frames is a 5 HDD RAID 0 hooked to esata and You better have a seriously good RAID case and controller not some no-brand crap.
Regardless that the mini has no esata and no slot to install a card. Minimum spec to do that for a current Apple computer is a MacPro or a 17" Macbook Pro. In either case a card is required.
I edit genuine lossless 1080HD, each frame is stored as TIFF LZW stored as a stream in AppleTIFF. I use this method because it is the lowest filesize (a tenth of uncompressed 422) and lossless (as in you can check individual pixels of source to end product and they are identical).
Finally, such a setup is completely POINTLESS unless you are playing back your own content and it was captured as RAW from a RED or as still frames from a DSLR (my method) or have the guts to sustain input quality through edit/effects processing cause any other content you are playing is already compressed to the crapper.
Bluray is shite compared to uncompressed.
That you even mentioned uncompressed in a comment against this article is ridiculous.
@dforbes It's all about the x264 rips. Seriously, they're amazing quality.
@SolidSnake That's what my PS3 is for. I already have 3 devices capable of playing DVDs hooked up to my TV, I don't need to start matching Blu-Ray players.
@Cy Starkman
My apologies, I'm playing 1080p content that is at the same quality as your Blu-Ray disc.
@Gordon Speaking of cheaper alternatives, the Zino HD just popped up on Slickdeals:
http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/35950/dell-zino-hd-amd-dual-core-athlon-x2-3250e-3gb-ddr2-250gb-hd-blu-ray-romdvrw-radeon-hd-3200-win-vista-home-basic-64-bit
$284 shipped to your door (thats with a BluRay drive)
Nice article...apart from the grammar and typos.
@meeku
And the fact that it isn't justifying anything...
Also the factual inaccuracies.
The mini is not the only Mac with no display, although I know the Pro is easy to forget when it hasn't been refreshed in so long. Also, the mini retains two versions, not one - there remains a server version that includes an OSX Server license and an extra HDD in place of an optical drive.
@starkruzr He said the only mac without a display, but with HDMI by default.
@blongo "...has adorned its only display-free Mac with an HDMI port". It's pretty clear he was referring to the Mini as the only Mac without a display, which ignores the existence of the Mac Pro.
@starkruzr
It's kinda stupid for Engadget to hint it would be ok used as a media center. You're far better off getting a cheap media streaming box. This is way too much money to relegate to such a basic task.
This is a desktop computer that uses laptop parts so is as powerful as a laptop. People complaining about performance should note that 80% of computer buyers choose laptops now and aren't complaining.
If you want a quad Core i7 with a Radeon 5850, go get one. Just don't expect it to use under 10W idle and under 30W maxed out and btw, this machine will play Crysis on medium using under 30W.
It is expensive for the performance you get, no one would deny that but this product is clearly about size and it's pretty well built. $100 off and I'll pick one up.
Alternative? Considering it costs $699, that'd be a NO
It's pretty easy to build a massively powerful system for $500. Getting it in this form factor is something else entirely.
@futuredavid on the other handle, you can easily put something decently powerful in a shuttle form factor. not as compact but still a good size
@futuredavid Unless you value your shelf space at several hundred dollars per square inch, so what? There are any number of mini-ITX cases that, while not AS small, are more than small ENOUGH to fit comfortably in any component rack. If someone came out with a HTPC that was half an inch smaller than the mini in every dimension, would it be worth an extra $200? Of course not. At a certain point, you're just paying for pointless design - and the mini is about $300 past that point.
@futuredavid
This article is about an AppleTV alternative.
All that requires is a $200 Revo. A Revo is pretty much an AppleTV with a GPU upgrade.
@billobob
So there you go. Either way, its a compromise. With Shuttle you compromise on size, with Apple you compromise on price. Apple's always been a Premier brand. Stop whining.
What a terrible review. I could have done as well just by looking at the price.
Honestly, if you own an Apple TV right now I have to question whether you're a terribly choosy customer anyway. You did notice the only thing it does well is help you buy media from Apple, right? And by well, I mean "only up to 720p".
@spin cycle
Well, I use mine more as an iPod replacement in the home and as a media streamer from my Windows Home Server. I rent movies from it only occasionally.
I'm typically not a big fan of Apple products based solely on their price to technology ratio, but the AppleTV is the one thing I wish Apple spent more time on (In it's current form, I mean. The rumor that the new AppleTV is going to run a modified version of the iPhone OS has me scared for the future of the product)
@spin cycle
I'm with Pacey. I have two ATV's (and a WDTV HD Live). I've never purchased or rented a movie from Apple. But it lets me share my 200+ movie collection from iTunes to my TV. And it it does so with an interface that is beautiful and intuitive. The WDTV is nice in that it plays 1080p, but the interface is equally as bad as everything else out on the market.
@spin cycle Apple TV is a very important part of my home theatre system. It's used for 90% of my movie viewing and 75% of TV shows. I use it for streaming music and the UI is one of the best there is.
Until something better comes along I'll stick with it. I also have a windows HTPC I use for Netflix and Hulu. Hulu is seldom used.
HA!, i got ragged on for saying that a simple network media player could satisfy the needs of many instead of a mac mini as a HTPC just because it wasn't made by apple. I like the way u guys think ;)
It costs WAY too much to be justified by anyone other than Apple fanatics and poor Art students...
The Mac line really does need bluray. The Mac Mini would be a perfect set top box with Plex, Boxee, and a Bluray player