AndAudio.com

viaviavia 寫:我想到的是 unix base 這一點，還有八台疊在一起差不多
是一台 pc 的體積。

八台聯合運作起來作單純資料計算轉移工作，應該也很嚇
人了喔。

MoLtoSoLo 寫:小子愚魯, 不知道此款電腦好在哪裡?
上網? 音樂撥放?
之前他們的 cube 也很炫.
PC 也有類似的東西.

devwild 寫:My 2 cents.

I use a dual G5 as my primary desktop. I have played around with tv cards in it, and I also have a shuttle based HTPC with a Hauppage PVR 250.

If you want to use the mini for divx playback, dvds, itunes, and web browsing on an HDTV or SDTV, I think it will be a cool solution. Especially if you order it with bluetooth and use a bluetooth keyboard/remote solution.

If you want to do TV recording, especially HDTV, it will be much, much more to your advantage to build an HTPC. My observations from my experience:

1) All TV cards/units I have tried and investigated are as much as twice the cost of an equivalent PCI card solution in a PC, and often not as powerful. There is no question about this, as even the mac reviewers will tell you - the EyeTV line is your only real solution if you want decent quality, and they are very expensive.

2) There is a distinct lack of proper PVR software that could handle an HTPC solution on the Mac. Without software like SageTV, BeyondTV, Windows Media Center Edition, MythTV for linux, etc., the Mac actually lacks a lot of the convenient user experience that even a Linux box could hold over it in the HTPC department.

3) Any TV solution for a mini is external, this is just more cable clutter, and I have more than enough of this as it is, dunno bout you.

4) The Mac Mini has no audio input, no multi channel output, and no digital output. Most HDTV owners have decent sound systems, and digital, 5.1/7.1 audio is a must. This means yet another external device and more cable clutter (and since the Mini only has one firewire and two usb ports, we're running out of space, or adding more clutter with hubs... oh, how's our power strip doing?). Certainly almost no one who frequents Head-Fi would be content with the onboard audio of the mini.

5) The mini lacks the horsepower to play HDTV video smoothly. If you read reviews of the EyeTV 500 you will note that they suggest an absolute minimum of a G5 for playback, a dual G5 for good results. I think people underestimate the horsepower involved in HD video. I could play back 640x480 divx on a P2 300 (with postprocessing off), but the new high def windows media struggles on a P4 2Ghz.

6) The price of the mini's small size is not only in the need for external parts, but in the internal parts it comes with:

The hard drive is a 4200rpm laptop hard drive (this was confirmed at macworld), available in a maximum of 80GB-- Neither the size, nor the speed are appropriate for large stream video recording.

Also a problem here is the single DIMM slot. I personally suggest a minimum of 512MB of ram for OSX, and 1GB from Apple doubles the cost of the machine. You also can't buy the memory yourself, because it isn't considered user replacable on the mini, voiding your applecare if you open the case yourself.

Finally, the video card on the mini is a 32MB Radeon 9200. This is fine for SDTV or for something like the iBook, but when you get to resolutions of 1280x720 with multiple applications and media playback, you have a potential problem. OSX/Quartz Extreme renders windows as textures and utilizes this to perform all sorts of great effects, but this eats up video memory. If it runs out, it starts swapping to main memory, which could be swapping to disk if you only have 256 MB of ram, and the end result is a huge temporary performance hit which kills the experience OSX strives to give. (this has been discussed in multiple articles based on performance on the G5 desktops with different cards)


All the parts and solutions above quickly bring the mini up close to the same price as a Shuttle or similar, for less overall horsepower. With the possibility of the external TV Card, Sound card, Firewire HD, and the big power block the mini comes with, you may not be saving any space. Don't forget to add applecare if you want more than a year's warranty. No, you don't get that support when you build your own, but the only parts I've had fail regularly do... 3-5 year on the hard drive, lifetime on the memory, 3-life on video cards, etc. These don't always stand on OEM parts, especially hard drives. More work, but it still saves you the money of replacing parts outright.

So long story short, no, I don't think this hits the HTPC market, as it exists, very hard. It may however open more of a market for average consumers who just want some basic audio/video coolness (itunes visualizations look sweet on a big tv). If someone came to me saying they were going to replace their shuttle with a mac mini, I'd ask them to at least do a double take and make sure that's what they wanted. The mini is by its very nature limited in it's capabilities.

dev*

viaviavia 寫:我是更有興趣知道會不會改變 ms 對 xbox 的想法，
恢復 xbox 的 bios 跟一些接頭，就是一台小 pc 了，
外觀重新規劃一下，就很美了。

只是 ms 會這樣想嗎？

MoLtoSoLo 寫:

viaviavia 寫:我是更有興趣知道會不會改變 ms 對 xbox 的想法，
恢復 xbox 的 bios 跟一些接頭，就是一台小 pc 了，
外觀重新規劃一下，就很美了。

只是 ms 會這樣想嗎？

呵, 只要 Apple iMini 賣的好, Xbox2 一定就是您說的那個樣.

MoLtoSoLo 寫:小子愚魯, 不知道此款電腦好在哪裡?
上網? 音樂撥放?
之前他們的 cube 也很炫.
PC 也有類似的東西.

emil 寫:

MoLtoSoLo 寫:小子愚魯, 不知道此款電腦好在哪裡?
上網? 音樂撥放?
之前他們的 cube 也很炫.
PC 也有類似的東西.

小弟絕得這東西的定位在於電腦的入門者
不需要很強大的功能, 就是文書處理
上網, 一般的多媒體應用, 影像剪輯, 錄製, 相片處理等等
配合Mac的軟體, 處理效能跟效率都好上PC不少
而且上手簡單, 對於電腦沒有使用經驗的使用來說
上手速度比較快, 而且因為系統封閉, 硬體跟軟體的搭配程度
會比拼裝的PC穩定一些, 售後服務跟維修也比較方便
至於使用者要不要花上一般PC近1.5倍的價格去購入
那就見仁見智了, 不過說句老實話, 小弟用2G的PC跟512的Ram
配上Win2k跑PhotoShop效能還沒有一台800mhz的G4跟512Ram好
要是一個業餘的影像工作者, 以這個價格, 買一台Mac電腦來另外
作處理其實很划算~

MoLtoSoLo 寫:這玩意是用 4200 轉的筆記型硬碟, 只有一個 RAM 插槽, 256mb 的
RAM, (512mb $300 USD, 1024mb $over 600 都貴得要死)
重點是不能自己換, 自己開了就沒有保固了...
"多媒體應用, 影像剪輯, 錄製, 相片處理" 可能有點乏力吧?

不過我認為這是一個開始, 慢慢地我們會看到更多產品出來, 第一代的
產品能這樣, ok 啦.

另外我想 XBox 在日本賣得不好是因為軟體的問題吧? 畢竟日本是遊
樂器的大本營, 要開拓市場不容易阿.

MoLtoSoLo 寫:
這玩意是用 4200 轉的筆記型硬碟, 只有一個 RAM 插槽, 256mb 的
RAM, (512mb $300 USD, 1024mb $over 600 都貴得要死)
重點是不能自己換, 自己開了就沒有保固了...
"多媒體應用, 影像剪輯, 錄製, 相片處理" 可能有點乏力吧?

不過我認為這是一個開始, 慢慢地我們會看到更多產品出來, 第一代的
產品能這樣, ok 啦.

另外我想 XBox 在日本賣得不好是因為軟體的問題吧? 畢竟日本是遊
樂器的大本營, 要開拓市場不容易阿.

MoLtoSoLo 寫:

emil 寫:小弟絕得這東西的定位在於電腦的入門者
不需要很強大的功能, 就是文書處理
上網, 一般的多媒體應用, 影像剪輯, 錄製, 相片處理等等
配合Mac的軟體, 處理效能跟效率都好上PC不少
而且上手簡單, 對於電腦沒有使用經驗的使用來說

這玩意是用 4200 轉的筆記型硬碟, 只有一個 RAM 插槽, 256mb 的
RAM, (512mb $300 USD, 1024mb $over 600 都貴得要死)
重點是不能自己換, 自己開了就沒有保固了...
"多媒體應用, 影像剪輯, 錄製, 相片處理" 可能有點乏力吧?

emil 寫:小弟認為Mac跟PC在媒體後製的處理上面不能放在同一個立足點來看
舉個個人的使用經驗, 約5年多前, 有次因為需要處理高解晰的底片掃描檔
(滾筒掃描機的one pixel scan方式)輸出檔是10mb大的Jpeg圖檔
在PhotoShop裡面一次開20個, 調到25%顯示比例並排
用一台500MHz的G3跟384Ram, 工作完全沒有問題, 不會Delay
同樣的時刻, 要用當時的PC光辦到不會Delay就很難了,

Mac的軟硬體搭配程度還有記憶體利用上的效能比PC好上不少,
這點是不容否認的, 對於長時間工作的穩定度來說也是,
另外對於完全沒接觸過電腦的人上手也較於方便,
這也是我推薦這台給入門者(尤其是女生)或是業餘媒體工作者的原因~

您可以參考一下~ 商品都有他的切入點, 不應只靠外型就可以打下市場, 小弟是這麼認為的,

或許乍看之下這個成功的商品(如果賺錢就算是成功的話)
如果在您的眼中沒有成功的因素, 那有可能是您還沒發現,
不一定是單靠一些薄弱的因素及運氣而得來的~

個人淺見, 如有冒犯, 還望包涵

MoLtoSoLo 寫:
您好

您太客氣了, 討論就是希望能知道自己所不知道的, 看到自己忽略的部
分. 非常謝謝您的見解.

Mac 的切入點一直是影音編輯, 從之前的專業市場到現在的娛樂市場,
Mac 一直有這個硬體軟體整合有效率的優勢.

以我的觀察, 要做影音編輯的人都不會省那幾百塊而屈就 iMac, 大部
分都直上 Power 系列.

(老美花錢可爽快的呢, 反正一堆信用卡...)

(可是其實 iMac 就夠強了阿??, 這是文化性的問題, 有誰規定一定要
有 6000cc 的 SUV 才能從 A 點到 B 點? 但是這些吃油怪獸是美國
賣最好的車種; 又有多少人把自己昂貴的 SUV 拿去上山下海了? 太
少了. 美國人花錢是為了買自由, 我可以這樣, 我可以拿這個那樣, 但
是我要不要做這些就是另一回事了...)

MacMini 對這些人來說似乎不是太大的誘惑.

而在學校, 圖書館中同時有 Mac, PC 的機器的話, 通常都是 PC 的先
被搶完. 大部分理由是 PC 的行銷太好了, 大家都習慣了.

如果 Mac 外型不搶眼的話, 我想 Apple 在消費者市場早就不見了.

Mac 之前的策略是保護暨有的顧客以及吸引對 PC 不滿的用戶, 自從 i
系列 (iMac, iPod...etc) 出來之後他要開始從根部著手, 他要第一次
買家. 這些買家最在意的是外型,

這是把電腦帶入生活的一個開始, MicroSoft 也在做, 但是沒有適當的
硬體配合, Apple 的 MacMini 似乎成功得多.

我期待看到更成熟的產品.

PS. 其實另外一個很大的市場是美國的教育工業, Mac 在教育工業裡
有非常重要的腳色. 我想很快就可以看到一堆圖書館, 學校有一堆
MacMini 了.