Other Sites
Mini Media Mac: mini Land-line
Benchmarks: Intel Mac mini Scores A Mixed Bag
Mac mini With DVR Capabilities A Rumor
The Mac mini From A Gamer's Perspective
The mini's Graphics
Apple Bitten By Own Words
First Intel Mac Mini Benchmark Trickles In
Mini Media Mac: mini Land-line
MacMerc reports:
Combining your mini with a USB Skype handset and Skype's cheap call-out service can turn your mini into a virtual land-line with long distance calling rates no traditional phone company can beat. Forget paying a monthly fee. For about $4/month you can even buy a phone number for your Skype account and have people call you from land-line phones. And with more than 40 million members, you'll be able to talk to tons of Skype users for free.
For the full report visit here.
http://www.macmerc.com/articles/Mini_Media_Mac/350
Benchmarks: Intel Mac mini Scores A Mixed Bag
MacWorld's James Galbraith reports:
Last Tuesday, Apple unveiled the newest member of its product line to receive an Intel brain transplant: the Mac mini.
With a choice between a 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo or 1.5GHz Core Solo processor, these new minis replace the current models built with either a 1.42GHz or 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processor. Macworld Lab has put these two models to the test, and the results—including an updated version of our Speedmark benchmarking suite—are something of a mixed bag.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.macworld.com/2006/03/firstlooks/minibenchmarks/index.php
Mac mini With DVR Capabilities A Rumor
ubergizmo.com reports:
Apple has refuted rumors of a new Mac minu with built-in DVR capabilities. Even though adding such a video-recording functionality is not difficult, Apple does not plan to tread on TiVo territory anytime soon. This should enable TiVo executives sleep easier at night, but who’s to say Apple will remain at that stance forever?
For the full report visit here.
The Mac mini From A Gamer's Perspective
Macworld's Peter Cohen reports:
If there’s one thing that’s abundantly clear from this past week, it’s that the Mac mini is very different things to different people—and that includes Apple.....
Much of the debate has centered around Apple’s use of Intel integrated graphics on the motherboard, in place of a discrete graphics chip like the old Mac mini, which featured an ATI Radeon 9200 graphics processing unit and 32MB of dedicated VRAM.....
In our preliminary tests, the new Mac mini (the Core Duo model in particular) also seems a lot more capable of playing back high definition video. That also bodes well for people who want to use their Intel Mac mini as the cornerstone of a tiny Mac-based media center.
The GMA 950 has a number of downsides, however.....
Up until Tuesday, Apple pooh-poohed integrated graphics as inferior. As my colleague Rob Griffiths noted in his recent editorial, Apple’s Mac mini Web page read (in part):
"Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they’re good for 2D games only. That’s because an “integrated Intel graphics” chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You’d have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don’t even have an open slot to let you add one."
For the full report visit here.
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/gameroom/2006/03/minigamer/index.php?lsrc=mwrss
The mini's Graphics
Macworld's Jonathan Seff reports:
After having about 24 hours to play with the new Intel-based Mac mini, I got the chance to pick the brain of Apple's senior director of desktops, Tom Boger. With senior editor (and game expert) Peter Cohen also on the line, I asked Boger about a topic on many people's minds—the new Mac mini's integrated graphics chip.
Unlike the previous models, which included ATI Radeon 9200 graphics with 32MB of dedicated DDR RAM, the new mini uses Intel's GMA950 graphics core, which doesn't include its own graphics memory—instead, it shares its RAM with the Mac mini's main memory. Because of this, many people have been calling the new mini's graphics a 'downgrade' from the last model.
Boger said the new graphics are actually a significant upgrade from the Mac mini, and pointed out that the GMA950 is programmable, allowing the Mac mini to support Tiger's Core Image features for the first time. For example, when you add a widget in Dashboard, you'll see the ripple effect on these new systems, and it simply wasn't there on the previous Mac mini models.
For the full report visit here.
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2006/03/miniboger/
Apple Bitten By Own Words
news.com.com's Ina Fried reports:
With the old G4 version of the Mac Mini, Apple made a lot out of the fact the diminuitive desktop had a standalone graphics card.
Rather than just tout its own graphics power, Apple took a swipe at many low-end Windows PCs, which use integrated graphics chips that share memory and processor power with the rest of the PC.
"Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC," Apple said. "Most say they're good for 2D games only. That's because an 'integrated Intel graphics' chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM."
That's all well and good. But now comes the new Intel-based Mac Mini. And guess what, it has integrated graphics too......
For the full report visit here:
http://news.com.com/2061-10794_3-6045343.html?part=rss&tag=6045343&subj=news
First Intel Mac Mini Benchmark Trickles In
insidemacgames.com's Evan Holt reports:
XBench's web site shows a benchmark for a user's stock 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo Mac Mini in comparison to the previous generation. 1.5GHz. The most interesting result is the OpenGL Graphics Test.
You can check it out at:
http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ID=12974
Charles W. Moore
Tags: Blogs ď Mac mini Muse ď
