Mac mini Core Solo: First Impressions
It may
surprise you, based on my initial and following
response to the news of the new Mac mini, that I acquired one for myself.My initial reactions were largely in response to the elevated price of the entry level model in comparison to the new features offered. Nevertheless, I like the mini as a development box to run odd experiments on, so I placed my hands on a Mac mini Core Solo this weekend. This initial post will be my first impressions of the device after having toyed with it for the better half of a day. I can sum up the experience in one easy to understand sentence: I'm considering taking it back before the Apple Store's 14 day return period expires.
There are
several little oddities and one big problem that are making me think that either I got a dud, or Apple let this little
Mac out into the wild a bit too soon. If you look at the picture accompanying this post, you'll see the Mac mini
doesn't fully comprehend what it is. It thinks it is an 1.5Ghz Core Duo in the About this Mac panel, but the System
Profiler, pictured to with this paragraph, knows the secret truth. This could be a very minimal glitch, and not
something over which to return the machine, but if you read on after the break, you'll see more reason, including Front
Row performance that is much below what any of us, I think, expected.More after the break...
It looks like the Safari that comes with the new Mac mini is slightly newer than the one that was rolled out to my new iMac in the recent surge of updates, and as a result, my favorite little Safari helper, Saft, isn't working. This, again, is no big deal, and in fact is not even a glitch in the Mac mini, but just something that I thought worth noting for the curious amongst you.
The real disappointment with this device is Front Row's performance. Although you may be able to install
Front Row on any Mac, I'm not sure if you'll want to. All the shows I purchased from the iTMS play fine streaming
through Front Row, as do all the video podcasts I've downloaded, but absolutely none of the other iPod and
iTunes compatible videos in my iMac's iTunes Library—which by the way play fine on my iPod, in iTunes, and even
on the new Mac mini if I go to the trouble of manually transferring them over to it—will stream over the much
praised magic of Bonjour savvy Front Row. Instead, the screen goes blank, and if I am lucky after about 30 seconds to a
minute a screen comes up saying that the server couldn't play this particular file. If I'm not lucky, I have to hit
Option Apple ESC to jump out of Front Row and find iTunes spiraling a multi-colored beach ball of death. I then
have to force iTunes to quit. The problem could be associated with the miniscule 512MBs of RAM included with the Mac
mini, but these files vary from the easily managed 3 minute clip from a local news affiliate featuring my father-in-law
all the way to full length DVDs that I own and have ripped to be viewable on my iPod, so it would appear to be some
other problem. Why does the $1.99 purchased episode of Lost stream fine, but an episode of Arrested
Development that plays fine locally in iTunes and on my iPod not?This is not unique to videos. iPhoto streaming has some pictures coming through fine, while others just return a black screen. Also, Front Row cannot connect to any of this media if you don't have iTunes and/or iPhoto running on the machine hosting the media and actively sharing the media. You'd be better off to fake it all with something like a Linksys NSLU2, a large USB hard drive, and a SMB share.
On the upside, World of Warcraft, though not as fast as on the iMac, is playable on the Mac mini, and better yet the small form factor of the Mac mini means it can sit nicely underneath my 32-inch LCD TV and I can play via my bluetooth keyboard and mouse in large, while reclining on my couch. Overall, I'm disappointed, and hoping that there are some Software Updates in the works that will fix these problems before I end up returning the Mac mini. I want to keep it. I mean, I already have VNC up and running and have started testing a few ports of things on it. It works well as a nice little UNIX-based box for me to experiment with away from my production machine. Unfortunately, if Front Row continues to languish with these problems, why would I keep this more expensive model, when I could buy a PPC version on the cheap for a good $200 or more less?
Stay tuned, as I intend to do a full video review of the device over the next several days to show you all the problems and cool bits I've discovered.
Update: I forgot another image in the original post. As you can see, it depicts Internet Connect clearly showing the Mac mini connected to my Airport network while also saying that I am connected to the Internet via Ethernet. That plus the Core Duo misreading make me feel a bit uneasy about the hardware in this mini.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Steve said 10:07PM on 3-05-2006
This all sounds like software issues instead of a problem with the hardware. Why would you take it back? They've already seeded 10.4.6 which may fix all of these problems (or may not). I don't really understand why you blame the hardware for obvious software issues.
Everyone has known all along that early Intel Mac adopters are going to run into some glitches.
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C.K. Sample, III said 10:11PM on 3-05-2006
Steve, a brand new machine that out of the box has software issues is reason enough to return. I mean, it thinks it is a core duo! schizophrenic computer.
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BeeCee said 10:18PM on 3-05-2006
Your review is dead on.I had bought the mini with the goal of having it my living room hub., but after a few days of having it, I realized it is not worth its price at all. I have my mini packed up and ready to take back to the Apple store tomorrow. When i first hooked it up to my samung 50 DLP", played with front row, it was like this is totally cool, then I tried to play my videos. not only did it take like 2-3 minutes it felt like to load, some videos would not play, even though they played fine on my quad G5, and my power book.It had serious troubl playing some of the songs in my itunes catalog.When I broke down my T.C.O for mini, external hard drive, second monitor, it was same price as the 17' duo core iMAC, and heck that comes with 160 HD as opposed to 60', comes with built in isight. and a full extra core processor! so sorry mini, they media hub dream we all desire, is not ready for prime time, at least with the imac I can still mirror/extend desktop display, and have way more horse power
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Ruben said 10:20PM on 3-05-2006
I do not know if this helps or not, I was having the same problem streaming videos from iTunes to iTunes. It would get stuck and not show anything if it wasn't a video from the apple store. It was fixed with iTunes 6.04, BOTH machines must have iTunes 6.04 installed. It might be you are not running iTunes 6.04 on the box front row is streaming from. Or it could be that they haven't copied the fix from itunes into frontrow yet. Hope this helps.
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DEBBIE Ripps said 10:27PM on 3-05-2006
I just installed FrontRow on my first generation mac mini and was experiencing the same problems you outlined with your new computer. I have the new intel core duo mini on order and hope things get a little smoother as this will be the computer on my living room plasma display. But alas, the problems with Front Row are not with your new machine! I don't know if it's a memory issue or just some bonjour kinks which need tweeking....but I'm confident apple will make it right. How's that for blind optimism?
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atomic16 said 10:29PM on 3-05-2006
Where can you get a mac mini for $200! I am looking for a cheap computer to give as a gift, it will actualy be this persons first computer so I thought that having a mac would be best for them, though I cant spend $1000 on it, only up to $500. If you could give me a link or somthing to the ppc mac mini for 200 that would be real great. all this person will be doing is web browsing and email so a PPC will do fine
thanks
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varun said 10:45PM on 3-05-2006
CK, it sounds like network bottleneck issues more than anything else. the proof positive seems to be that these files play well over locally on the mini, but not over the network, streaming. could be either latency issues (which are quite annoyingly present in every rendezvous app i've ever used) or maybe just a very high bit rate?
additionally, as far as the core solo/duo problem, it's probably a missing string in the lookup table. (or for the conspiracy theorists out there, the correct string, for a mac mini that never made it out the market - perhaps originally the lower end mac mini was supposed to be powered by a 1.5ghz core solo.) in either case, i suspect 10.4.6 will clear it up.
give it some time to grow on you - it took me a long while to figure out what niche my mac mini g4 fit into in my windows life :)
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Kaegan Donnelly said 10:46PM on 3-05-2006
To #6
"Unfortunately, if Front Row continues to languish with these problems, why would I keep this more expensive model, when I could buy a PPC version on the cheap for a good $200 or more less?"
If you read this correctly, you'll see he meant a mac mini for $200 cheaper, not one for merely $200.
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atomic16 said 10:53PM on 3-05-2006
oh, I was thinking that but was being hopefull, oh well, if I cant get a mac mini for 200 Im going to have to go with windows since a laptop or small computer is what this person needs, Oh well.
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Steven Noble said 10:54PM on 3-05-2006
Although this is certainly not a solution to your streaming woes I'm curious if anyone has tried playing with "Media Central" on these new mini's. Has anyone fiddled with getting the apple remote working in it?
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TLD said 11:00PM on 3-05-2006
atomic16, CK said a PPC mini was $200 LESS than an Intel mini. Not that it was $200. :-P
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Sean said 11:01PM on 3-05-2006
How could you say that $100 price increase is too much? They added in Airport Extreme + Bluetooth 2.0, a hell of a processor upgrade, bigger hard drives, remote control, gigabit ethernet, etc... I know you were hoping for DVR, but that would have been a hell of a lot more expensive than $100 extra.
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starwxrwx said 11:05PM on 3-05-2006
great review.
i was thinking of upgrading to an intel mac mini from my tvix (external hdd/divx player). but I have front row installed on my dual 2ghz powermac, and its a slow and painful beast, and it sounds like the streaming isnt great enough to overcome the crappiness of the interface. I hate how it requires iTunes/iPhoto to be running.
I'll stick to my Tvix, even if it can't play HD-res xvids, for watching on my tv. On my desktop I'll stick to Quicktime Pro, whose controls are far superior to front row
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GPSNavX said 11:12PM on 3-05-2006
What does the CHUG System Preferences "Processor" display? Before the last update of CHUG, it showed Pentium on my iMac Core Duo. Now it correctly displays Core Duo.
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GPSNavX said 11:17PM on 3-05-2006
I actually meant CHUD..
http://developer.apple.com/tools/download/
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Terrin said 11:23PM on 3-05-2006
I love Macs, but under the circumstances you discribe I would return it. It is possible this is a weird kink just with your Mac. If so, it may never get fixed. You would then be stuck with this computer. Buying a new computer is supposed to be a joyful experience, and if it is anything less, the computer should be returned.
I, however, would take the picture you shared here to the Apple store with you here, and ask the Genuises about these issues. Perhaps, it is something Apple is aware of. Perhaps, it is not a problem with the Macs at all.
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David said 11:36PM on 3-05-2006
Re: your updated Airport/Ethernet image. There's nothing saying your machine can't be connected to an Airport network (but not routing to the Internet through it) while being connected to the Internet via Ethernet.
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Logan said 11:44PM on 3-05-2006
There's a new version of iTunes that "addresses stability and performance issues related to Front Row."
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Michael Sykes said 11:47PM on 3-05-2006
Just wanted to point out, as David/#16 did, that you can certainly be connected to a Wireless network, and also connected via Ethernet - I do this 5 days a week when at work, where I typically use wired because of the much faster speeds.
You can re-arrange the priority of the various connection types from within the Network System Preferences Pane, to determine which interface traffic will actually be routed through when you are connected in more than one way.
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Chase said 11:48PM on 3-05-2006
The core solos, use a two-core chip, with one core disabled. Seems to be an oversight in Profiler, not a hardware problem.
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