Found Footage: A fanboy's Mac mini concept

What about a MacMini/Apple TV child?

If the front surface was an aux display with touch, maybe, but as it is written so shall it hopefully never be done. Personally I'd like a same 6.5 inch square form factor but 1 inch thick. And mini-Displayport takes care of the multiple display issue. What you didn't know they could daisy chain displays? Well, no one makes a compatible display setup yet but it is in the spec. And a Mini driving a 30 inch display would be awesome. I also want the Apple auxillary touch display as well. I tried running on my Xenarc as a secondary display but the touch drivers for it don't like that mode. But the 7 inch widescreen makes a sweet mac mini setup. And yes. We use mac minis in custom cases in racks, 8 to a 4U shelf in our server farms. So the proposed design would hose all those like us who still are waiting for a Apple blade system (and with the recent IBM Apple hiring snafu Apple is unlikely to even step close to that for a while, a long while...)

Bad Idea but a grate way to Fup one of the best selling points of the mac mini.

Sait,

NICE WORK!!!

Keep it up!

As for the rest of you: Keep discouraging people from sharing their creativity, because what the world really needs right now are more critics and less visionaries. Wait did I forget the sarcasm tag?

Dave

And I wanted to say, I don't know if there are any product designers here, but as a product designer I like to try new things. Of course I can take the actual mac mini look, give it a new macbook-appletv kind of look, make it a little bit smaller, etc. But that wouldn't be my design, would it? :) The people at Apple would do it, because it's their design.

There are a lot of redesigns, just by rounding the edge or changing the color, etc... You get the idea. I think the concept of 'conceptual design' is creating new things, sharing experiences, opening minds... A designer who had spent all his/her life designing cars is an experienced car designer, knows all the rules, but a designer who never designed a car but drives a lot, could see a lot of things and could come up with new ideas. This is what I did with this concept. I would be happy to discuss the problems you see in the design. Thanks...

Massive Fail!

I knew when I put the Apple logo on this design, I’d get some rough comments :) I’ll try to give some answers if I can.

First of all, I’m a huge Apple fan, I love them. And specially I’m not trying to copy or suggest a design. I’m not saying my design is better than the current Mac Mini design. I’ve been using my Mac Mini 7/24 for the last 5-6 years and as a very devoted customer I think I have the right to say what is right or what is wrong ‘for me’ with the actual design. With the Macworld coming up and the new mac mini rumors around, I thought, why not design my own kind of mac mini? It’d be fun! The whole process took approximately a week, because designing concept computers is not my job -it’s just for fun and learning- and If I’d spent 2-3 months and submitted the new mac mini design after the new one, it would be just cheating I’d be very very inspired after I saw the new one. So, yes, it’d be much much better If I’d spent more than a week on this concept, but it’s pretty detailed for a week’s job with all the price, size, dimensions, heating, etc. research.

The airflow had some bad comments, people asking me why I didn't put the fans at the bottom of the legs and dissipate the heat with vents from the top. It's a simple physics law, isn't it? But the thing most of these people aren't thinking is, this is a multi-positioned computer. And if you put fans on the legs, it wouldn't be 2 fans. It would be 4 or more fans! Because fans are circular shaped objects, the diameter of the fan should be smaller from the depth of the leg. And because the depth of the legs are so short, the fans would be ridiculously small! So one fan wouldn't be enough, there would be four fans, maybe more. And the most important part is, there are three, maybe more positions you can put a computer like this, and all of them are equally practical for their own purpose, and the airflow design is the best like this for all three positions, believe me I tried a lot :)

For the port reaching problem, the V shape has the advantage of putting your hand&fingers from both sides and especially ’seeing’ them while you plug-in the cables or sticks. If your desk arrangement doesn’t allow it, you can lift the front and see the ports. You can not do this with the actual design. With the actual mac mini, while it’s a great product, I can’t see the USB ports when I try to plug a usb device. I’d always have to check the direction of the port, the cable, feel the port, try to plug it. And because I’m a very tidy person, I don’t like the cable mess on or under my table so I hide them, tie them, then if I want to pull the mini a little bit closer, some cables unplug with the tension and I have a problem. With the ports facing front, this accident can not happen.

I got some advice from some electronic and computer engineer friends and an Apple expert friend during the process. The HDMI port, the extra HDD, power brick inside, all of them are for pushing some limits and trying to be different. They could be done or not, if you like we can discuss it and we all would learn something. But don’t do the ‘this is crap, you idiot, this is useless, stupid, pointless design’ , please. I’d love to see more and more concepts about mac mini and learn from them.

The design is not totally Apple looking because I didn’t want it to be a total Apple copycat. If I made it boxed shaped, than a lot people say, the same old boring box shaped Apple design, so what’s new with you?

Again, it’s not ‘better’ than the current design. It’s ‘better for me’ than the current design. I spent lot and lots of hours on this, I wish people didn't spend 3 minutes and judge it without thinking all the details. It’s just a concept, a visual expression of my imagination and my experiences with the product. Thanks for all the comments… :)

I love the idea (unlike most people here). However I feel that there is a flaw in the design. Heat rises, it doesnt go down. So if there was a way for the heat to go up you would see better airflow.

I'd like to see a larger Mac Mini that has a standard sized drive in it that is easy to replace, and HDMI out. What I'd really like is a Apple TV that also is a full Macintosh, with 1TB of storage. I'd use if for the house iTunes and video repository, and occasionally for surfing from the couch.

Use MacBook Air parts in the mini? You have got to be kidding, do you want the mini to be more overpriced and underpowered than it already is?