Filed under: Hardware, Cult of Mac, Mac mini
The mighty mini
While the iPhone, iPod and laptops get most of the glory, the Mac mini chugs quietly along, doing its job well and making owners happy. Earlier at my day job, I was working with one of our minis and recognized how I rely on it to perform a critical function without the slightest hesitation. In other words, it's time to give the little guy some recognition.When I'm not blogging for you folks, I'm managing the web presence and other tech goodies of a large museum here in balmy Massachusetts. When customers arrive in our lobby, they can view a slide show of what's new via a gorgeous HDTV hung above the ticket counter. Behind the HDTV is a Mac mini running Keynote. Once a week, the art department sends an updated Keynote presentation to the mini via Dropbox. This simple and reliable system is powered by an Intel-based mini.
Here's the best part. Before our guests move on to the exhibits, they view a brief orientation film and slide show that displays sponsor information. Thousands of people watch both the orientation movie and slideshow every week. Behind it all is a G4 Mac mini (pictured on the right*).
This machine has been absolutely rock solid. Again, the art department uploads new slide shows to it via Dropbox and the whole operation couldn't be simpler. When I look at the Laptop Hunter ads, and I see Lauren squealing over her Dell, I think, "Would I trust that machine to do what this mini does when it's 4 or 5 years old? Heck, no." The G4 in question is stock from the factory. Plus, if its HD croaks tomorrow, the only critical bit of data -- the slide show and movie -- lives on Dropbox so we're covered. In a pinch, we've got a Mac Pro that could take on the workload in under 10 minutes.
In a world where the new and shiny gets most of the attention, the plain and reliable is often overlooked. So here's a post to praise the Mac mini. The tiny, go-anywhere, do-anything, ultra-reliable computer that I absolutely love. No wonder there are racks full of them at Macminicolo and other facilities.
Now I'm certain there are others out there with dutiful minis. Home servers, media centers, carputers, etc. If that's you, send a snapshot to Flickr and tag it TUAWmini. We'll post some of our favorites this weekend.
*No, it doesn't live on the floor. I moved it to compose the shot. Rest assured that it was returned to its cozy shelf immediately after.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Rob M said 9:15AM on 6-26-2009
I love my Mini. It's the machine thatade
me switch back to a Mac. It's my main machine and has never let me down.
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jason mark said 9:23AM on 6-26-2009
Agreed 100%. We have a Mac Mini with OSX Server Leopard installed on it, and it's been rock solid for a year. We replaced the built in hard drive with a faster/bigger one (by by warrantee), but other than that it's straight out of the box.
Our backups use Time Machine on a rotating A, B, C offsite schedule, and while it is hooked up to a monitor, the monitor is very rarely used.
Our old system was a tower with heavy duty RAID, which cost thousands of dollars to set up, and eventually when it went bad it was one of the RAID drives that went bad. We don't do hardware, so we called in the people who set it up and they couldn't replace the hard drive. After talking to a couple of other techs we realized that it would cost well over $1,000 to fix the machine, and ironically the part that was broken was the RAID, which was only there to make my systems MORE stable.
So we simplified and haven't looked back since. If the machine shows the slightest hick-up I'll send someone to the local Apple Store, and 24 hours and less than $1,000 later we'll have the Mini replaced with a new one, and the old one can go somewhere else...
I feel like the Mini has allowed us to go from "complex/expensive = more stable" to "simple/cheep = more stable". Less moving parts = less that can break = less cost.
Jason
http://www.gravityswitch.com
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kevinlmuise said 8:48PM on 6-30-2009
How do you rotate a Time Machine back up??
jason mark said 8:52PM on 6-30-2009
We have 3 external hard drives (creatively named A, B and C). We plug in A, while B&C are off-site, and open the time machine prefs and select disk, and it backs up the whole server to A. Then after a week we bring B into the office, and bring out A that night (so they're both onsite for a day, but C is offsite at all times). We plug in "B" and go to time machine prefs and select that drive, and it backs up "B". The next week we bring in C and do the same thing again.
Jash Sayani said 9:25AM on 6-26-2009
The mini is my first Mac. I just love it !!
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Jamus said 9:25AM on 6-26-2009
We use a mini for a similar purpose. It is a digital signage setup that loops 4-5 videos in our main lobby. The only issue was that the G4 mini could not handle the HD video well, but a year or two back we swapped it out with the 1st gen Intel mini and it has run very well. The dropbox is a good idea for moving the files. I will have to check that out. Right now video is loaded on USB flash drives and copied over as needed.
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Taylor said 10:16AM on 6-27-2009
I would be thrilled to know exactly how you have it set up for signage. I'm trying to get something like that going but I'm stuck on what software (commercial, hacked scripts, or otherwise). Would you tell us more about the setup? Cheers!
Jamus said 5:11PM on 6-28-2009
Sure. No problem.
What we do is take a 1st gen Intel mini running OS X 10.5.7. Video slideshows (whether actual video or photos turned to video using Final Cut or iMovie) are setup to run using VLC. A generic playlist is setup with VLC. Be sure to set it to play full screen. That playlist is then added to the startup items. After copying video files to the mini, drag them to the playlist (deleting the old ones first) and be sure to resave the updated playlist. Then whenever the mini starts up in the morning the playlist is opened at startup and begins playing. You can also set it to play in order or random if you wan to keep it mixed up. There is probably lots of other ways to do this, but this has been working well for us so far.
ps -- the mini is hooked up to a 42" flat screen tv that sits directly behind a large 7' display. The tv sits on a moveable cart and shows through a carefully cut out area in the display so that you don't see much of the tv chasis.
Adnium said 9:27AM on 6-26-2009
Awesome article, I love the mini, and will soon (if I have my way) move one of my younger siblings to it over the ageing iMac G5.
PS. "So here's a post to meant to praise the Mac mini" - either it's 'meant to praise' or it's 'a post to praise'.
Just to let you know :)
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Ian Rathbone said 9:35AM on 6-26-2009
I love my mac mini, bought it a few months ago second hand off eBay. Being only an iPhone owner, its my first mac and I have to say what a great first impression!
I'm using it almost nightly now to build several iPhone apps, one of which I just submitted to the app store last night (fingers crossed!).
They're so reliable and so speedy, and they do just what you want them to do!
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Luke L said 9:36AM on 6-26-2009
I got a Mac Mini at the start of the year to go with a new HDTV and it hasn't had a single problem since being plugged in. It spends most of the day and night ripping my DVD collection via Handbrake, downloading torrents with Transmission (via the web interface) and playing back films in Plex and I couldn't be happier with it.
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Ben said 9:44AM on 6-26-2009
Great article! I love my Mac mini. I had a 12" PowerBook G4 for several years and it was still going strong --- but the price point of the mini combined with the Intel switch convinced me to get one and I've loved it ever since. I'm glad that Apple is keeping them around.
Btw, this article gives just as much love to Dropbox as it does the mini!
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ZipperSeven said 9:44AM on 6-26-2009
My mini is my main media server and media center pc. I've got it connected to my HDTV and use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and remote to control it. I use Plex and Hulu mostly, and Ripit to add Netflix movies to my collection. A couple of external Firewire drives connected to it hold all of the main media. I love my mini and wouldn't give it up for anything.
Oh, we've also got a first gen iMac (purple) that is our 'kitchen' computer, we use it for looking up recipes.
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swellsparky said 9:48AM on 6-26-2009
My Intel Mac mini is awesome. I bought in on ebay 2 years ago and use it for wireless internet sharing and as a 3d render server. It sits quietly behind my monitor and just chugs away 24/7. It really is the most amazing computer that Apple has made! It is funny to me that the iMac gets all the buzz. The real marvel is the Mac Mini.
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Mike said 9:52AM on 6-26-2009
I currently have a cheap Atom-based Linux server casing a 1.5 TB harddrive for an always-on fileserver to my Macbook and 360, but if I had some spare cash (and a way to use an internal 3.5" SATA2 drive somehow), I'd totally replace it with a Mac mini.
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Greenie said 9:55AM on 6-26-2009
Here, here Dave!
The mac mini could be the most reliable machine of all. Even on an internet where all computer problems are overly magnified, we hear little negative about the Mac mini.
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j0ram said 10:09AM on 6-26-2009
My Intel Mac Mini single core outputs video to my 52" LCD DVI to HDMI - 1080p never looked so good. It has no trouble playing 1080p movies (VLC, Boxee, Plex - very good, Front Row/Quicktime - slight pauses here and there).
As my media center that I seldom reboot, it never lets me down.
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Chris Pratt said 10:10AM on 6-26-2009
Like others have mentioned, my mini is hooked up to my HDTV. I have two external hard drives (500 GB and 1TB) hooked up to it containing my music, movie, and television collection. I just bring up Plex and watch something from my collection, Hulu, or Netflix. In truth, I'd be lost without he Mini.
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Mike said 10:13AM on 6-26-2009
I've purchased 3 mini's over the past 4 years. One original G4, one CD 1.6 and one CD 1.8. All 3 of them are still going strong. The G4 was my daughters dorm computer as a freshman and she still has it running to record TV shows etc and acts as a backup to her Blackbook. I use the CD Mini's as a headless media server for an Apple TV in the living room and the other Mini is a HTPC in the master bedroom.
I'm looking at upgrading to a new 2.0 C2D and shifting them around with the G4 being perhaps put out to pasture (eBay).
Simply fantastic little machines!
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Thijs Poorthuis said 10:15AM on 6-26-2009
Although the mini is a great little machine, appreciating it more because of dropbox is not really fair.
Dropbox can be used in other OS, such as windows as well.
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