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Macminicolo writes up their state of the Mac mini

by Mike Schramm Oct 22nd 2009 at 11:00AM

Steve Sande actually did a brilliant job of explaining just why the Mac mini is so awesome the other day (and we've certainly had our share of mini-love here on the site before), but this is worth a read as well if you're interested in Apple's littlest Mac. Macminicolo, the very company that Steve lauds in his piece for colocating mini servers for a while now, has posted a "state of the mini" piece, complete with unboxing of the new mini server, pictures of its guts and how they all work together. If you've ever wondered why the mini is such a marvel of desktop OS X-ness, check out their writeup (and drool at the beautiful setup above -- so many minis!).

There are a few good things to take away from the big release this week -- while Steve is exactly right that releasing a mini server means Apple is getting on the server bandwagon, it also means that Apple is officially on the mini bandwagon. When these machines were first released, they were marketed as a switchers' computer -- bring your own mouse and monitor, and we'll show you what being on a Mac is like at a fraction of the cost. Frankly, they never shined at that purpose, prompting many people to proclaim death sentences for the little machine that could. But by releasing a server, Apple's saying, "we get it." They get that the mini is much more of a workhorse than it appears (or was meant) to be. In my mind, that's a whole new lease on life -- the mini may have never made much of a splash as a switchers' computer, but it's got a long future as a tiny but powerful computer you can use for all sorts of things.

[via DF]

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Analysis / Opinion Hardware Switchers Apple Mac mini Mac OS X Server

Steve Sande actually did a brilliant job of explaining just why the Mac mini is so awesome the other day (and we've certainly had our...
 

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RB

Sadly, Apple is missing very basic needs of the consumer on the mini...such as an eSATA port so you can have a larger had drive that is not restricted by the type of connection. They should not have to be told such things...or that high-glare screens are an abomination.

November 02 2009 at 12:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alexander Worley

http://applemacintosh.chatango.com/

talk about all thigs apple, even the new mac mini server

October 27 2009 at 3:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alex

Mac Mini was my first mac, and caused me to switch to a big boy mac within a couple of months.

October 27 2009 at 9:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Maldaen

While I agree with the above posters to a degree, the mini hasn't had the impact many would hope it would. I see the $999 MacBook being a far more substantial impact on switchers than the mini was. Not discounting its usefulness in swaying people to Macs, just saying that it didn't work as well as it could have... cuz it could have been a massive thing.

I always saw more use for a mini in a business environment as a cost-saving measure. You get a great Mac and you get the flexibility to use cheaper accessories and swap out the hardware as needed if something doesn't work. Why buy a $1200 21" all-in-one behemoth like an iMac when you can just have the mini and a 17" LCD display (or smaller) for $700 or less? It's easier for IT, cheaper for management and space-saving for the user (I've accidentally kicked the tower at my workstation SO MANY TIMES, OMG...)

October 22 2009 at 7:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
SwissMac

I meant redundancy in the sense of having an immediately ready to run cloned server "duplicate" which just needs the ethernet cable to be plugged in from the failed mini server and to be rebooted out of target disk mode in order to restore full network services in case of hardware failure. I didn't mean failsafe redundancy with automatic kick-in of the second server.

We had a PSU failure on the G5 this year which led to a 2 week absence during which we had two full days of server outage when we moved the backup onto the loan machine (not identical spec so didn't behave totally as expected) and then back again after repair. Relying on just a single machine now seems rather risky! However, as a small business we have to count money carefully, and buying over-specced machines isn't necessarily a good move when we add a max of 1Gb of data per year...

October 22 2009 at 5:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jollyllama

I couldn't disagree with you more about the whole "mini didn't work as a switcher's computer" thing. I'd be interested to know if you have any evidence to support your statement.

October 22 2009 at 5:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
SwissMac

How can you possibly say:
"When these machines were first released, they were marketed as a switchers' computer -- bring your own mouse and monitor, and we'll show you what being on a Mac is like at a fraction of the cost. Frankly, they never shined at that purpose..."

The Mac forums I visit in the UK have loads of members for whom using a Mac would never have happened if it had not been for the mini, but then Macs have always been more expensive in Europe than in the US by some 10% to 15% on average so price makes a lot of difference.

I know personally at least five people who switched as a direct result, and since I tried the Mac with a mini in 2005 I've since bought two iMacs, four minis, a PowerMac, a PowerBook, a MacBook and am now just looking at the mini server. None of that would have happened if I had not been able to buy a Mac mini for less than £350! Sadly they soon went up 50% in price and stopped so many Switchers adopting them as a first step.

It's a shame the new mini server isn't more suited to a normal small business though. Our office server (files, users, intranet) only needs 50 Gb of HD space (it's currently on just under 30 Gb), not 500, and an unlimited licence for a business of only 5 to 8 users is overkill IMO.

They could have trimmed the price by offering some options here eg 160Gb HDD, slower processor and the old 10 user licence reduced in price like the unlimited was. We could have bought two mini servers then and had a safe and secure fully redundant server system.

October 22 2009 at 4:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to SwissMac's comment
Etaoin

While an unlimited licence seems like an overkill for a small environment, it's more a matter of offering a hassle-free option in a place where marketing a limited license wouldn't raise profits substantially. Those places where a mini is chosen as a server will mostly be home and small business, places where a handfull of apple notebooks or iphones or i-somethings will need some organized data store and point of exchange. As a general assumption, first-time-server-administrators won't be happy if for some silly coincidence they get hit by an artificial user limit counting connected devices. Their means of debugging those cases are limited, and resulting "bug reports" would not only make the users doubt the reliability of the product, support hours resulting from calls related to these problems would pile up costs as well.
So it's a good choice not to limit the number of users/clients, and let the customers be happy with what the mini can handle. In any production environment seriously serving a larger number of clients, the necessary infrastructure (power, climate, ..) would be available and redundancy would be one of the demands a server has to meet. This isn't what the mini is aimed at, so it won't cannibalize those sales, not even with an unlimited license.

Two systems != redundancy, unless you're thinking (HA) cluster, and the mini server, while being a great little thing, just isn't built to meet that requirement.

October 22 2009 at 5:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
House of Mirth

This is purely anecdotal, but I think the mini has been a good 'switcher's computer.' I know several people who bought minis just to play with OS X. It may not have happened by the millions, but that was never in the cards; the PC market is too mature for that.

That said, Apple might do the mini favor by updating it more often (and lowering the price back to $499?)

October 22 2009 at 3:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to House of Mirth's comment
dunham

The mini (and OSX) was responsible for me switching. A few years ago, I bought a G5 mini thinking it'd make a nice little Linux server. I decided to play with it for a week or so before wiping the disk, just to see what OSX was like. By the end of the week I was sold on OSX as a desktop OS.

October 22 2009 at 8:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Huff

"That said, Apple might do the mini favor by updating it more often (and lowering the price back to $499?)"

Indeed. Lowering the price on the entry-level model to $499 or less would show me that Apple "gets it" when it comes to the market the Mini is trying to compete in. Well that, and making it a bit easier to access the RAM & HDD for user upgrades (heck, just make it as easy as a Macbook).

October 23 2009 at 9:23 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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