Apple today unveiled the new Mac mini with the Intel Core Duo processor, delivering performance up to four times faster than its predecessor and providing even greater expansion in the same innovative and incredibly compact design.* Starting at just $599, the Mac mini is the most affordable way to enjoy iLife ’06, the next generation of Apple’s award-winning suite of digital lifestyle applications, and features the Apple Remote and Front Row so you can play your music, enjoy your photo slideshows, watch your DVDs, iMovies, music videos and television shows from across the room.
“With the new Mac mini, Apple has now moved 50 percent of its entire product line to Intel within 60 days—a record transition,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing in the press release. “The new Mac mini is now up to four times faster with the Intel Core Duo, includes even greater expansion in the same incredibly compact design, and is the most affordable way to enjoy Front Row and iLife ‘06.”
Featuring the next generation of Apple’s breakthrough Front Row media experience, the new Mac mini gives customers a simple way to enjoy their digital lifestyle content on the Mac mini including music, photos and videos from across the room using the Apple Remote. With the latest version of Front Row, customers can now effortlessly access shared iTunes playlists, iPhoto libraries and video throughout their home via Bonjour, Apple’s zero configuration wireless networking built into Mac OS X.
The new Mac mini offers a completely new system architecture for performance up to four times as fast as the previous Mac mini, including a 667 MHz front-side bus and 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory expandable to 2GB. With the latest high-performance connectivity options, every new Mac mini now includes built-in 10/100/1000 BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet for high-speed networking, built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11g WiFi for fast 54 Mbps wireless networking, built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) and a total of four USB 2.0 ports, twice as many as the previous generation. Mac mini includes a DVI interface and a VGA-out adapter to easily connect to a variety of displays, including many of today’s most popular flat panel televisions, and now features both analog and digital audio outputs to easily connect to a home stereo.
The new Mac mini includes iLife ‘06, the next generation of Apple’s award-winning suite of digital lifestyle applications featuring major new versions of iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, GarageBand and introducing iWeb, a new iLife application that makes it super-easy to create amazing websites with photos, blogs and Podcasts and publish them on .Mac for viewing by anyone on the Internet with just a single click. All the iLife ‘06 applications are Universal applications that run natively on the new Intel-based Mac mini for maximum performance.
Every new Mac mini comes with the latest release of the world’s most advanced operating system, Mac OS X version 10.4 “Tiger” including Safari, Mail, iCal, iChat AV and Front Row, running natively. Mac OS X Tiger includes an innovative software translation technology called Rosetta that lets customers run most Mac OS X PowerPC applications seamlessly.
The new Mac mini is shipping today and will be available through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.
The new 1.5 GHz Mac mini, for a suggested retail price of $599 (US), includes:
• 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo processor
• 512MB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable up to 2GB
• a slot-load Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) drive
• 60GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm
• Intel GMA950 graphics processor
• built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 BASE-T)
• four USB 2.0 ports
• one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog
• DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately)
• Infrared Apple Remote.
The new 1.66 GHz Mac mini, for a suggested retail price of $799 (US), includes:
• 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo processor
• 512MB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable up to 2GB
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• 80GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm
• Intel GMA950 graphics processor
• built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 BASE-T)
• four USB 2.0 ports
• one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog
• DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately)
• Infrared Apple Remote.
Build-to-order options and accessories include up to 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 80GB, 100GB and 120GB Serial ATA hard drives, iWork ’06 (pre-installed), AirPort Express and AirPort Extreme Base Station, Apple Wireless Keyboard, Apple Wireless Mouse, Apple USB Modem and the AppleCare Protection Plan.
See the new Mac mini here.
Advertisements:
• MacBook Pro. The first Mac notebook built upon Intel Core Duo with iLife ’06, Front Row and built-in iSight. Starting at $1999. Free shipping.
• iMac. Twice as amazing — Intel Core Duo, iLife ’06, Front Row media experience, Apple Remote, built-in iSight. Starting at $1299. Free shipping.
• iMac and MacBook Pro owners: Apple USB Modem. Easily connect to the Internet using dial-up service. Only $49.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Old Apple Mac mini G4 vs. new Mac mini’s graphics and video specs – February 28, 2006
This isn’t a powermac folks…
This is the entry level Mac that costs $600..
It has just doubled it’s processor performance, became a media center, included frontrow and added airport and bluetooth…
What are you complaining??
If you need bleeding edge performance and graphics the MacMini is not the machine you oughta be looking at…
If you are a casual user and want your first Mac… This is a damn good deal..
There are obviously alot of newbies on the board right now..
Apple stock ALWAYS tanks on the day of a new announcement..
I think that this particular Mac mini will be a stop gap. Something amazing will replace it very soon.
The $499 price point was great for marketing, but in reality, no one bought the base model…
Compared to yesterdays MacMini, we’ve just seen a hell of an upgrade… Quit your bitching.
You do realize that no PC/Mac at this price point is going to play games well either, right? The old Mini was not for games; nor is this one. The new iMac will run CoD and universal AA very well…
AL – the gma950 does support core image. other than that you’re completely right. this is a real bummer. i guess let’s just wait for the benchmarks to start coming in. hopefully it won’t be as bad as we all think. i guess just remember that the radeon 9200 that was in the old g4 mac mini was just a differently-clocked radeon 8500, which has been around for what, five years now?
Mark & Nick…
The integrated VGA is on the PCI express chain, pci express has direct access to the system ram, and the system ram being DDR2 is as fast or faster than most ram on most mid range video cards. therefore, ergo: the ‘integrated’ video on this platform is not that bad. the only downside is the fact that you are losing some system ram. solution: get at least 1GB ram… hell get 2GB…….
also: biggieG: that benchmark has slower vga ram by 133Mhz, and if the 92xx from the olde mini doesnt come close to the 6000 series they are comparing the 950 to, so I feel comfortable in saying the GMA950 is not bad.
now that the memory speed is there integrated graphics takes on a whole new meaning.
also people, if you need ram and are really REALLY upset about giving up 64MB to your vga, then a: buy a different computer, or b: get more effing ram.
either way, imo this new intel mini is currently the worlds most cost effective comptuer.
damn, I was hoping it would be free!!
Whiners, Apple is running a business. They are trying to stay relevant in a computer business dominated by Windows machines. Apple has their margins that they are trying ot maintain so that they can continue to sell Mac computers to all of us.
Don’t like what Apple is selling? There are numerous other companies that will willingly take your money.
Now, am I impressed by the announcements? Not really. I wa hoping for more. However, the iBooks will be out soon and hopefully we can be again underwhelmed.
I am expecting the Mac Books to have the mobile GMA950, and I am not going to have a problem with it, know why? because its MORE POWERFUL THAN ANY OTHER VIDEO THATS EVER BEEN IN AN IBOOK!…. people are stupid, integrated graphics sucks, bitch you couldnt detect integrated graphics if it was a** fu*king you!
TT:
see for yourself how terrible the integrated graphics performance is compared to competing cheap-ass solutions by ATI and NVidia:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2427&p=2
“Whiners, Apple is running a business. They are trying to stay relevant in a computer business dominated by Windows machines. Apple has their margins that they are trying ot maintain so that they can continue to sell Mac computers to all of us.
Don’t like what Apple is selling? There are numerous other companies that will willingly take your money.”
…and that is the same excuse you’ll be using when Steve Jobs decides to package his day old sh#t and sell it to you for $500. Get a clue already!
So you can share playlists from other computers with iTunes. Can I access my library of DivX movies that are not in iTunes? Just on a drive on another computer?
In case anybody cares…the video chipset on this thing was MADE for home theater! It has hardware motion compensation, MPEG-2 hardware decoding, support for native HDTV resolutions and 16×9 aspect displays..among other nice stuff. It’s NOT a big 3d gaming platform but definitely has the stuff for decoding video.
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/
Nick aka dumbass: read my post!!
“that benchmark has slower vga ram by 133Mhz, and if the 92xx from the olde mini doesnt come close to the 6000 series they are comparing the 950 to, so I feel comfortable in saying the GMA950 is not bad.”
the intel 950 is like twice as fast as the 9200! (but still slow for most games)
So yah its better, I wanted more ram anyway, this will just give me the extra incentive to get it.
Crap graphics, but small form factor.
It’s an office PC, albeit a bloody expensive one. If you don’t like it, stop being so cheap and get an iMac.
It’s good news if the Mac evangelists on this site are disappointed… It only means that Apple have a hit on their hands and that it will sell to the masses..
Remember all the whining and complaining about the orignal iPod, the iMac G5, the iPod mini, the iPod nano… All were HUGE products and all of them were slammed by the so called “Mac-Faithful.”
When someone came on this board and said that the price Apple pays for powerPC processors is/was cheaper, sometimes half the price of equivalent intel processors, most people laughed. I haven’t been able to find out how much Apple pays for the PPC’s because neither IBM not Apple has released anything, but seeing how the machines aren’t getting any cheaper, haven’t added any features, have lost some features, and the only change has been the processor, I’m tempted to think he was right.
I think everyone who expected the intel switch to drop Apple’s prices and significantly boost their performance was smoking something. The switch was not made for desktop performance. High end PPC is equal or better than top of the line intel, and eventually all those high end chips make it into desktops. The problem was notebooks and while it looks to me like IBM could have solved it, Apple claims that’s why they switched and it’s possible, but I’m not convinved. The intel switch is definietly not my favorite thing. If Steve announced tomorrow that it was a joke, and all intel machines were EOL’ed I would honestly be very happy.
To all the switchers and newbs,
This is an excellent deal for an entry level Mac! shared video memory with pci express and DDR2 is not as slow as your grandmother’s shared memory Compaq.
If you need more performance and have the bones, by all means get an iMac, Macbook or PowerMac.
To those that are “underwhelmed”. You shouldn’t be. What did you expect when the venue was on campus?
“I think everyone who expected the intel switch to drop Apple’s prices and significantly boost their performance was smoking something. “
No. That’s just their way of rationalizing their complete faith in Steve Jobs.
At least it has like 4 USB ports! And that’s 1 more than the iMac. Although the iMac has two FireWire ports. It seems that Apple has listened to some of the complaints! Question: Where is the IR port located? Is it on the top where the logo is?
For $600 bucks, this thing rocks. Here are the benefits over yesterday’s G4 Mini….
1. Smoking processor twice as fast
2. Faster Ram
3. iLife 06
4. Front Row
5. Bluetooth 2.0 (standard)
6. Airport wireless (standard)
7. Gigabit ethernet
8. Digital audio in and out
9. DVI out for HDTV (media center)
10. Apple Remote
How can anyone in their right mind think that this is not a worthy upgrade over yesterday’s G4 MacMini??
MacMania: “To those that are “underwhelmed”. You shouldn’t be. What did you expect when the venue was on campus?”
I don’t know, maybe something that didn’t take several steps backwards while raising the price.
cup half empty there Jay?
The intel core solo and duo cpus are the worlds most efficient cpus, how are they a bad choice again?
and what featureas did they take away? it looks all around more powerful to me, bigger hdd, faster hdd, gigabit ethernet, better video, DDR2 memory support, dual channel memory support… more usb ports? shall I continue?
TT aka Kool Aid drinker:
I did read your useless post. You looked at the Intel integrated graphics getting massively outperformed by cheap integrated NVidia graphics and you provided some lame excuses.
Apple could have charged an extra $50 to offer non-poopy graphics, but they did not. They could have kept wireless as a $100 option, but they made it a manditory purchase. They could have offered a $50 upgrade to a Core Duo chip, since it costs $32 more for it, but they did not.
They could have offered a $450 iMac Core Duo 1.67Ghz with no wireless built-in, but instead you have to shell out $799 for something with an iMac Core Duo 1.67Ghz.