“When Apple rolled out its Mac mini in January, a lot of Apple enthusiasts excitedly claimed that the device could easily become a living room-based “iHome” device that might eventually incorporate DVR capabilities,” Paul Thurrott writes for Internet-Nexus.com. “…one thing I never bought into is the idea of the Mac mini as an iHome device. It’s just not suitable for that purpose. But [Microsoft’s] Xbox 360. My God.”
“The Xbox 360–while still six months away from shipping–kicks the Mac mini in the butt and makes the whole iHome concept look like a non-starter to begin with. I’m starting to believe that the digital media hub of my home will indeed be in my living room, and not in my home office. But it will be an Xbox 360, and not a Mac,” Thurrott writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Is Thurrott suggesting that Apple’s ceased all R&D and will not be releasing any new or updated products between now and Christmas 2005? By the way, Apple never suggested the Mac mini’s purpose to be anything other than an inexpensive Mac OS X machine that Windows users could pick up and easily use with their current collection of monitors, keyboards, and mice. Comparing Microsoft vapor to currently shipping Apple products seems to have become a very popular pastime with the Wintel-centric press outlets lately (Thurrott’s now taken it to an even more ridiculous level by trying to compare a game console to an entry-level personal computer). Thankfully, we don’t have to stoop to comparing future Apple products to currently shipping Microsoft products (while twisting products’ intended uses) to make ourselves feel better about our platform choice.
[UPDATE, 1:55pm ET: Changed “MDN Take” to “Christmas 2005.”]
Oh, I forgot to say, that over the lifetime of the Xbox 360 the processor speed will stay the same most likely, look at the Xbox 1, and Apple and the rest of the computing market will get faster. Eventually this machine will be old hat and hopefully the Mac G6 will make it look dated in a two to three years.
nice to see thurrott back to normal. I was beginning to worry.
I love to watch all these people pretending that a “triple-core PowerPC at 3Ghz” means that the XBox 360 will have a real desktop chip like a G4 or G5. It means nothing of the sort — I’ve got a PowerPC in my telephone. As befits a game machine, the CPU for the XBox 360 will be stripped of processing features and optimized for the narrow set of functions it will be doing. Most of the heavy lifting will not be done by these three “baby cores”, but rather by the other assorted special-purpose chips.
If you make a tiny, simple chip, you can run it at a high clock easily, but that doesn’t mean that an XBox 360 will have six times the performance of a Mac Mini. It will play games very well, but it wouldn’t be a great CPU for a general-purpose computer. The high clock speed is just hype. The PS2 could do some huge number of triangles a second, unless you were trying to make a real game. Console manufacturers have always loved coming up with absurd specs that don’t reflect real-world performance.
Look at the Playstation 2 1/2. It is very compact and I’ll bet Playstation 3 will be just as efficiently designed. Nintendo’s Revolution will be thin as three DVD case stack together, typical compact intelligent design from Japan. On the other hand, Xbox 360, although smaller than the first, still clunky and bulky compared to the compactors. Not to mention its ugliness. That confirm one thing: MicroS#@t’s industrial design, if there is any, SUCKS and inefficient!! The people at the top have no taste and it trickles down.
Um, forgive me if I’m echoing a few of you, but the XBox 360 (at least according to the XBox website) is being marketed as a game machine with an HD “experience”, and can, AS LONG AS YOU ALREADY HAVE a Windows Media Center PC lurking about somewhere, stream HD content. There’s nothing about the DVR capabilities Thurrott speaks of. Oh, BTW, all he has to do for a Mac mini, or many other Macs for that matter, is to hook up an EyeTV 200 (DVR) and an EyeConnect (streaming). Granted, a dual G5 Mac is needed for full HD capabilities. Thurrott still has to make sure his Media Center PC is equipped to record and playback HDTV content. M$ is not even making those promises as to the XBox 2 (a/k/a XBox 360).
If the Xbox 360 is a horrible failure, and has a bad start, it will only outsell the mini by a factor of 10.
My whole home entertainment experience will be built around the Mac. Xbox 360 need not apply!
I bet if I dipped my Balls in a Shiney White “Glass”, You apple freaks would buy them for a couple of grand.
Oh btw, they are wireless too
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> (mw) except there’s no apple logo…
He also mentions “water-cooled”. Can you imagine cooling 3 cores and what that does to the “cool”/”hot” packaging? No-one else has tagged this as “water-cooled”, so where Paul’s source? His anterior?
I invented the term “360”.
Though I do not agree with this guy, MS has a potential trojan horse with this one. The game console is a great way to sneak a PC into the living room. With that Gates can tie in those knock off mp3 players, the MS knock off music store, knock off photo, movie viewing, and wannbe TivO functions. With this one box (pretending to be a game machine) in the living room MS can even more completely dominate all of these markets. After all if you have an X-Box 360 you want to make certain your mp3 player, music store, video camera etc. work with it… and that will only happen if you use MS blessed products and codecs.
I think this actually has a chance of success. Many more people want game consoles than want “media center Pc’s” This gives MS the foot in the living room door they need.
MDN pays entirely too much attention to Thurrott.
People will always find faults with other people’s faults. And its all people’s faults. That is to say, people with faults do that.
Now if we could just cut Microsoft’s taxes, maybe they could finish up this Xbox and still have time to go to church.
Praise Jesus.
Comparing a small footprint computer to a video game console is about the most absurd thing I think I have ever read on the web.
As usual Mr.T’s credibility = ZERO.
not sure if anyone has said this before, but i think that MS doesn’t really care how much it cost to make and sell the xbox 2. I think like the first xbox they aren’t in it to make money. I gurantee the xbox2 will be decently priced and MS will lose money on each box. All they care about is getting into a market and trying to dominate it. They have too much money (45 plus billion) now and all they care about is market penetration and hype. I bet the xbox 2 will be good, but lets see how much they price it. The specs say 799 and up, but i bet they will price it at 499. lose 300 on each xbox, but get backend with game makers and acessories. Didn’t the first xbox division lose like 860 million dollars the first quarter even though it sold a million units. I hope IBM has chip problems with the xbox as well as it had with the PowerMac.
This comparison is so off from the get go.Only he would compare a watered-down mac with a cutting-edge console that isn’t even out yet.
funny, read the new Time cover story. Here’s a blip from the article:
“Which is why, in addition to games, the Xbox 360 plays CDs. You can also use it to rip songs off CDs and play them from the hard drive. You can plug your iPod into the Xbox 360 and play songs off that too. You can watch DVDs on it. If you have a digital camera, you can plug it into the Xbox 360 and pop the images up on your TV, which beats making everybody crowd around the computer monitor in your study. If you have sufficient techno-gumption, you can even connect the Xbox 360 to your PC wirelessly, via wi-fi, and access whatever music and pictures you have stored there.”
and…
“Right now you can use Xbox Live to talk to people you’re playing with via voice chat—think free long distance over the Internet. Soon you will also be able to send e-mail and instant messages. If you have a camera peripheral, you will be able to send short video messages and even videoconference. And here’s an important point: with Xbox 360, you don’t even have to be playing a game. You will be able to chat with other people over Xbox Live when you’re just plain watching TV.”
what? How is this news? Um… mac’s have had these capabilitiews for 4 or more years now. amazing…
WILL THE REAL X-BOX STAND UP?
To date, the only production platform that can run X-Box 360 software is the PowerMac G5. Where are all of those people wanting Apple to abandon the PPC for X86 now?
Magic Word “only” as in only one.
The X-Box360 IS a computer and runs a variant of the Windows NT for PPC that used to be sold back in the day. It would be very easy for MS to market these as home computers by adding in basic Word Processing and a few other apps- everything else for Joe/Jane average user is already there. It’s PPC Windows with a different UI.
Wonder what they are going to say about the upcoming “Thin Client” Mac Tablet that Steve Jobs is going to whip out at the WWDC?
What no pentium processors? I thought intel processors blew the doors off of G5’s. WTF is wrong with Bill & they are developing on Apple hardware? OMG. Those bastards at Apple they never know what they are doing. They picked the wrong processor. Now thaey must have Gates held hostage or something. How can this be…oh woe is me. Bill said this is onlt temporary in the future they will be developing on something more powerful….yeah, quad multi-core processors Macs from Apple.
M$ is in danger as it will soon be competing not only with Apple and Sony, but also itself. If M$ will turn its XBox 360, which is its most Mac-like hardware (tightly integrated hardware/OS/software), into the so-called ultimate home digital appliance, then this XBox2 will actually compete with x86-based PCs loaded with either Longhorn (if it ever comes out) or XP Media Center Edition. The confused public will not know which way to go, so (hopefully) it will seek comfort in Apple and Sony digital home solutions.
I swear… PT is bipolar…
MDN word: “Paid”… as in PT is a paid M$ shill.
Again another idiot article that I refuse to click on. You give this mangy Microsoft maniac support by clicking on his article.
The best approach to this idiot is to ignore him. I reasd the MDN post and that was it.
Yours in bliss
Oops…looks like Sony has stolen ALL of M$’ thunder with the PS3 announcement last night. As predicted, it totally blows the doors off of the Xbox 360…
What the hell?! XBox 360 and Mac Mini are apples and oranges. I don’t want to move my home office to my living room. I use my Mac to do work! If the Xbox 360 will let me run Photoshop and spreadsheet applications, then fine. Otherwise, what’s Thurrott’s freaking point? Honestly, with the commentary I’ve been seeing lately from some of these supposed tech analysts, I’m thinking any grade school kid with a keyboard could get these jobs and do just as well. Wake me up when I see some EDUCATED analysis of the market!