Apple's Mac mini - Tempting PC Users Everywhere
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 25, 2005 7:39 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
iPhoto 5
For the most part, I detest photo management applications. They are usually riddled with cumbersome interfaces and/or lack any sort of real editing power. I tried using iPhoto 4, which was a part of the iLife '04 suite, and I was left fairly disappointed. I had to switch between editing and organizing modes to edit or just flip through my pictures. Images took entirely too long to flip through and despite the fact that iPhoto had the best interface of any photo management application that I'd used, it was still not enough. In the end, it was just like everything else to me and I happily continued using Photoshop for editing and saving pictures for AnandTech articles. I used folders to organize the pictures according to article, so I didn't need the organizational aspects of iPhoto for that. But then came iPhoto 5 - time to give it another try, but this time, it looked like there was hope.
During his keynote at Mac World San Franciso, Steve Jobs talked about iPhoto 5 as the only application that you'd need for both editing and organizing your photos. For my uses, Photoshop is basically overkill, but I've never found anything to suit my needs better without sacrificing usability in one way or another. But with a better interface and a new editing dashboard, iPhoto 5 seemed promising.
The iPhoto 5 interface has been greatly simplified. No longer are there different modes to switch between, everything happens in the same browsing mode. You get photos into iPhoto using its import feature, which is activated automatically whenever you connect a digital camera or a removable disk (a configurable option).
Thankfully, iPhoto gives you the option of deleting your photos automatically from the media/camera after it is done importing them. Once you confirm your intentions, iPhoto goes off and copies all of the photos into your iPhoto Library. Your photo library can be viewed at variable sized thumbnails, adjustable by a slider in the lower right of the application. The scaling of the number of pictures on your screen at one time happens very quickly as iPhoto will render the thumbnails quickly, and then later, sharpen the images once you're done playing with the slider. iPhoto is much faster (especially on the G5) now, and photos no longer take a little bit of time to come into focus when browsing through them one at a time (as opposed to a page of thumbnails). Also, when browsing quickly, they will appear as thumbnails rather than blurry images (more useful in my opinion).
The iPhoto Library is organized by year and feeds off of the information written by your camera to the images. If you have a lot of photos, the Library quickly becomes cluttered, since it is organized by nothing more than date. This is where some of the indexing features of iPhoto come into play, but they do require a bit of user intervention.
When you import images into the Library, you have the option of tagging the images that you import with a title. For example, when I imported the images for this review, I titled them "Mac mini". Now, even if I have thousands of images taken in 2005, I just type in "mini" in the search box and all my Mac mini images come up instantly, thanks to a fully indexed search in iPhoto. Now, titling images isn't something that I'd normally take the time to do, but the way iPhoto works is that you just create one general title and it will apply it to all of the photos that you're importing (or you can selectively import them).
After they are imported, you can go back and add ratings, keywords and comments to photos on an individual basis, all of which are fully searchable fields. You also have the option of populating these fields after the fact using iPhoto's batch processing. Just highlight what photos you want and you can add a title, comments or even modify the date/time. And if you actually take the time to make good use of these searchable fields, or even if you just make use of the batch titling upon import, you can create Smart Albums based on searches of these fields. For example, you can create an album of all pictures of "video cards" or "cars I'd like to buy" or just about any other combination that you can think of.
Personally, I'm not enough of a photo enthusiast to put that much time into my digital library, but if you have a habit of taking a lot of pictures, iPhoto 5 offers some very excellent and intuitive ways of organizing them. Plus, the interface works and feels just like the rest of OS X, which is a very strong point of iPhoto. There is one exception to my last statement, however. Hitting Command + W will actually exit the iPhoto program itself, something which breaks the way that almost all OS X applications work. One thing that I was a fan of with OS X is the consistency with which all applications behaved, and iPhoto unfortunately breaks that consistency - not something I was too happy with.
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Dualboy24 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#85 I am not saying come develope on the Mac. I am just saying that it comes with a great asortment of languages and even a full IDE. You can get these for free on a windows platform also but they are not included by default and thats understandaable that the majority of users would not use them. I assume apple includes Xcode to help promote software development on their platform."I think that most developers are a bit more educated on this subject than you are, buddy. Save the marketing hype for those who are more easily persuaded. Some of us may decide to program for OS X (I have), some of us may not. But we will do it for our own reasons, not because you throw around the names of programming languages like they are the latest buzzword. "
Gee somewhat hostile no? I never said anything negative in my post have I (please people read my post and tell me if you think I was rude in any-form).
You may be right I am not an expert developer, nor have I worked on any large complex projects for companies etc. But I have programmed a lot in my life. And did get a degree in CS Software Engineering.
As for the throwing around programming languages I listed I really just summarized what was on that link I added to that post. I assumed it was nice of me to do that as it saves people having to read the full link to get a composed list.
And I do not wish to start any issues or flame wars or anything negative.
Great article also Anand!
Your site continues to be one of the top hardware sites in the world. It just continues to get better and better. Keep up the good work.
abakshi - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I'll pick one up when they're under $150 just to play around with OS X. Otherwise, there's not much use for it -- I code in VS.NET (VB), do some gaming, and some image and video editing. The first is obviously not going to happen on Mac, the second is N/A (except UT, Halo, D3 -- running on a 9200 with 32MB...), and so basically I could only use it for some basic browsing and image/video editing - anything fancier would require getting a lot of Mac version software (e.g. Photoshop, Premiere, etc.).Alternatively, if you could get one of these with something like a 9600 onboard and a 7200RPM HDD in the range of $300 within a few months from now, that would be quite cool to play around with :)
msva124 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
>Oh lets not forget about developers. You will love a mac if you do C, C++, Objective C, >Java (built deep into the system) oh and Apple XCode a fully featured IDE that is so >simple to use if you have used Visual Studio etc...You’re right, Xcode is totally intuitive for the Win32 programmer. The GUI target and action system is pretty much second nature, especially for the Visual Basic developer who is used to double clicking on a button to write an event handler. Heck, even the framework is the same as with Windows, to most people I’ve talked to there is no noticeable difference between MFC and Cocoa. Then there’s the compilation speed, it must be ten times was it was on Delphi on my Wintel machine. And I hear in Tiger there will be a project converter that lets you import Windows source directly from Visual C++ 6.0 without any recoding. Yes, I’m serious. You need to go to other sites and start spreading the word about these things. Many people will say you are lying or wrong, just ignore them.
I think that most developers are a bit more educated on this subject than you are, buddy. Save the marketing hype for those who are more easily persuaded. Some of us may decide to program for OS X (I have), some of us may not. But we will do it for our own reasons, not because you throw around the names of programming languages like they are the latest buzzword.
And from now on you might want to read links before posting them, to make sure that they align with your inexperienced viewpoint. On that kernelthread site one of the first things it says is:
“Life is still much better for a developer on Windows than on Mac OS X - no matter what one might think of the usability, etc. of Windows.”
Dranzerk - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#83Because many people will buy it for the Hype and find they really don't care for it, esp many PC users who might not be as thrilled like they thought they would about it for whatever reasons. :)
michael2k - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
#66 Dranzerk: Why would you expect there to be a flood of cheaper minis? If anything, I imagine you'd find a flood of old G4 PowerMacs, G3 PowerMacs, and any minis on eBay would be really expensive (though still less than retail) as all the old Mac users look to upgrade from 8 year old machines to a more modern one.That's exactly what's happened for the last 4 years I've been a Mac user and seeing how used Macs are priced.
So I would expect you'd find them on eBay for $400 :)
#82: The Apple Mac mini accessories page also mentions that same DVI to video adapter.
Dualboy24 - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
#81 there is a "Apple DVI to Video Adapter" for $19 USD""DVI port to S-video or Composite video devices such as TVs, VCRs, or overhead projectors with S-Video or RCA (Composite) connectors"
Its stated as being designed for the Powermac G5 but it will work with the mini.
AtaStrumf - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Too bad cMAC doesn't have a TV out. It would make for a nice HTPC even for those less fortunate of us, who don't own HDTVs with DVI inputs -- that would be the so called majority :-)dingbat - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
I think the Mac Mini has the potential to be the jukebox for the living room, except the designer forgot one thing... good audio input/output. Either that or you have to dangle a USB based audio device and I am not sure how well those will perform.Dualboy24 - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
I forgot to mention a lot of additional things... but I will hold back.If your into programming (Java, PHP, MySQL, C/C++, Fortran, Applescript, Perl, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme, Python, OpenGL, Qt, Tcl/Tk ,X11R6) then you should read http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/programming.ht... << a great read
Dualboy24 - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
[/START INTERESTING RANT WITH SCREENSHOT URL]I dont have a Mini yet.. but I got a powerbook 17" (First mac ever. Its a beautiful machine). I would never have gotten a mac if it wasn't for one of my old friends that I was in CS with got an ibook. I got to use it and did a lot of reading and research before trying the Mac world. BTW I do computer sales/repairs/system quotes/web-design and system admin for an ISP/Computer company. Used Windows 95-2003, Linux from redhat 5.2-SUSE 9.2 and now Mac OSX 10.3.X. I must say that the OS on Apple is by far the best OS for desktop users. The only thing it falls behind on is video gaming.
For #75: I have been able to connect to my PC with the Remote Desktop with no issues. However I find myself using a program called VNCDimension and running RealVNC (or any VNC software) on my PCs so I can connect to Windows/Linux systems in my house and from my office. I can also use my PCs in Win/Linux to control the mac. Plus SSH/Telnet access thats so easy to setup.
Also for the Linux fans you would love the terminal and a program called Fink. Which allows you to install a huge selection of linux apps including KDE/Gnome that can run rootless or full-screen
For those people that like to download you can get a host of different P2P apps for every P2P network and torrents for music/movies/apps
Sherlock is another great application that you get with OSX that lets you do so many things. Search the net look for pictures, search ebay, check for flight data, Dictionary, Translate languages, AppleCare database, RSS feed reader, and Version Tracker the best tool ever!
The default calculator also has built in converters including a currency converter that updates via the internet the daily currency values.
Oh also going over installation and removal of apps would be a great read. Its drag the app to a folder and its installed. If you run terminal you can actually go into the app were it stores all of the data and settings for the app. Very smart method.
Oh lets not forget about developers. You will love a mac if you do C, C++, Objective C, Java (built deep into the system) oh and Apple XCode a fully featured IDE that is so simple to use if you have used Visual Studio etc...
Well all in all its really impossible to cover all of the default apps that come with OSX but lets just say Windows is a joke compared to OSX
Oh one problem is if you buy a Mac you become a Mac fanatic... It made me one. And I was very anti mac before I got my powerbook.
I will probably get the Mac mini with the wireless and apple keyboard with the USB ports. Add a stick of 1GB OCZ for under $200 and all good for a system for silent operation in my bedroom. You can turn this thing into anything you really want. Silent download system and transfer the files via network or usb/firewire, http, ftp, ssh, great for photoshop work, email with Mac mail (instant searches almost), safari/firefox web-browser. Plug it into your TV for a great media experience with VLC... you name it and it will do it. I have yet to find a limitation to my G4 CPU. Of course I do not do any heavy video work. My daily use is best summed up in a screenshot http://www.travisjmac.com/screenshot/
BTW I still keep 4 PCs at home one gammer, one storage and download, one linux for dev/testing/fun, and one win2k3 server for testing/dev/fun and I love windows... just love mac more lol.
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