October 21, 200916 yr Sorry to disappoint you guys but the iMac is a gift for my mom who I have finally convinced to move over from the dark side after her Dell desktop died in an electrical storm. I already have a Mac Pro and an older iMac so I am not really in the market for anything but the mini for my music server and magic meeses for everything. That just adds to the hero credentials. Hero's can't diss their moms.
October 21, 200916 yr A little tidbit from the good folks at MacMiniColo that may make some of you happy. We've already secured the new 2.26 and 2.53 Mac minis and taken them apart a couple hours after they were announced. Inside, they are designed the exact same as the previous models, just with the upgraded processor and RAM. (see pictures of the last generation minis here) There is one thing to note that most people don't know. The Mac minis are officially sold and supported to use 4GB of RAM. However, with that last Mac mini firmware upgrade, they will now support 8GB of RAM. These new minis already have this firmware applied. Edited October 21, 200916 yr by Hopstretch
October 21, 200916 yr Author Yeah that is what they told me at the store. I got it all set up successfully and I am am listening now. Firewire into the Weiss on one Preamp input and out of the Weiss via AES/EBU into the PerfectWave DAC on another input. A lot of crap to listen to iTunes I guess.
October 22, 200916 yr That is very interesting, Stretch! Maybe a new reason to buy after all! Will the Apple store sell them w/8gb?
October 22, 200916 yr I would be surprised if they did. They usually have the "stock" configurations and I would guess that none of them would have max ram
October 22, 200916 yr The RAM upgrade is the easier to the upgrades for a mini and local stores apple and others will do this for those that do not wish to attempt the surgery. I'd wait until 4gb RAM is cheaper at 2 X 4GB RAM sells for $500 or so. Nice to know though and a good reason for me to to go mini over macbook pro at this point
October 22, 200916 yr The RAM upgrade is the easier to the upgrades for a mini and local stores apple and others will do this for those that do not wish to attempt the surgery. I'd wait until 4gb RAM is cheaper at 2 X 4GB RAM sells for $500 or so. Nice to know though and a good reason for me to to go mini over macbook pro at this point There is a building oversupply of RAM happening now so RAM prices are forecast to start dropping between now through 2Q of 2010. Now having said that, it doesn't mean that this will translate into Apple's components pricing model.
October 22, 200916 yr Now they have the 999$ server model mini with two hdd's and leopard server included. Put 2x2tb in there and run raid1 for data safety ... a really nice music server.
October 22, 200916 yr Now they have the 999$ server model mini with two hdd's and leopard server included. Put 2x2tb in there and run raid1 for data safety ... a really nice music server. not sure where you'd find a 2 TB laptop HD also does the mobo in a mini support that size??? I'd say likely no and no but what do I know
October 22, 200916 yr I use external drives with my mini and I see no advantage to internaal drives for me. They are certainly quiet enough for my office environment plus they are hella lot easier to change out when prices drop. Not sure I want the server one with the heat from two drives in there anyway. Is there an advantage to running snowy-server versus regular snow leopard?
October 22, 200916 yr The only advantage is the stuff like the mail server etc. No benefit to most people.
October 26, 200916 yr Not sure why but I swear the new mac mini running amarra with 4gb ram sounds better than the 1.83ghz model with 2gb ram. Well off to craigslist goes the 1.83ghz model
October 26, 200916 yr Author New stuff always sounds better. I am really digging this Mac Mini set up. So easy and fantastic sound. After using my big screen to set up the Mini I am thinking about getting another to use in the living room as a computer/netflix streamer. Edited October 26, 200916 yr by VPI
October 26, 200916 yr it very well could be new toy syndrome although with 4gb ram I no longer run out of memory and playback issues have stopped
October 26, 200916 yr Author When running on my 2GB Macbook Pro I did have some sound quality issues that I determined were either caused by lack of RAM or too much heat.
October 26, 200916 yr checking activity monitor I have a bout a gig of ram free (3 gigs used) running amarra, itunes and safari. Amarra uses just over 500mb or ram
October 26, 200916 yr I don't know how much Safari uses but there's something wrong when Firefox uses over 400MB for me, so I figured that meant 2GB for iTunes (and OS stuff).
October 26, 200916 yr Right now it is Amarra 530mb safari 357mb itunes 279mb finder 220mb sonic console 63mb activity monitor 23mb and various other programs under that I've got about a 1.25gb free
October 26, 200916 yr Author Mine is Amarra 781 mb Amara Remote 4.4mb Apple VNCServer 53.5 mb iTunes 50 mb Last FM Scrobbler 27 mb A bunch of little things 2.4 Gb Free
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