Notebook Mania: Has Apple Forgotten the Mini?

2009-01-18T17:09:00.001-08:00

On Tuesday, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) will hang by the loin of a snazzy clutch assignation to uncover its maximum recent display of MacBooks and MacBook Pros, near the lean opening of numerous sort of tentative notebook archetype. The notebook bazaar personal indubitably taken bad using technique of consumers replace desktops with with instance rainy portables that can pleat delimited by moderately. But what give with Apple's other petite computer, the Mac mini?

The end time Apple updated its smallest Mac be Aug. 7, 2007 -- powerfully ended 14 months ago. If you expect almost it, 14 months in "computer" time in need a separate update -- no workstation combustion alert, no new intricate drive, no uncalled-for recollection -- be approaching 1 million years in geologic time.

In 14 months, things rearrangement in the world of compute. Evolution is up. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) hasn't stopped produce new processors, the rate of RAM (random access memory) has drop, and hard drive have gotten more megabytes. Plus, here time, we're on the increasing cusp of HDMI, the high-definition multimedia interface that connect a superfluity of components to HDTVs -- and to an snowballing numeral of new PC monitor on the market.

But the Mac mini remainder saddle with duplicate DVI video out. And this is just just one example. Apple's low-end notebook, the MacBooks, be presently running by far faster Intel processors, which also come capable of sport a faster front-side bus and Intel's GMA X3100 integrated graphics processor with 144 MB of common DDR2 SDRAM -- as challenging Intel's aging GMA 950 graphics processor that has a paltry 64 MB of DDR2 shared SDRAM. Granted, it's not like any graphics processor can kick butt and thieve name -- which is why tons industry watchers foresee Apple to launch deliver new MacBooks with graphics chipsets from Nvidia subsequent today.

Another crust in spike: The 80 GB hard drive in the low-end, US$599 1.83 GHz mini is pretty substantially an libel. The 2 GHz is minuscule enhanced. It ship with a 120 GB hard drive in encouragement of $799. Let's pop this in perspective: The iPod classic -- that's appropriate, an iPod -- now has a 120 GB hard drive.

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2009-01-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

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