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“The Mac mini is BYODKM,” Steve Jobs said, in front of a crowded and slightly confused audience at Macworld 2005.
“Bring your own display, keyboard and mouse,” he continued. “We supply the computer, you supply the rest.”
The Mac mini was designed to lure switchers to the platform. A new customer could simply unplug their desktop PC and hook a new Mac mini up to their existing peripherals.1
The original machine started at just $499, making the Mac mini the lowest-cost Mac Apple has ever sold.
Brian Stucki, writing on the Macminicolo blog, has some big news today:
In short, I’ve decided to sell ownership of Macminicolo and merge it with another company. I will stay on as President of Macminicolo and also serve as a Vice President of the parent company, MacStadium.
Now, I could just announce this with no explanation and be done with it . I could also write one of those generic acquisition posts focused on sunsets and brands and blah. Instead, I’ll be forthright and real like I’ve always tried to be with customers.
Macminicolo is the Mac mini hosting company in the Apple community, and this move feels right to me.
MacStories is hosted on Macminicolo (and has been for several years now). Moving to a dedicated mini has been one of the best decisions we’ve made in seven years of MacStories, and I’m excited to see what MacStadium brings to the table. I wish them all the best.
This weekend marks the ten year anniversary of the first Mac mini. I feel confident in saying that no one has watched this little machine grow more intently than I have watched it. It’s the center of everything I do here at Macminicolo.
Macminicolo’s Brian Stucki has put together a timeline with highlights from the past 10 years of the Mac mini. It’s fun to look back at the original “iHome” rumor and I’m glad the mini (the small but powerful machine that runs this website) is still around today.
Brian Stucki of Macminicolo:
For home users, the increased Graphics will be a very welcomed upgrade. In a data center, that will be useful for those who process a lot of images and will likely help when screen sharing. (Speaking of screen sharing, these HDMI adapters have been very useful. I’ll be interested to see if they’re still needed for the 2014 Mac mini.)
We’ve been running MacStories on Macminicolo for two years now – one of the best decisions we ever made. Once properly configured, the Mac mini can be a little beast of a machine – I was so happy with our setup at Macminicolo, I now use a second Mac mini just to automate tasks remotely. And with yesterday’s refresh, it looks like I may have a serious candidate for my next Mac.
Photo courtesy of Jason Snell at Six Colors.
At its media event held earlier today in Cupertino, Apple announced an update to its Mac mini line.
“People love Mac mini. It’s a great first Mac or addition to your home network, and the new Mac mini is a nice upgrade packed into an incredibly compact design,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With the latest CPU and graphics, faster Wi-Fi, two Thunderbolt 2 ports, OS X Yosemite, and starting at just $499, the new Mac mini is the best value ever.”
Described by Phil Schiller’s as “the world’s most efficient” desktop computer, the new Mac mini comes with two Thunderbolt 2 ports, new fourth generation Intel Core processors, and 802.11ac WiFi. Packing an “entire Mac experience” in a small 7.7-inch-square frame, the new Mac mini will come pre-installed with OS X Yosemite and also offer four USB 3 ports.
I like Bjango. They make the kind of simple, polished, and useful software that defines OS X as a platform with equal attention to beautiful pixels and powerful features. I was already a big fan of Consume and Skala. Bjango’s latest release, iStat 2, falls exactly under this category of apps: great-looking and efficient at the same time.
I own a 13-inch MacBook Air and a 21.5-inch iMac. My MBA is the “work machine”, whereas the iMac has always been the media center of the house, as it’s connected to a couple of external drives with my iTunes library on it. For the past few months, however, I’ve been increasingly switching every part of my “entertainment workflow” from local to cloud-based. It started with Rdio a year ago (now, I have a Family account and I’m not switching any time soon). For iTunes, it means I’ve slowly uploaded my library to a Mac mini hosted on Macminicolo. As documented elsewhere, I’m very happy with Macminicolo, their reliability, and the overall message of a Mac mini server always available in the cloud.
But I’m not a “server guy”. I don’t understand the teminology behind server management, and my limited skills go as far as restarting WebDAV and Apache. I use my Mac mini primarily for media streaming through Plex and as a server for Mail, OmniFocus, Dropbox, and other services or apps that allow me to automate my workflow in the cloud. All my Dropbox-based scripts for plain text and OmniFocus are created with the Mac mini in mind, because it’s always-on and lets me receive results in real time. Hazel is another invaluable utility when it comes to automating a remote Mac.
I do put my Mac mini through some more processor-intensive tasks every once in a while. Usually, it’s movie conversion through Handbrake or movie streaming through Plex Media Server. I recoginize this doesn’t compare to using a mini as an Xcode build server, but it’s still something that I want to keep an eye on. Read more
During this afternoon’s Apple Special Event at the California Theater in San Jose, California, Phil Schiller announced the availability of an updated Mac Mini, starting at $599 for the base model.
The updated Mac Mini comes in multiple configurations for desktop and server. The base configuration features a 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB of memory, and a 500 GB hard drive for storage. A second configuration for $799 comes with a 2.3 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 4 GB of memory, and a 1 TB hard drive for strorage. An updated Mac Mini with OS X Server is also available for $999, which includes a 2.3 GHz quad-core processor, 4 GB of memory, and two 1 TB hard drives(and is preloaded with OS X Server). The Mac Minis can be optionally configured with a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of memory, a 256 GB solid-state drive or a 1 TB fusion drive. The Mac Mini with OS X Server can be additionally configured with two 256 GB solid-state drives.
Inside the chassis you’ll find Intel HD Graphics 4000 for graphics and video. All Mac Minis have a Thunderbolt port with support for monitors up to 2560-by-1600 resolution, an HDMI port with support for up to 1920-by-1200 resolution, a Firewire 800 port, four USB 3 ports, an SDXC port, an audio line in minijack, and an audio line out/headphone minijack. For networking and wireless peripheral connections, 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.0 are also available.
Image credit: The Verge
For more coverage, check out our October 23 news hub and follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter.
Updated at 2:42 pm with additional model and pricing information. Corrected Mac Mini with OS X Server storage information.
I recently became tired with the fact that OmniFocus needs to be launched every once in a while in order to get the latest version of its synced database. For almost two years, I synced OmniFocus through The Omni Group’s excellent (and free) Omni Sync Server service, but I switched to a manual WebDAV location hosted on my Macminicolo machine because I like to be in control of the app’s sync sessions, and to fiddle around with ways to better automate the app’s syncing system.
Over the past few months, however, I have found myself increasingly missing notifications for due items because I am not always using the same device to manage OmniFocus, and I tend to forget to launch the app and hit the Sync button. I may go a full week without using OmniFocus for Mac, but I’d still like to be reminded of important items even if I don’t sync my iPhone and iPad all the time. Unfortunately, in the way OmniFocus is structured, the standard sync doesn’t allow items to be “pushed” in the background.
I came up with a way to have OmniFocus’ due reminders synced “in the cloud” and always up-to-date that enables me to keep using the app like I always have, yet staying assured I won’t miss items because I forgot to sync or open the app. It uses OmniFocus’ built-in calendar export functionality, and a mix of automation, Macminicolo hosting, and third-party apps to get the job done reliably and consistently. It’s not perfect (mainly due to Apple’s fault) and it’s likely doable in some other way with some other hosting solution, but I found this method to work perfectly for me in my workflow. Read more
Megan Lavey-Heaton reporting for TUAW:
While the Mac mini began its life as a low-end PowerPC G4 machine, current build-to-order models can meet or exceed stock-configuration iMacs. They’ve become smaller, more powerful, yet are still an excellent switcher machine for those who already own a monitor and keyboard. They also can function as a server or serve a variety of needs for homes and businesses.
In setting up a media server with my old MacBook earlier this week, I thought about getting a newer, faster Mac mini to do the job. My MacBook Pro has an internal SSD whilst the standard mini comes with a spinning drive, but on the other hand the new minis blow my old MBP’s performances out of the water and offer Thunderbolt, which is something I’d like to have on a media server looking forward. Plus, my MacBook’s internal SSD is only 128 GB, whereas a standard Mac mini has 500 GB of storage and can be easily extended with different, even multiple drives.
Maybe I’ll get a Mac mini someday. Thing is, I believe the Mac mini is the coolest machine Apple makes: not the most powerful or successful, just awesome to have around. It can be extended. It’s got minimal footprint but it’s packed with powerful internals. It’s extremely reliable, otherwise the good folks at Macminicolo wouldn’t have built a (terrific) business on it.
Happy birthday, Mac mini.
[via 512 Pixels]
