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Mac Mini and iPod Hi-Fi Over-Hyped? 317

Posted by Zonk from the isn't-everything-nowadays dept.
RX8 writes "Analyst Michael Greeson takes a look at Apple's new products, the Mac Mini (Intel based) and iPod Hi-Fi and explains why they were over-hyped and how that can damage Apple. Michael explains that when you are 'an industry innovator - when your products fall short of being truly original, your own success becomes your worst enemy.'" Update: 03/04 00:07 GMT by Z : As many posters have pointed out, the article here has little to do with the synopsis. This article is mostly about the design for the mac mini and its remote, which is a fairly interesting topic. Mea culpa, folks.
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Mac Mini and iPod Hi-Fi Over-Hyped? More

Mac Mini and iPod Hi-Fi Over-Hyped?

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  • Amateur Hour (Score:5, Informative)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) * on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:22PM (#14845312) Homepage
    Zonk, the Slashdot headline and summary have virtually nothing to do with the article.

    For one, Greeson specifically states that he's not going to go into whether or not Apple overhyped their latest releases; by the tone he takes, one suspects that he sees the grumbling of "Apple's fanatical base" as a largely unavoidable cost of taking innovative risks. Beyond that, though, the focus of his article is on the remote control included with the mini; how it is simultaneously easy-to-use and powerful--he calls it "sophisticated simplicity"; and how he hopes and expects future devices to try to mimic Apple's design choice.

    Instead, this summary takes a throwaway bit from the introduction and completely ignores the entire point of Mr. Greeson's article. The summary goes on to state that Mr Greeson thinks Apple over-hyped their latest product release--even though he explicitly says otherwise in his article. If I were Mr. Greeson, I'd be more than a little peeved that you'd so fundamentally butchered and misrepresented my work. Not even two minutes of the most basic editorial work would have revealed this.

    You've been trolled, Zonk, and now it falls to us to clear the air. Of course, the joke's on us, too: we're not the ones who are getting paid to do the job in the first place.

    • Re:Amateur Hour (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stupidfoo ( 836212 )
      Zonk's an idiot. I think this has been fairly well established by now.
    • Are you new here? At least it's not a dupe.
    • that's what I get for reading the article at a "leisurely" pace. By the time I'm ready to whip out the flamethrower, this has already been modded to 5...

      Well, at least I'm not the only one who was frustrated.

      • Re:Amateur Hour (Score:4, Funny)

        by happyemoticon ( 543015 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:43PM (#14845524) Homepage

        Well, you've got to learn from the article submitters and moderates and only read the first paragraph of every submission, and then see how you can best angle that to stir up discontent between Mac using /.ers and Mac-hating /.ers.

        Seriously, that summary is absurd. It might as well have read, "Apple Not As Cool As It Thinks, Study Shows," with bar graphs representing how cool Apple thinks it is (10), how cool it actually is (6), and how cool Steve Jobs thinks Apple is (und).

        • Re:Amateur Hour (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Just use this handy graph that Apple has provided:

              X
              X
              X
            X X X
          X X X X X
          X X X X X
          X X X X X

          M S A D S
          i a p e o
          c m p l n
          r s l l y
          o u e
          s n
          o g
          f
          t
    • At least it shows that some people actually RFA. :)

      • Re:Amateur Hour (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Firehed ( 942385 )
        That's only because the summary was totally contrary to what actually made sense. This is probably the first time in a month I've RTFA. Apple's secretive nature got us talking, and they released more simple-to-use and fairly elegant products (the "hi-fi" stereo is definately up in the air on that one I suppose). Summary: New mini and hi-fi overhyped. Article: simple remotes are perfect for humanity; no mention of the hi-fi.

        The Mini revamp, anyways, adds those necessary yet simplistic features to make

    • Zonk, your fired!!! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Enrique1218 ( 603187 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:58PM (#14845669) Journal
      I thought I was I going stupid there for a moment. I read the article and it had nothing with the slashdot title. If anything, it seem to praise Apple. But I realized from post, it wasn't I going stupid- it was Zonk. Zonk, you need to buck up man and pay attention!!!
    • Thank you. My point exactly. 6 button mouse fugue does not equal () hype summary.

    • Re:Amateur Hour (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tooth ( 111958 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @05:14PM (#14845852)
      I'm sick of Zonk articles too, and the come in waves, 6 at a time. I notice it as the times when I read /. are the time when he posts a heap of articles. Can't there be some more effort put into getting this right?

    • The new masthead (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mille Mots ( 865955 )
      Perhaps the masthead should be changed to something like:

      Slashdot
      News for nerds. Summaries that bear no resemblance to the articles they summarize.

      YMMV. HTH. HAND.

      --
      Sig null

    • Usually this kind of crap only happens on weekends, which is when everybody else goes home, leaving Zonk in charge. I guess everybody's taking a long weekend.

      Could it be that Zonk is not a carbon-based unit? Maybe he's just a script that accepts stories at random.

    • Re:Amateur Hour (Score:5, Insightful)

      by baryon351 ( 626717 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @06:10PM (#14846327)
      Sadly, I don't think the summary was a troll or a joke, rather an expression of how poor many people are at truly reading news articles for meaning, as opposed to the habit of skimming over them in 30 seconds and getting a few key words to highlight mentally.

      I've written articles for a few sites in the past, not as anything professional, but come across the same problem. Enough of the feedback in site comments or email comes from people who betray their lack of comprehension by their comments. I'll write about how to install an apache module for example, and specifically state three steps to be taken in order to get everything working; the responses indicate people have jumped in and tried only step three, done all steps in a random order, or in some cases completely misread the point of the article. "Hi B, I'm writing about your article on how to get eaccelerator working, and I'm getting errors decompressing the archive according to Step 2"... so I reply "Hello user, I have never written an eaccelerator article, step 2 is how to decompress the archive for installing mod_gzip". Any & every permutation comes back at me. It's possibly a reflection of bad writing skills, but honestly I don't think my writing is THAT poor.

      So it goes on, and I blame half-hearted attempts in school to introduce speed reading, where anybody can be taught in minutes to skim over two paragraphs and get words like "hype" "apple" "mac mini" and "intel" then make up their own story in-mind, without getting any real context or meaning from what's read.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:22PM (#14845320)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The article's not about hype at all... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:22PM (#14845321) Journal
    For the purpose of this essay, let's forget about whether Apple failed to live up to its own PR. In fact, let's ignore the PR strategy altogether and focus on one of the product announcements: the new Mac Minis.
    ... and in any event, what hype is it that we're talking about here ? All Apple did was issue invitations (with no details on what was about to be disclosed) to a bunch of people in the press. In no way, shape, or form is this "hype" (verb: to promote or publicize a product or idea intensively, often exaggerating its importance or benefits) - it was an invite to a product release (with no details of the product) for crying out loud!

    As soon as the invitations hit the 'net, all sorts of rumours (note: these are *not* Apple-created) surface. Some people publicly projected their own desires onto the event, irrespective of how likely it is, and then these self-same people get all disappointed when their fantasy doesn't come true. These people need to (a) get out more, (b) have more sex, and (c) move on from the mental state of a five-year-old ("Me want", "Me want", "Me want"). [aside: note that (c), as applied to (b), is more likely after (a). Just a hint to get you started...]

    The fault here lies solely, completely, and utterly with those who raise Apple on too high a pedestal. There's only so much cool stuff any one company can make (although I thought the new mini *was* pretty cool, personally).

    Simon.
  • This announcement shouldn't even have been an event. New McMini? Yeah, that was inevitable. An iPod ghetto blaster? Kinda goes against the whole portable movement, doesn't it? And as far as "innovative" goes, well, it's a box of speakers. We've been able toconnect iPods to various speaker systems for 3 years now.

    But, then again, Apple wasn't the only one who hyped this up. Didn't the rumor sites all predict a bigger video iPod?

    • Re:Snoozer (Score:3, Informative)

      by Golias ( 176380 )
      An iPod ghetto blaster? Kinda goes against the whole portable movement, doesn't it?

      Not really. It runs on d-cells just like any other portable boom-box.

      That said, it has several strikes against it:

      1. It costs to much to take it with you while tubing down the Apple river or to a tailgate party at a St. Paul Saints game. For the kind of places one usually hauls a boom box, you want to bring something that won't make you break down in tears if it gets run over by a car or smashed against rocks.

      2. It's called
      • " It costs to much to take it with you while tubing down the Apple river or to a tailgate party at a St. Paul Saints game."

        but then, so does the iPod you connect to it.

  • Wait just a minute (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Michalson ( 638911 )
    You mean to tell me that advertising a screenless MP3 player with random mode as a life changing revolution could be a bit over the top?

    /Doesn't own a Shuffle
    //But already owned another cheap generic brand no-feature MP3 player with the same chipset

  • The old "gifted child" syndrome? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vought ( 160908 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:26PM (#14845364)
    So, he seems to be saying that like the "gifted" children that show higher interest and aptitude in certain areas, Apple must do better because they're clearly capable of it.

    I've seen lots of kids drop out of college because of reasoning like that from their parents. They get discouraged and stop trying, because they are capable of doing better, even when they aren't interested in "doing better" at the time.

    Just seems counter productive to expect something groundbreaking from Apple everytime there's an annoucement. Apple didn't overhype it - the press did. The rumors sites did. Apple will display innovation when they have something innovative to ship - they never promised that the Intel-based machines would be anything groundbreaking - just Macs with Intel processors - which is exactly what they are, and more (Front Row).

    So don't expect the gifted child of the computer industry to display brilliance in every assignment. That's not what being "gifted" about - even Ansel Adams made more average-level work than masterpieces.

  • How is this overhyped? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Matey-O ( 518004 ) <michaeljohnmiller@mSPAMsSPAMnSPAM.com> on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:26PM (#14845373) Homepage Journal
    Apple held an event in it's 'Cafeteria(*)' fer chrissakes!

    When they pull out the stops, it isn't in an event of this level.

    Overpriced leather case aside, the stuff they rolled out was worth holding a minor event over...That's what this was, a minor event.

    *=yeah, it wasn't the Cafeteria, but it was held in a location they already own, it's cheap floorspace to hold an announcement.
    • even though the summary has little correlation with TFA, it was over-hyped. but not by apple. all apple events are prefixed by lots of sites guessing and rumour mill spinning. i think that's what caused a lot of people to go "a leather case and a speaker? what's the big deal?" (the intel a/v mac looks way cool though). this is not apple's doing directly, but the way they like to introduce stuff in secrecy and "one more thing", it leads to this kind of stuff.

  • Umm? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Christopher_G_Lewis ( 260977 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:27PM (#14845375) Homepage
    I read the article (really, I did!) and it mostly talked about the new remote and how cool a 6 button remote is.

    Kind of neat, but what about channels with 7 8 9 and 0?

    • When you are simply downloading media from ITMS (and other sources), what use do you have for "channels".

      Apple is bypassing the whole legacy model of Broadcast that is so ingraned, even technical people think we need "channels" instead of browsing for video content like we browse the web. Do you visit a web page on channel 8, then browse it for 30 minutes only to have it suddenly vanish?

      The Mac MINI is primarily a home media center, not a PVR (though you can use it as such).
      • Maybe a conspiracy against MSDN's Channel 9 ...
        • Maybe a conspiracy against MSDN's Channel 9 ...

          Even that is "Channel 9" (as you typed), not just "9".

          We don't browse by IP, I fail to see why the long term method of finding video does not use text I can read instead of arbitrary numbers with meaning mapped by temporality alone.

      • The concept of Channels is for when there is so much content that anyone who is not 100% dedicated to evaluating it is overwhelmed.
        • I'm not following that. If there's so much content, then sorting by keywords or other criteria that has something to do with the content would be what's wanted. Not a random number that happens to be associated with the content.

          So if you're looking for CNN, you look for CNN, not a number that happens to be associated with CNN.

          Kind of like my post last week about Vista still using letters to designate drives. Its necessary to have a simple designation, but these sesignations are meaningless to the end user.
        • Channels are one-dimensional. You can deliver the same functionality (and much more) with a tree- like the iPod music browsing interface. You can already sort of do this on digital cable boxes with the sort by title or theme buttons, but when there's a real computer driving it there's no reason to stick with an organization that was first designed for a single mechanical dial.
    • Did anyone else spend half the article trying to guess what CE stands for?

      (I came to the conclusion, eventually, that it is Consumer Electronics - am I right?)

    • it mostly talked about the new remote and how cool a 6 button remote is.

      Kind of neat, but what about channels with 7 8 9 and 0?

      Also the on/off button, record button, volume, channel up/down, replay, mute... the buttons that TV and DVR (Tivo) users have gotten used to.

      TFA misses TF point when he lavishly praises Apple's 6-button remote over Windows Media Center remotes. Try controlling Front Row's television/DVR functions with that 6-button remote. Of course, FR doesn't controll TV/DVR.

      I suspect he

  • Maybe overhyped for the Mac fanboys... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ImaNihilist ( 889325 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:27PM (#14845376)
    But not for us "normies." For the first time I'm really looking at Apple products. It's like I want them all. I don't own a single Apple product, and yet I spend forever on their store.

    I'm thinking about taking out my school loans just to buy something cool. I think both the Mac mini and the iPod Hi-Fi are totally sweet.

  • Over-hyped? Did the submitter read the article? (Score:3, Informative)

    by nvrrobx ( 71970 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:28PM (#14845382) Homepage
    Maybe I missed something, but how does this go about explaining how they were over-hyped?

    He explains why the 6 button remote is a great idea.

    The article clearly says:

    For the purpose of this essay, let's forget about whether Apple failed to live up to its own PR. In fact, let's ignore the PR strategy altogether and focus on one of the product announcements: the new Mac Minis.
    • On the other hand, he does seem to think that it's a big deal that the new Minis come without keyboards. It's supposed to mean that they meant to be media centers rather than computers. Except haven't Minis always come without keyboards? Their big selling point is that they work with all the peripherals you already bought for your PC.
  • (Score:-1, Offtopic)

  • They screwed the pooch on the hi-fi (Score:5, Interesting)

    by andyring ( 100627 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:29PM (#14845389) Homepage
    Apple screwed the pooch on the iPod Hi-Fi. Sure, it looks all sleek and such, but it's priced WAY too high. $349 will get you a "home theater in a box" that will sound quite a bit better and give you a ton more flexibility, not to mention the ever-elusive AM/FM radio (not that people listen to it anyway). This thing is really no different from a $99 "boom box" type stereo with an AUX input, except that it charges your iPod, and costs $250 more.

    It's my belief that if Apple TRULY wanted market share, they'd follow Microsoft's lead on the Xbox and sell it at a loss but then make it up in other ways. If they sold the Mac Mini for $299 or even $349, they'd sell millions overnight, still make money on dot-Mac, iWork, keyboards, iTunes songs, iPods, etc. And they'd get a hugely larger share of the market. Then, when mom and dad send junior off to college, give him the mini and buy an iMac for at home, or buy junior an iBook, etc.

    • Re:They screwed the pooch on the hi-fi (Score:4, Insightful)

      by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:42PM (#14845517) Homepage
      Thank god you're not in charge of making business decisions at Apple. People are already buying iPod HiFi systems - Bose, Altec Lansing, etc. Apple wants in on that. They know they can charge a premium for their system, and they're gonna do it. And you know what? People are going to buy it. In droves.

      Most of your complaints can be traced back to the iPod itself. When it was first announced most people around here laughed it off as being nothing new and overpriced. Don't underestimate Apple's excellent product design and marketing expertise.

    • Problem: there's nothing that says if I buy a mini, I have to buy an Apple keyboard, mouse, and monitor. The Xbox is different in that all products that want to work with it have to pay liscense fees, so even if I buy a 3rd party Xbox controller, MS still gets some of the money.
    • But why would Apple care about marketshare? It's making plenty of profit without it!
    • Apple screwed the pooch on the iPod Hi-Fi. Sure, it looks all sleek and such, but it's priced WAY too high. $349 will get you a "home theater in a box" that will sound quite a bit better and give you a ton more flexibility, not to mention the ever-elusive AM/FM radio (not that people listen to it anyway).

      Just as people who dissed the iPod mini not realizing that it was going after the flash player market, you miss the market Apple is going after with the iPod HiFi - the people that are buying other things j
    • According to their announcement, Apple thinks their iPod Hi-Fi will sounds as good as a "home theatre in a box" system. It's true that it'll be somewhat more limited, but that's only an issue for A/V and live stuff; lots of people have serious stereo equipment that they only use for listening to music, and iTunes or the iPod handle all the selection issues, and people put all their music in anyway.

      The sort of mystifying thing is that they simultaneously released the media center machine and the stereo syste
    • Apple screwed the pooch on the iPod Hi-Fi.

      My first thought upon seeing the picture of it was, "where are the tweeters?"

      Frequency response: 53Hz to 16kHz ± 3 dB
      (From Apple's "Tech Specs")

      16kHz? Absymal. It's not Hi-Fi - I've seen ghetto blasters with better specs. For what Apple's charging, you could buy a Chinese-made tube amp from eBay and still have enough money left over to buy a pair of speakers with better specs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • If these products were overhyped I believe it's more the media than Apple's fault.

    But as for the actual products the Mini needs one specific upgrade to be great option for living room multimedia: a faster hard disk [gadgetswanted.com]. At 5400 rpm they'll be slow at recording. But then PVR functionality doesn't seem to be in Apple's interest. They want us to download video through iTunes. But the Mini should have a faster HD to be ready to handle PVR functionality that others will program for or Apple will add later to sta
    • If you really need a faster disc (which actually you do not), you can always hook up a 7200 RPM external firewire drive.

      On current mini's that provides a good boost in disc performance.
    • "At 5400 rpm they'll be slow at recording"?

      No, you're wrong.

      Off the top of my head, I can name at least 2 SD DTV PVRs which use 5400RPM, ATA-33 drives - the Topfield 5x00 [dtvforum.info] series, and the Humax Smart [dtvforum.info].

      Note that both of these machines can simultaneously record 2 SD DTV streams while playing back a third from disc. That's 3 streams (2 write, 1 read) of ~6Mbps each, for a total of ~18Mbps. Or, roughly 2.5MBps (note "B", not "b").

      Assuming a sustained transfer rate of 10MBps for a 5400RPM ATA-33 drive - which, hon
  • I for one am happy with the new Mac Mini announcement, and they can overhype it as much as they want (in fact the more, the better). Personally I plan to pick up a (now significantly cheaper) PowerPC Mac Mini for media center purposes. The previous processor is more than powerful enough to be a MythTV frontend.

  • Ignoring the article completely... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:32PM (#14845433)
    I usually pay pretty close attention to the products Apple introduces, and I have to say that I nearly missed the most recent introduction entirely. I may have been a bit inattentive, but when there's a really big announcement coming from Apple, everybody knows about it. For one thing, Apple generally introduces important products at major events, such as MacWorld or WWDC. This time, though, they just invited a bunch of reporters to show up and see their new products.

    Overhyped? More like hardly hyped at all.

  • Remote Controls (Score:5, Interesting)

    by soft_guy ( 534437 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @04:38PM (#14845485)
    I used to work for a consumer electronics manufacturer in product design. I learned several things about remote controls. The thing that I learned that is relevant to this conversation is that there is a "regional trend" on how remote controls are designed.

    In the European market things like design and elegance and simplicity are percieved to be important. Therefore a "good" remote control for the european market has very few buttons.

    In the US, a remote control with a button for every feature and not as much software menus/interactions is more normal.

    In Japan/Asia/Pacific, a remote control is considered to be "macho" if it has lots and lots of buttons. The more buttons, the better. A "lady's" remote control will be a little bit smaller and have a few less buttons. According to the folks who I learned this from, the average family would have a remote for the man of the house and a smaller lady's remote.

    In the US, there would just be one remote and no one would think of it as a "macho" thing to have more buttons.

    With regards to the Front Row remote, Steve Jobs (as usual) takes his queus from european sophisticates on his notions of design, simplicity, etc.


    • Mehhh! THIS [msrcsites.co.uk] is the only remote control worth having...
    • "In the US, a remote control with a button for every feature and not as much software menus/interactions is more normal."
      Which no one likes.
      Even the most technical savy people I know will look at there remote to figure out what to do, or which button they accidently fat thumbed.

      As far as the Japan market is concerned, they could always out with a one meter square model to show there friends how macho they are!

      "With regards to the Front Row remote, Steve Jobs (as usual) takes his queus from european sophisti
    • In the European market things like design and elegance and simplicity are percieved to be important. Therefore a "good" remote control for the european market has very few buttons.

      "Fewer buttons" ought not to be confused with greater simplicity.

      Consider the example of a DVD player remote control that I own -- many DVD player remote controls work in the same way:

      The fast-forward/rewind buttons are overloaded to control the chapter skip functions. Press and release quickly for chapter skip. Press and hold b

    • Re:Remote Controls (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tgibbs ( 83782 )
      Few remotes are very well designed. The two best I've seen are the TiVo remote and a remote for an older device called VideoGuide that added TiVo-like capabilities to VCRs. Of course, making a simple remote for a simple device like an iPod is not exactly a huge challenge. I'll be interested to see what Apple comes up for a remote when and if they finally release a true media center PC.
  • I was eagerly waiting for the new Mac Mini.

    I WANTED a Mac Mini.

    My brother (unfortunately) purchased a G4 laptop 3 weeks before they released the Macbook pro, so I was in no hurry to by the Mini until they released it with the new chip.

    I was expecting the same low price with a better processor.....like everything else tech.

    Then I see the actual price....and it costs far more than the original and for what? A new chip? A puny hard drive? Not alot of memory? No DVD writer?

    Apple......you can stick it.
    • Far more? no, just more.

      You are paying for a small quite device. well, not YOU, but people in general.
      Personally I think it is a great trade off.

    • I was expecting the same low price with a better processor.....like everything else tech.

      Then I see the actual price....and it costs far more than the original and for what?

      Wait another month or two for Celeron M processors based on the Core Solo core [theinquirer.net]. That should add a nice sub-$500 option back to the Mac mini selection.

      I was actually shocked that Apple used Core Solo/Duo for the Mac mini. Those processors are not meant for "low end" computers, although the price increase makes the mini "less low-e

  • there are already multiple stand-alone speaker systems for the ipod from Bose, JBL, and others, and the Intel Mac mini is simply a retool of the same offering on a faster chip.

    these 2 products are more evolutionary than REVolutionary, and hardly deserves the fanfare of a separate launch party hosted by Jobs himself

    maybe a true video ipod does, but these 2 products yielded a big YAWN in my mind when i saw the live blogs
    • there are already multiple stand-alone speaker systems for the ipod from Bose, JBL, and others

      Have you listened to any of them?

      I sepnt some time in an Apple store comparing them (not even to buy, just curious) and frankly all of them soundly really weak. Yet people buy them.

      If the Apple unit produces much better sound then the extra cost may well be worth it for the same people that are buying these things already (I must admit I am not quite sure who they are, though I suppose they'd be nice for a sewing

  • What hype? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by biglig2 ( 89374 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @05:05PM (#14845743) Homepage Journal
    There wasn't any hype. "Come and see some fun new products" was all they said. How exactly could they have played it any less? "We've some new stuff, it's pretty crappy, but someone might want it I suppose."

    And they could have hyped this. Look, they announced the switch to Intel last year and said they'd have Intel Macs in June this year. It's March, and already they have a mid-range desktop, high-end notebook, and two low-end desktop machines out.
  • Firstly, "overhype" is a strangely tautological word. Surely the word needed is "hype".

    And secondly, what hype? I don't remember seeing ads everywhere advertising these new products. I surf tech web sites. I read news on Slashdot. I heard a rumour that Apple were going to make an announcement and was curious - but that's it. But I don't remember any hype coming from Apple.

  • Michael Greeson

    Who?

  • "a dedicated TV output"? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @05:12PM (#14845823)
    "The new platform features a variety of entertainment-specific goodies, including... a dedicated TV output"

    Where? I see a Firewire and a DVI port, no composite, S-Video, 75ohm coax, or component video you'd expect for the term "dedicated TV output". Indeed, from the specifications:
    S-video and composite video output to connect directly to a TV or projector (using Apple DVI to Video Adapter, sold separately)
    So Apple makes a scan converter, which could probably be used with any of their machines. It still doesn't make the DVI port a "dedicated TV output".
    • The cable is NOT a scan converter. The Apple "DVI output" has both the DVI and S signals, you just need a cable to convert the connecter.

    • Re:"a dedicated TV output"? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mpaque ( 655244 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @08:32PM (#14847301)
      Where? I see a Firewire and a DVI port, no composite, S-Video, 75ohm coax, or component video you'd expect for the term "dedicated TV output".

      Yeah. There isn't even a switch for channel 3 or 4, and there's no tin box with a slide switch and double-sided tape for me to put in series with the rabbit ears on my Magnavox.

      By the way, while you were out, TV sets have been going digital. There's this new broadcast standard, and newer sets, the ones that will handle digital signals, tend to ship with the DVI/HDMI connectors that accept the signal from the Mac Mini.
  • A disappointing, low-key announcement. Now watch the following happen:
    1. Next announcement will be one heck of a blockbuster announcement. Like iPod Video, Mac Pro and totally redesigned Intel iBook in one shot.
    2. They'll slash the price on the minis by a hundred bucks a couple of months down the road. Crowds of Mac fanatics will bust the doors down if it's just $100 less.
    3. They'll re-price their boombox at $299.
  • I usually avoid these hypes. I just wait until I see the products myself. That's true for movies, TV shows, games, places, etc.
  • So we all know that poster and submitter didn't apparently read past the first 2 or 3 paragraphs of the article.

    The article is mostly praise for Apple's view of the future and reminds me of a discussion I had with a freind of mine about the Apple remote when it first came out.

    My take was that simplicity and easy to use will appeal to more people than shear number of buttons and number of button presses to reach a fuction. The goal of a remote control is not to "shock and awe" the consumer into being afraid
  • 1. Sound begins at 53Hz, and ends at 16 Hz.
    2. What cannot be reproduced on three inch speakers is monophonic.
    3. Surround sound does not exist.

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