Mac Mini Questions

arty

arty

arty

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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I'm toying with the idea of getting a Mac Mini to replace my slightly ageing Shuttle SK43G as a LAN box, HTPC and potentially also a server. My Shuttle is rather noisy which tends to limit its use to the odd film watching and some light LAN gaming, as well as a (very) useful backup computer when friends and family's own computers have problems. I'd really like to replace it with something silent, or near-silent, to run Subversion and one or two other things 24/7.

My questions are thus:

1. How quiet are the current Mac Minis?
2. Would one be a suitable choice for a server? Do they run hot?
3. Can you run them on their side (i.e. with the DVD drive vertical)?
4. Do they have any 3D graphics capabilities? I'm thinking enough for things like Civ4, not Oblivion :p
5. Is there a decent VNC-like application for OS X?
6. Are they likely to be powerful enough to manage a full 1080p HD output?
7. Is it worth waiting for Core 2 to become the standard CPU?
8. Bearing in mind I've only briefly used Macs with System 5 and OS 8, is there anything really important I'd need to know about that differentiates modern machines from PCs?

I think that's more or less it for now. I've had a look around for answers to most of these questions on the internet, but not really found any conclusive ones. I also appreciate the first-hand experience of people on this forum :)

Cheers for any info!

arty
 
Thanks for all of the responses so far. It's probably something I'll consider in the next month or two but it's useful for me to start thinking about things now.

Forgot to mention, I'd also like to run Apache on one, mainly for PHP development. I'm sure that'd be fine as Subversion works best as an Apache module and I've already seen a Mac binary for it somewhere :)

I'll do a bit more reading up and make a decision soon. Thanks again.

arty
 
MagSafe said:
Just for a bit of a heads up - rumours are starting to appear that a new mac mini will be released sometime soon :)
Click to expand...

Intriguing. I shall keep my eyes open.

Is it possible to uninstall the bundled applications with OS X? There are quite a lot of programs I know I won't be using, such as iTunes, and I'm used to having a clean PC with a streamlined version of Windows. I don't expect OS X to be as bloated by any means, but I just don't know about this stuff :)

arty
 
deano said:
or do a custom install of Mac os X.

cheers
Deano
Click to expand...

Out of interest, do Mac Minis actually come with an OS X CD? It's been an incredibly long time since I bought a 'pre-built' computer and I know the PC world has rather annoyingly moved on to 'recovery CDs' and restrictive OEM licensing.

arty
 
Just another question to add to this thread, if anyone's still reading it: I'm now thinking of buying a Mac Mini alongside a Sony 32" LCD TV and using the two together. As the TV doesn't have a DVI input I was planning to use a DVI -> HDMI adapter. Is this essentially just a connector change? In other words, should I be able to just use the TV as a normal monitor with the Mac Mini and get full 720p (1366x768) output from it?

If anyone has their Mac Mini connected via HDMI I'd be very interested to know :)

arty
 
BillytheImpaler said:
HDMI is essentially DVI with a few pins to carry digital audio. You'll have to connect your Mac Mini's audio output to the HDMI converter along with your DVI plug.
Click to expand...

Great. Many thanks for that clarification - audio won't be a problem :)

arty
 
Finally just taken the plunge and ordered a Mac Mini 1.66Ghz with 1GB RAM. It'll be used with the Sony 32" LCD TV which I now have - should be a pretty neat setup, as long as the Mini can cope with HD playback :cool:

Thanks for all the advice. I'll post some photographs once it arrives :)

arty
 
Unfortunately mine's now been delayed by 7-10 working days, apparently :( Might not get it for 2 weeks now! Still, I'll be patient :p

arty
 
Just got my Mini and writing this post from it as is traditional with new computers :p

So far I'm finding it all fairly straightforward - the only thing that's giving me a slight peeve is that my forward / back buttons on my mouse don't appear to work in either Finder or Safari. I've had a quick poke around in the keyboard / mouse settings in the System Preferences but quickly felt out of depth and gave up :o Home and End don't seem to work either. Any tips gratefully received!

Will post pics with my new TV when I next have the chance :)

arty
 
Some more questions:

  • Does anyone know of a way to get Mplayer to accept input from the Apple remote control?
  • Has anyone got any links to good terminal tutorials? I'd like to knock up a few simple scripts.
  • Along with the previous item, does anyone have links to decent general 'using OS X' tutorials?
  • How do you maximise an application a la Windows? :p
  • What do people tend to use for an MSN, ICQ and IRC combined client? I'm thinking a rough equivalent of Miranda.
  • How do you change the font size of window titles and the menu bar? At the moment it's really far too big for this monitor :)
  • (I'll add a few more of these as I think of them!)

Lovely machine, though. There's an increasing temptation to hook my digital piano up via USB and play with GarageBand when I get home (currently away!).

arty
 
Last edited:
Matt said:
MSN/ICQ = Adium
IRC = Colloquy

You can't maximise windows (you'll get used to it quickly) :)
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll take a look at those. Garageband is damn good for a free application - I think it'd make a terrific 'notepad' music app. Cool :)

arty
 
Got some more questions:

  • What's the correct procedure for uninstalling an application? I installed DivX a day or two ago but found it more or less useless. When I dragged its icons in Applications to the trash can and then did a Spotlight search for 'divx', it still found about 15 or so files dotted all over the place, including the .component folder used by Quicktime (i.e. the core codec!). Did I do the right thing and was the software behaving badly, or should it have come with an uninstaller? In addition, when I tried to delete some of these files I got 'in use' errors.
  • Is there a way to get Front Row to ignore the awfulness that is iTunes and merely read media files via folders? I tried adding a few symlinks to artist folders shared on my main PC in my Music folder but Front Row still didn't pick them up.
  • Is it possible to build and run Linux applications on OS X relatively easily? So far I've not found any half-decent free text editors and I'd like to have a go at building SciTE if possible.
  • Why can't I cut / paste files in Finder? :p

If I get no replies to these questions I might move them into another thread as this one's starting to get a bit OT and rather long :) As always, thanks for all the help!

arty
 
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