Apple has announced new Powerbooks, though they are only a slight speed bump and a RAM upgrade, not the new form factor G5′s that everyone had hoped for. You can now get 8x Superdrives in them, as well as Bluetooth 2.0, faster hard drives, more RAM standard, etc. Prices now range from $1,499 to $2,699, which is about what they used to charge for a refurbished model. Now is the time to buy a Powerbook in my opinion, for sure. This is the cheapest, most stable they will be, since this is likely the last revision of the current form factor. I wouldn’t think they would make another speed boost Read more »

Lots of people, including our own Scrivs, are concerned about the 4,200rpm hard drive that ships with the Mac mini. A lot of people have wondered if the performance would be increased with a faster drive, or if it’s limited by the controller on the motherboard. The answer is, the faster the drive, the faster the mini. For $150 – $250 you can upgrade the hard drive in the mini to a 5,400rpm and even 7,200rpm drive, in sizes up to 100gb. There is a graph on “this”:http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Benchmarks/12705/minihd.html page showing the performance improvements, as well as links to buy the drives themselves. They don’t tell you how to actually perform Read more »

The Register has pointed out that a stat tracking graphic placed on the main powerbook page is labeled: http://switch.atdmt.com/action/apple_g5_powerbook It’s a 1×1 gif used for tracking purposes. All of the graphics on all of the other product pages are unique, and are all named appropriately, with the correct processor. So… Is it just a typo or a coincidence, or are they gearing up for that page to change soon, and perhaps generate some new interest that they’d like to compare to the “before” version? Only time will tell. Read more »

Everyone has been trying to figure out how to force the Mac mini to be a media center ever since it was announced. It’s small, and it’s cheap, so it does make sense. Engadget has put together a preliminary guide to getting your mini set up as your entertainment hub. Though it is just a very basic overview, at least it hints at what is to come. As of right now, I really don’t see any value in using a setup like this other than pure geek factor. I mean if you look at the list of stuff they are using to make that work, you have the Mac mini Read more »

Beyond the Obvious has a couple of nice torrent files that have a collection of 165 Apple TV commercials in .mov format. Here is what’s included: 49 – Classics 32 – Switch 13 – iMac 12 – Cost Less, Do More 12 – What’s on Your PowerBook 8 – The Future 7 – Misc. 6 – Newton 5 – //gs Commercials 5 – iBook 4 – Think Different (best) 4 – G3 4 – G4 4 – Performa Read more »

Now that the Mac has turned 21 years old, it’s about time the home video of its birth is finally released on the internet. “Kottke”:http://www.kottke.org/05/01/jobs-macintosh-video has the best list of mirrors, including some torrents. I got 300k/sec off of the torrents, so I recommend using those if you can. Also you won’t suck up some site’s bandwidth that way. The video is great quality considering its age, and it’s a ton of fun to watch this thing be unveiled. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it’s really cool to see the whole auditorium on their feet cheering for a simple little computer on the stage. I also enjoy Read more »

“Bare Feats”:http://www.barefeats.com/mini01.html has posted some benchmarks of the new Mac Mini. The scores are taken from xBench results online, and were not taken by Bare Feats themselves, because they don’t have one yet. But based on the xBench scores, it looks like the achilles heel of the Mac Mini by far will be its hard drive speed. In the thread and memory tests, the 1.4ghz Mini actually performed _better_ than the 1.6ghz iMac G5, but was less than half as fast when it came to random writes to the hard disk. This will be the largest bottleneck in the system, especially if you don’t upgrade the RAM to 1gb. With Read more »

Details on the Mac Mini have surfaced through the notes of a reporter for Macintouch. According to the notes, the Hard Drive is definitely a 2.5 inch 5,400rpm laptop hard drive, which is the main reason for the relatively small 80gb maximum. There aren’t many laptop drives larger than that, and the ones that are are much too expensive to meet the $500 price point. The notes also say the drive is buried pretty deep in the internals of the system, so upgrading it in the future will be no small task. I recommend just using a external Firewire drive, or even a string of them. The RAM is the Read more »

Not only has “Macnews.de”:http://www.macnews.de/ already received a Mac Mini, they’ve already ripped it to pieces and “posted”:http://www.macnews.de/gallery/displayimage.php?album=16&pos=18 the gory pictures on the internet for all to see. Of note, the hard drive inside is in fact a small laptop hard drive, not a full sized one like in most desktop computers, so figure that difference into your upgrade pricing… They are quite a bit more expensive than the full size ones. Read more »

The “Mac Mini”:http://www.apple.com/macmini/ is going to be the hottest selling thing to come out of Apple since the iPod, and is already a bargain at $499, but why not get it for “free”:http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=14910715? Like the original “FreeDesktopPC.com”:http://forevergeek.com/news/freedesktoppccom.php, this one requires 10 referrals to get the free Mac Mini. The offers are the same as the “FreeiPodShuffle.com”:http://forevergeek.com/apple/freeipodshufflecom_only_3_referrals_needed.php site. The free ones right now are eFax and PeoplePC, which are both free trials that you can cancel. Blockbuster is there too, and if you pay $9.95 for a 1 month membership, you get instant credit for the offer. Blockbuster is well worth signing up for. In 1-month you can easily rent 14 Read more »