Hasta La Gadget!

The leaks had it right, again. The new Mac Mini is available on the Apple Store starting at $599. And yes, it features five USB ports.

$599 Version
2.0GHz
1GB RAM
120GB Hard Drive
8X SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

$799 Version
2.0GHz
2GB RAM
320GB Hard Drive
8X SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

Systems are configurable with up to a 2.26GHz processor and 4GB of RAM. Especially with the 4GB RAM cap and 9400M video card, the new Mac Mini looks very similar to the latest iteration of MacBooks, performance-wise, except for the inclusion of a FireWire port. [Apple]

The new 2.0 GHz Mac mini, for a suggested retail price of $599 (US), includes:
• 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB shared L2 cache;
• 1GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM expandable up to 4GB;
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics;
• 120GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• Mini DisplayPort and mini-DVI for video output (adapters sold separately);
• built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 BASE-T);
• five USB 2.0 ports;
• one FireWire 800 port; and
• one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog.

The new 2.0 GHz Mac mini, for a suggested retail price of $799 (US), includes:
• 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB shared L2 cache;
• 2GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM expandable up to 4GB;
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics;
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• Mini DisplayPort and mini-DVI for video output (adapters sold separately);
• built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 BASE-T);
• five USB 2.0 ports;
• one FireWire 800 port; and
• one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog.

Build-to-order options and accessories for the Mac mini include: a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, up to 4GB DDR3 SDRAM, 80GB, 250GB or 320GB 5400 hard drives. Additional options include: LED Cinema Display, Apple Keyboard, Apple Keyboard with numeric keypad, Apple Wireless Keyboard and Wireless Mighty Mouse; AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme Base Station, Time Capsule; Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter, Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter (for 30-inch DVI display), Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter, Apple USB Modem, Apple Remote, the AppleCare Protection Plan; and pre-installed copies of iWork ’09, Logic Express 8, Final Cut Express 4 and Aperture 2.

Various blogs claim receiving confirmation of new iMacs and Mac Minis launching Tuesday.

Hardmac posted product numbers purporting to reference four iMac models and two Mac Mini models (from low- to high-end).

Hardmac and OneMoreThing both claim reliable sources said the new Macs are set for release tomorrow. OneMoreThing also provided an incomplete list of specifications (translated by a MacRumors forum member):

Mac Mini

• Ports: USB (five), FireWire 800, Mini DVI, Display port
• Graphics: Nvidia chipset
• CPU: Starts at 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• Memory: 1 or 2 GB DDR3 memory (max 4 GB)
• Storage: 120 GB hard disk (max 320 GB)

iMac

• Screen size: one 20-inch model; three 24-inch models
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo (not a quad core): 2.66GHz, 2.93GHz and 3.06GHz
• Ports: Display port
• Memory: 2GB DDR3 memory in the 20-inch model; 4GB DDR3 memory in the 24-inch model (max 8 GB)

We find this very believable: Apple traditionally launches hardware upgrades on Tuesdays. Also, upgrades for both of these Macs are long overdue, and many were anticipating a March release. 

Yowza. Those are some pretty fast iMacs, huh? Keep an eye on the Apple Store online in the early hours of Tuesday.

Mac Mini and iMac Product Part Numbers? Available Tomorrow? [MacRumors]

Photo: Stephen Hackett/Flickr

About two weeks ago a blurry photo purporting to capture Apple’s next Mac Mini had us calling BS. But then a day later, a video appeared showing off the fabled device, and we were a little more convinced. Today another image is making its rounds on the web, this time claiming to represent the packaging of the Mac Mini.

In the image, the device appears to match the Mac Mini in the previous photo. (Note the five USB ports and Mini Display port). And above the fabled Mac Mini is the Nvidia logo, which suggests the device will ship with an Nvidia chipset. Though some might have doubts about the image because the packaging shows the back of the Mac Mini, the box of the current Mac Mini flashes its derriere, too.

At this point we’re 90 percent convinced that this is the new Mac Mini. And to that we have to say — snore. We wanted a form factor upgrade, dammit.

See Also:

• Rumor: New Mac Mini Coming to Macworld 2009
• Video: Is This the New Mac Mini?
• Leaked Mac Mini Photo Shows Many New Ports
• Does the New Mac Mini Have 17 USB Ports?
• Atom-Powered Mac Mini in March? Probably Not
• Apple Slows Down Mac Upgrades, in Sync With Economy

New Mac Mini Packaging Spy Shot [MacRumors]

Photo: MacRumors

DoubleTwist is a new, open-source, universal media manager in beta for the Mac. It gathers music, videos and photos, supports tons of devices and has a P2P/social networking component. Will it be great?

DoubleTwist was created by the famous DVD copy-protection reverse-engineer who calls himself DVD Jon, so you know it’s friendly to the budget-minded poweruser. So far, it’s been a joy to use, but it’s still in beta and has some flaws. Here’s what it does now, and what it should do:

WHAT DOUBLETWIST DOES
Manages Photos, Music and Video on Your Computer
It watches your Music, Photos and Movies folders, and lets you drag and drop any other folders into its media browser. There’s also a Spotlight-esque search function to check your folders. Music is organized in sortable list form, while photos and videos are displayed as tiles.

Lets You Maintain an Online “Feed” and Send/Receive Media To/From Other doubleTwist Users
DoubleTwist has a built in social-networking aspect that lets you create an account, add friends and shoot files back and forth. You can post video, photos and music to a “feed,” which is basically a media-rich version of the Facebook wall, and it gets syndicated to all your friends.

They say you can send any type of file back and forth on doubleTwist, which seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. We haven’t yet had the chance to fully test this feature, but they remain pretty vague on its limits . And for those who aren’t signed up, you can send them an email link to the doubleTwist servers, where they can view/watch/hear the content you want them to receive.

To add friends on doubleTwist, you basically send any file as a message to the email address your friend used for their doubleTwist account. Once your friend reads/accepts the message inside the doubleTwist app, you’re officially “friends” and any non-drm song/video/photo you send back and forth can be dragged from the message thread to your media library.

Connects to a Variety of Phones and Devices
DoubleTwist is really touting its ability to connect with devices here, especially BlackBerry and Android phones. (Not surprisingly, you can’t yet sync with Apple products.) When you plug in your device, it shows up under its model name, and doubleTwist organizes media files in the same way it does for your computer. You can drag and drop freely between the two devices. (see top photo)

Auto-Converts Files to Provide Compatibility With Your Device
Because it only works with devices it knows, doubleTwist autoconverts media files as necessary. So if you have a .mp4 video file that your phone doesn’t support, doubleTwist will detect this before uploading and convert appropriately. (We’ll be testing this to see how long a movie in the wrong format might take.)

Connects to Your iTunes Library for Access to Playlists and Other Stuff
Like other media devices and apps, doubleTwist can read your iTunes Library XML file, which provides access to playlists and podcasts, in addition to the the rest of your library. Most of the crap that pops up in the left column of iTunes will show up here.

Uploads Photos and Videos to Online Services
With Flickr and Facebook integration, you can drag, drop and tag your photos, then upload them with a click, and without exiting doubleTwist. The same thing goes for sending videos to YouTube.

WHAT DOUBLETWIST SHOULD DO
iPhone and iPod Support
As we mentioned, there’s not a lot of love for iPhone and iPod yet, but the doubleTwist team says this functionality will actually appear in future versions.

AirTunes Support
One of my favorite features of using iTunes with an Airport Express is the AirTunes streaming feature. There are 3rd-party apps, such as AirFoil, that take advantage of this feature, so it shouldn’t be too hard to work this into future versions.

Native Playlist Support and Streaming Libraries
For now, there is no way to import or create music playlists, aside from what’s already in iTunes. You also can’t connect to other people’s libraries or an iTunes Music Server on your network. This means you’ll still be using iTunes for some stuff.

Advanced File Categorization/Organization
Right now, the categorization and organization of media files are a bit rudimentary. Music shows up in a list view, but the only sortable categories are Title, Artist, and Time. Photos and Videos only show up as tiles, with no other view or sort options, except adjusting thumbnail size.

For people with tons of files, this doesn’t quite cut it.

I also don’t really like that when you play a song, it launches a second window which compiles the list of songs played while the app has been open. But there’s no way to remove songs from the list aside from closing the app, nor can you keep playback all in one window. It’s not major, but kinda bleh.

BOTTOM LINE
DoubleTwist is an extremely promising app that really could become the de facto standard for media players if they continue to develop and improve on this beta. The idea of not having to use iPhoto ever again (I hate it), or getting more functionality than what VLC offers for videos is pretty exciting. [doubleTwist via MacRumors]

While Apple grandly updated their notebook line to the new unibody design, the 17-inch MacBook Pro, Apple’s granddaddy of mobile computing, was left behind. Now, the 17-inch model joins its siblings—with promising bonus features.

Design

With nothing to scale this image, it’s nearly impossible to tell the new 17-inch MBP from the 13- or 15-inch unibody macs. From the outside, it’s the same thing, only bigger. At first it’s a little intimidating to see such a large, unadorned block of metal. But at 6.6 lbs, it’s actually not as heavy in your hands as you’d expect. And at .98-inches in stature, it’s only ever so slightly thicker (.03 inches) than the other two MacBooks.

Apple will tell you that the MBP17 is the thinnest, lightest 17-inch notebook in the world. We’ll tell you that for a monster of a laptop, it manages to not be too monstrous. The 17-inch (1920×1200) screen is a sharp, contrasty and colorful panorama, but it’s the little touches that make the MBP17 manageable: The system’s near-silent operation (using a 256GB SSD instead of a hard drive) is almost unnerving. Its underside gets warm, but never hot. And the unibody design makes particularly good sense in this larger size, as the wide chassis does not flex to your grip as you might expect.

The battery is one of the only components that’s significantly different than that of the smaller machines. Striving for 8-hours of battery life the newly designed power pack screws right into the chassis. (Lots more on that topic below.)

What’s missing, however, is the underside hatch that made for easy hard drive and battery replacement. This smart design feature, recently introduced in Apple’s 13- and 15-inch unibody laptops, has been replaced by a series of screws to remove the bottom panel, and another series of screws to remove the battery. Removing a few screws is by no means a horrendous exercise, but we can’t help but feel that it’s a step in the wrong direction. The most spend-happy pro users will be the most likely to crack the lid of their laptops—so this design choice will likely annoy a key part of the MBP17’s target audience.

What’s Different About It?

Compared to the MBP15

• Supports 8GB of RAM; the MBP15 only supports 4GB

• Includes a 256GB SSD option; the MBP15 only a 128GB

• The MBP17 includes five speakers with a wider frequency response

• There’s one extra USB port (3 total)

• Slightly faster processor options

(note: shot comparison of 13-inch model)

Compared to the old 17-inch MBP

• 40% larger battery (95WH vs. 68WH)

• Glossy and matte screen options are now available

• The screen has equal resolution, but a 60% wider color gamut

• Unibody structure, of course

Performance

The MBP17 features a 2.66 or 2.93GHz processor, up to 8GB of RAM and dual Nvidia 9400M (integrated) and 9600 (discrete) graphics cards. A 320GB 5400RPM hard drive comes standard, but that can be upgraded to a 320GB 7200RPM drive or a 128GB/256GB solid-state drive. (Note: There’s no option for a 500GB hard drive, though they are readily available if you want to swap one in.)

The model we tested was fully loaded, with a 2.93GHz processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD.

Still, because the MBP17 is so similar to the 15 internally, we’re going to point you in the direction of our last review for benchmarks on the dual Nvidia 9400M and 9600 graphics cards. We also ran Xbench and uploaded the predictably impressive results to their database. However, one feature we wanted to be sure to check out was the new 256GB SSD option, a drive made by Toshiba. It’s a $750 upgrade that we were able to test in our review model.

SSD Speed Benchmarks:

Against the stock drive that comes with MBPs, the speed gains are obvious. However, the SSD market is still very young. There are only a handful of drives out there, so how do you know if Apple’s $750 offering is price competitive?

Searching through the XBench results forums, we found a user who tested out a G. Skill Titan 256GB SSD on a unibody mac. It’s not rated to be as fast as Samsung’s $1000 SSD gold standard, but according to these benchmarks, it’s still considerably faster than the drive Apple will sell you. The catch? The Titan runs $500, or $250 less than Apple’s bundled Toshiba. In other words, as with most upgrades, you’re still better off going through a third party for your SSD.

The other bonus to SSDs is how quickly they boot. From the picture, you can see that our MBP17 booted in 31 seconds, despite me having a few hundred icons on the desktop. The MBP15 (normal hard drive, 4GB RAM) took about 90 seconds to load a similar configuration, or “three times longer” in marketing speak.

Battery Life

Everything so far about the new MBP17 is all well and good, but we think there’s one claim in particular that’s going to interest consumers the most: A 7-8 hour battery life*.

*Assuming screen at half brightness, Wi-Fi on, light browsing, light word processing (so no Bluetooth but otherwise a standard configuration). 8 hours on integrated graphics, 7 hours with more beefy discrete GPU.

Indeed, the MBP17’s battery is huge. It takes up roughly the whole bottom half of the computer’s underside. To make the battery as big as possible, Apple removed even the battery’s removal mechanism. Apple’s lithium polymer pack screws in and promises a shelf life of 1000 complete charges—which also means 2000 half recharges or 4000 quarter recharges—before the battery depletes to 80% capacity.

And while we didn’t have the time to test Apple’s 1000 recharge claim, we were able to run some battery tests.

First we put the system up against a day of blogging. This test was admittedly harder than Apple’s cushy benchmarking, but I wanted to see how it would stand up to true pro use. So with the screen just a hair above half brightness, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off, backlit keyboard on, discrete graphics on, heavy web browsing and occasional Photoshop work, we achieved 3 hours 57 minutes of run time.

Should we be pissed? After all, Apple offers 7-8 hours in their ads! That’s your call. In truth, we’ve found that most laptops hit about half their rated battery life under real world conditions (cough, netbooks, cough). If we can only cover our ears and hum through Apple’s latest marketing campaign, we’re actually fairly pleased with about 4 hours of heavy use from a fully loaded 17-inch laptop—especially since that metric includes no real compromises to our workflow.

We also wanted to simulate watching a movie on the plane. So we played back an MPEG4 with the screen at half brightness, discrete graphics off, backlit keyboard off, Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off and headphones in. We received 4 hours 39 minutes of run time. That’s nearly two hours longer* than we received from the MBP15, and 2 hours 30 minutes longer than we received from the MB13. That’s basically the difference between watching one movie and watching two.

*The previous MBP tests had Wi-Fi on, the backlit keyboard on and speakers on. These alterations should account for a small amount of the increase, but my no means a majority. The 17-inch unit also has an SSD, but these non-spinning drives don’t necessarily mean power savings.

For the Lazy Readers Needing a Summary

A 17-inch notebook has never been designed for the mainstream consumer. But then again, nothing about this MacBook Pro is aiming for the mainstream. It’s a laptop that starts at $2800, and our fully loaded test model runs a hair over $5,000. Its screen is as big as most CRT monitors from just a few years back.

The thing should feel like a beast on the couch, but it actually doesn’t. It’s almost frightening how quickly you adjust, appreciating the extra screen space while disregarding that this system is supposed to be a “laptop” in name only.

If you can get over the purported 8 hours of battery life and settle for longevity around half that number, you’ll be welcomed with a laptop that feels like a desktop but is actually a laptop. It’s a Cadillac that you can just about park, a triple cheeseburger in the bun of a double, a stocky man in a well-tailored suit. And we’re liking it. We just can’t help but ask, why can’t Apple fit a 256GB SSD or 8GB of RAM—or even a 4+ hour battery—into a 15-inch MBP?

It’s a big honking computer in a smallish package

As with the other unibody systems, the MBP17 runs cooler and quieter than past MacBooks

Battery life is reasonable, but will fall short for pro users looking for a true day of use

Apple’s Toshiba SSD upgrade is pricey for its performance

There’s no easy pop-off bottom panel like in other unibody models

External Sources [ifixit, Xbench]