Apple's Mac mini - Tempting PC Users Everywhere
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 25, 2005 7:39 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
iPhoto 5
For the most part, I detest photo management applications. They are usually riddled with cumbersome interfaces and/or lack any sort of real editing power. I tried using iPhoto 4, which was a part of the iLife '04 suite, and I was left fairly disappointed. I had to switch between editing and organizing modes to edit or just flip through my pictures. Images took entirely too long to flip through and despite the fact that iPhoto had the best interface of any photo management application that I'd used, it was still not enough. In the end, it was just like everything else to me and I happily continued using Photoshop for editing and saving pictures for AnandTech articles. I used folders to organize the pictures according to article, so I didn't need the organizational aspects of iPhoto for that. But then came iPhoto 5 - time to give it another try, but this time, it looked like there was hope.
During his keynote at Mac World San Franciso, Steve Jobs talked about iPhoto 5 as the only application that you'd need for both editing and organizing your photos. For my uses, Photoshop is basically overkill, but I've never found anything to suit my needs better without sacrificing usability in one way or another. But with a better interface and a new editing dashboard, iPhoto 5 seemed promising.
The iPhoto 5 interface has been greatly simplified. No longer are there different modes to switch between, everything happens in the same browsing mode. You get photos into iPhoto using its import feature, which is activated automatically whenever you connect a digital camera or a removable disk (a configurable option).
Thankfully, iPhoto gives you the option of deleting your photos automatically from the media/camera after it is done importing them. Once you confirm your intentions, iPhoto goes off and copies all of the photos into your iPhoto Library. Your photo library can be viewed at variable sized thumbnails, adjustable by a slider in the lower right of the application. The scaling of the number of pictures on your screen at one time happens very quickly as iPhoto will render the thumbnails quickly, and then later, sharpen the images once you're done playing with the slider. iPhoto is much faster (especially on the G5) now, and photos no longer take a little bit of time to come into focus when browsing through them one at a time (as opposed to a page of thumbnails). Also, when browsing quickly, they will appear as thumbnails rather than blurry images (more useful in my opinion).
The iPhoto Library is organized by year and feeds off of the information written by your camera to the images. If you have a lot of photos, the Library quickly becomes cluttered, since it is organized by nothing more than date. This is where some of the indexing features of iPhoto come into play, but they do require a bit of user intervention.
When you import images into the Library, you have the option of tagging the images that you import with a title. For example, when I imported the images for this review, I titled them "Mac mini". Now, even if I have thousands of images taken in 2005, I just type in "mini" in the search box and all my Mac mini images come up instantly, thanks to a fully indexed search in iPhoto. Now, titling images isn't something that I'd normally take the time to do, but the way iPhoto works is that you just create one general title and it will apply it to all of the photos that you're importing (or you can selectively import them).
After they are imported, you can go back and add ratings, keywords and comments to photos on an individual basis, all of which are fully searchable fields. You also have the option of populating these fields after the fact using iPhoto's batch processing. Just highlight what photos you want and you can add a title, comments or even modify the date/time. And if you actually take the time to make good use of these searchable fields, or even if you just make use of the batch titling upon import, you can create Smart Albums based on searches of these fields. For example, you can create an album of all pictures of "video cards" or "cars I'd like to buy" or just about any other combination that you can think of.
Personally, I'm not enough of a photo enthusiast to put that much time into my digital library, but if you have a habit of taking a lot of pictures, iPhoto 5 offers some very excellent and intuitive ways of organizing them. Plus, the interface works and feels just like the rest of OS X, which is a very strong point of iPhoto. There is one exception to my last statement, however. Hitting Command + W will actually exit the iPhoto program itself, something which breaks the way that almost all OS X applications work. One thing that I was a fan of with OS X is the consistency with which all applications behaved, and iPhoto unfortunately breaks that consistency - not something I was too happy with.
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bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#126Graphics card swap hardly agonizing but Joe $499 User won't know how or care to do that, I agree. I am still wondering how a PDA can be useful for me but since I can't think of a reason to get one I am obviously not the market for those.
Chuckles - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#120:1: Given that a 3.5" is about a third the size of the computer, what do you think?
2: Do you think Joe Luser is willing to spend the time and agony upgrading his graphics card?
3: If the past is any indication, no, its got about 4, maybe 5 years of "official" OS support.
4: Does your PDA have the ability to serve as your HD backup, play music for 8 hours, and still fit in your pocket? Capability is a matter of perspective. The PDA I have does exactly what I need it to, my iPod does different things.
Concord - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Oh, yes! Dying - strong word but its true and bestdescribes situation. Macs represent now less than 1 percent of the market. Of course we do our best to keep them alive. We vote for personal computer's diversity :)). But frankly speaking this miniMac is so badly constructed (I have at least 10 reasons for this claim) so I see at this moment only one reason to buy. Your girlfrend would say - Oh, its so cute! Maybe this reason is strong enough to buy it. But I will give you strong consumer advice (it was in 1st post) - wait for a couple of month and you will buy it on eBay for 200 US, of course if you will not change your mind.
bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#123People will still jump on these because the $499 buyer doesn't know about how much system or video memory they'll need. Like someone else said, the $499 market only cares about price and name.
Dualboy24 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#121 "A pitiful attempt of the dying platform."- People have been saying its a dying platform since the early to mid 90s. Perhaps even earlier. But that hasnt stopped tens of millions of people worldwide from buying their products.
I am sure that everyone would agree that they would love standard 512MB RAM and 64MB or 128MB video memory. If apple were to offer this a large amount more people would jump on these Mac minis. Perhaps a good rule is to hold off a few months. Until the buying rush is done with and apple tries to start a new rush by offering more advanced features. I dont know if they could get in a 9600 or higher video card with heat reequirements though. But the 9200 should do fine for the OS and the higher res work with more video memory.
bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#71Shuttle is making gaming machines. They need to be able to fit a 6800 or X800 in them. Also, they use full size hard drives and DVD/CD drives.
Concord - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
A pitiful attempt of the dying platform.There are no reasons to buy it. Stylish? This soap box? I am dying laughing! Try to have your own look on things. Apple is trying to make an impression that it does so much good for us poor users and for only 499 US we are among choosen.
Ha-ha buy and enjoy - You are different! That's all you can get.
peachee - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
It uses 2.5" HD. Does that mean 3.5" HD upgrades won't fit?Is the graphics card upgradeable?
Will it take 1 - 2 years before Apple completely abondons this computer when a new OS update comes out?
When people realize that a PDA is cheaper and more capable than an IPOD, will MS have to bail out Apple again?
Cygni - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
"figure out the case and internal hardware components to use such as those you suggest be used for an alternate base Wintel"Thats true, the shuttle will take considerably more setup time and prior knowledge. That does not lessen the bang/buck of the hardware, in my eyes, and i think thats what Anand is speaking of.
"when it comes to downtime, system maintenance,"
I am typing this on my G4 Powerbook, and i think this is an unfair comment. I have K6-2 machines running WXP that havent rebooted in months. I also have friends and coworkers with Macs that consistantly freeze (especially when opening a 3rd party program). In all honesty, if you have any type of downtime problems with ANY modern system, something is wrong. There doesnt seem to be any measurable difference to me... they are both quite solid.
"I'd bet my daily income, that if you would install a good AV SW, many ,even tens of, viruses would be found."
I havent installed an AV program since Windows 3.1, and i have never had any problems with viruses. I run HouseCall every couple of months, and its never found anything. Honestly, how do people get these viruses? I use P2P programs all the time, i open and install community made programs all the time... never gotten a thing. And i have yet to recieve any type of virus from all these amazing holes in XP where viruses just fly through the internet at your computer. If you DONT click anything on the screen on a shady site, you will never have any problems... doesnt matter what browser you use. If you drop all the security levels and click yes to everything, whose fault is that?
msva124 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I don't care what the PC costs, I already have plenty of PCs. I want to buy a Mac. First of all, I will need 512MB RAM ($75 extra). Second, I want to get a keyboard with apple keys so that I can get used to the new shortcuts ($30). It should also have a USB hub, or I will need to get one seperate ($15). Third, I need wireless, unless I never want to use the internet($79). Fourth, I need a two button usb mouse with scroll wheel ($20). Finally, the cheapest 15" LCD with good reviews on Amazon is the AG Neovo F-415 ($215 with shipping). That comes to $933. A similarly configured Emac is $953. And the lowest cost Ibook upgraded to 512MB is $1074.Why would I not want to upgrade to the Ibook and get full portability?