[loren s]

I would hope that they are building it for the next gen OS and not as just some thing with left over parts. I would love to get one but if it will not even use the pixel shader stff then what is the point ?? Besides being a realy noice small computer for those that dont care about that stuff

[Kermy]

No, the Mac Mini can't do Core Image (at least via hardware), it has to do it via software so it's going to tax/slow down the CPU more.

[milhous]

Originally posted by loren s:
I would hope that they are building it for the next gen OS and not as just some thing with left over parts. I would love to get one but if it will not even use the pixel shader stff then what is the point ?? Besides being a realy noice small computer for those that dont care about that stuff

well if that's criteria you're using to see if the mini's right for you, then i think you've answered your own question. this machine will however will be great for regular end users who just want a computer that works.

the core audiences for the mini are undoubtedly the windows switchers and existing mac users who want to get a cheap mac for other uses.

[tooki]

P.S. it's "Mac Mini", not "iMac mini": it has no "i"

[macaddict0001]

The imac mini can use core image but not too its full extent, as this requires at least a 5200 ultra.

[Simon]

Originally posted by tooki:
P.S. it's "Mac Mini", not "iMac mini": it has no "i"

Well, actually it's "Mac mini".

Apple seems to not like capitalizing its product name additions. iPod mini, iPod photo, Mac mini.

[pliny]

Originally posted by Kermy:
No, the Mac Mini can't do Core Image (at least via hardware), it has to do it via software so it's going to tax/slow down the CPU more.

The Mac mini will run Tiger just fine, it is not going to slow down unless you are trying to do some of the newer stuff for which higher end video cards (and applications) are a requirement; if the gpu can't do some of the Tiger shades it won't be just software of course, it will default to Altivec, which is no slouch.

It will work FINE.

[bartman00]

who in the hell would be using Motion and honistly look at buying a freekin $500 computer to run it on.. be reasonable at least!

Bart

[hudson1]

The comment has been made several times (and well before MWSF) that if Tiger is being built so that the OS can finally offload rendering to the GPU, then Apple should stop shipping new Macs that won't be able to do this.

[pliny]

Originally posted by hudson1:
The comment has been made several times (and well before MWSF) that if Tiger is being built so that the OS can finally offload rendering to the GPU, then Apple should stop shipping new Macs that won't be able to do this.

Whaaat? That's like saying that EVERYONE must buy the the most expensive machines or that Apple must offer the highest end machines very very cheap (which would be great)!

Tiger will have the ability to offload to the GPU but not everyone will need this, especially not if it you need higher end machines and cards to do it.

So people will be able to take advantage of other new features in Tiger--this is good.

It seems like Tiger is backward compatible, Apple is not shutting out every machine but the most expensive/high powered, this is a PLUS.

As for running Motion on a mini, get real! For Motion Apple recommends

Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5

2GB of RAM or more

Mac OS X v10.3.5 or later

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card or better

This is not your mommy's MacPaint.

[loren s]

motion blah blah blah..

I am after core image. As there willbe Photoshop clones when Tiger comes out. Most apps will start useing core image and core video, one would think ilife will useit to as another update, or what itdoes now will scale to the coreimage stuff.

But whateve, I read the applesite and it now says that it will swap down to use the CPU if the CG card is not enough.. Though it is still silly that they couldnot at the very least put in a 5200 nivida like the imacs...

[hudson1]

Originally posted by pliny:
Whaaat? That's like saying that EVERYONE must buy the the most expensive machines or that Apple must offer the highest end machines very very cheap (which would be great)!

Tiger will have the ability to offload to the GPU but not everyone will need this, especially not if it you need higher end machines and cards to do it.

I think you might have missed my point. *Many* people have commented that Apple should be switching to hardware that CoreImage can use. It's not just me that's saying that.

It's also important to the discussion to mention that the speed of the GUI has been the weakest part of OS X. Just about everyone has made that observation. Sure, Apple made it better in 10.2 but hardly anyone claims that the GUI is as Snappy as it was in OS 9 or in current Wintel systems. Even lowly Wintel systems that use "Integrated Intel Graphics" or whatever that joke of a GPU is.

Now that Apple seems to have found a way to finally bring the GUI speed up to current standards via 10.4 and CoreImage, we find out that they are still designing computers that won't be able to use it as it's intended. I don't that it's going to hold back the Mac mini to a substantial degree but it does cause me to scratch my head. Maybe rev B will correct this.

[discotronic]

Originally posted by loren s:
Though it is still silly that they couldnot at the very least put in a 5200 nivida like the imacs...

I don't think it is silly. If Apple added the 5200 the price would go up as would the heat. Customers thinking of buying the iMac would probably look at the mini and iMac sales would suffer. You can't please everyone I guess. The mini is aimed at the entry level market and I believe it will sell very well.

[Sparkletron]

Originally posted by discotronic:
I don't think it is silly. If Apple added the 5200 the price would go up as would the heat. Customers thinking of buying the iMac would probably look at the mini and iMac sales would suffer. You can't please everyone I guess. The mini is aimed at the entry level market and I believe it will sell very well.

Well the Mac community has been asking for a headless iMac for ages. That is not what we got. Instead we got an entirely new class of Mac--not nearly as powerful as an iMac let alone a PowerMac. Now I have no beef with the Mini (except that it should have included 5.1 optical out). The Mini is nice in fact. But I would still like to see a headless iMac in the $999 range. For $500 more, give me a G5 and a 5200 and 5.1 optical out.

-S

[Dale Sorel]

Originally posted by tooki:
P.S. it's "Mac Mini", not "iMac mini": it has no "i"

I thought it was Mini Mac...

[Pierre B.]

Originally posted by pliny:
Tiger will have the ability to offload to the GPU but not everyone will need this, especially not if it you need higher end machines and cards to do it.

Excuse me, but everyone needs this. It is an OS-wide feature and it just improves the way the user interacts with the OS.

Things are quite simple, actually: Apple releases a machine that supports all the technologies found in the current OS (Panther). If people did not know that Tiger comes in some months from now or what is new, perhaps they would not complain. And of course, any machine introduced or updated after Tiger is released, will have full support for all features of this OS. Expect the next round of Mac minis sporting a 5200 Ultra, like the Powerbooks 12" do today.

We have the right to ask for more and for the same price, just to be future-proof, but Apple too has the right to make profits without violating common sense (i.e. full support for the current OS only in a budget machine).

[pliny]

When I posted about GPU I was referring to the CoreImage functionality, I should have been more specific.

Your computer will not have to take advantage of Core Image in order to run Tiger. Core Image is a framework, it is not a requirement.

Is every Tiger OS function going to require Core Image?

No.

Is ANY Tiger function going to REQUIRE CoreImage?

No.

Is Tiger going to require that developers retool code to take advantage of the simplified paths to the GPU????

No. If they want to they can.

Is every developer going to retool their code to take advantage of Core Image framework?

No.

So Tiger will look the way Panther does now. If anything it is going to run faster with the new technologies it incorporates apart from Core Image.

IF you have the higher end cards and IF the code has been retooled to take advantage of the specific paths THEN you will see a difference in applications. And if not, then you will be running them like you run them now.

Incredible that we are getting by without Core Image right now.

[Pierre B.]

All these are nice and good, but without a Core Image-ready GPU you cannot enable Quartz 2D Extreme in Tiger. Of course Core Image and Quartz 2D Extreme are two completely different and independent things, it just happens to have the same GPU requirements. See here and you will understand.

[Cincinnatus]

Originally posted by Sparkletron:
Well the Mac community has been asking for a headless iMac for ages. That is not what we got. Instead we got an entirely new class of Mac--not nearly as powerful as an iMac let alone a PowerMac. Now I have no beef with the Mini (except that it should have included 5.1 optical out). The Mini is nice in fact. But I would still like to see a headless iMac in the $999 range. For $500 more, give me a G5 and a 5200 and 5.1 optical out.

-S

I found your dream machine then - headless and everything else - and at a lower price point:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...743849356&rd=1

[pliny]

Originally posted by Pierre B.:
All these are nice and good, but without a Core Image-ready GPU you cannot enable Quartz 2D Extreme in Tiger. Of course Core Image and Quartz 2D Extreme are two completely different and independent things, it just happens to have the same GPU requirements. See here and you will understand.

????

That's not right.

Quartz Extreme functionality is supported right now by the following video GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 MX, or GeForce4 Ti or any AGP-based ATI RADEON GPU.

A minimum of 16MB VRAM is required.

(And I don't even have a card that qualifies to run Q2d and my Mac runs OS X great!)

There is nothing to indicate quartz extreme requirements will suddenly be totally different!

If you don't have a Core Image capable GPU like I said it will still work like it always has.

[macmad]

Originally posted by Sparkletron:
Well the Mac community has been asking for a headless iMac for ages. That is not what we got. Instead we got an entirely new class of Mac--not nearly as powerful as an iMac let alone a PowerMac. Now I have no beef with the Mini (except that it should have included 5.1 optical out). The Mini is nice in fact. But I would still like to see a headless iMac in the $999 range. For $500 more, give me a G5 and a 5200 and 5.1 optical out.

-S

And I thought the 'headless iMac' posts would finally go

[Pierre B.]

Originally posted by pliny:
????

That's not right.

Quartz Extreme functionality is supported right now by the following video GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 MX, or GeForce4 Ti or any AGP-based ATI RADEON GPU.

A minimum of 16MB VRAM is required.

(And I don't even have a card that qualifies to run Q2d and my Mac runs OS X great!)

There is nothing to indicate quartz extreme requirements will suddenly be totally different!

I am talking about Quartz 2D Extreme, not Quartz Extreme.

Quartz Extreme is just the Quartz Compositor accelerated by the graphics hardware. In the video I linked above, it is explained that the Quartz 2D component will take the same route in Tiger as Quartz Compositor did from the Jaguar era. This means that 2D operations will now be offloaded to the GPU, resulting in a 2-100 times acceleration compared to software Quartz 2D we have right now in Panther.

All this will require a programmable GPU, the same requirement as in Core Image/Video.

[turtle777]

Originally posted by Sparkletron:
For $500 more, give me a G5 and a 5200 and 5.1 optical out.

Add another $ 300 for a LCD monitor and you are at the same price as the iMac. So what's your point and complaint ?

-t

[Sparkletron]

Originally posted by turtle777:
Add another $ 300 for a LCD monitor and you are at the same price as the iMac. So what's your point and complaint ?

-t

No point other than the Mini is not a headless iMac. No complaint other than I'm still waiting for a headless iMac.

-S

[Sparkletron]

Originally posted by macmad:
And I thought the 'headless iMac' posts would finally go

I would venture (and I'm no expert) that the "give us a headless iMac" posts will go when, ahem, we get a headless iMac.

-S

[pliny]

Originally posted by Pierre B.:
I am talking about Quartz 2D Extreme, not Quartz Extreme.

Quartz Extreme is just the Quartz Compositor accelerated by the graphics hardware. In the video I linked above, it is explained that the Quartz 2D component will take the same route in Tiger as Quartz Compositor did from the Jaguar era. This means that 2D operations will now be offloaded to the GPU, resulting in a 2-100 times acceleration compared to software Quartz 2D we have right now in Panther.

All this will require a programmable GPU, the same requirement as in Core Image/Video.

How many times do people have to post this??????

Tiger will scale.

Even if you do not have a CoreImage capable machine, Quartz 2d will STILL be faster in Tiger than it is now.

There are other technologies and improvements to code in Tiger beyond CoreImage.

Tiger does NOT REQUIRE that you be able to run CoreImage enhanced applications or that CoreImage requirements be attributed to EVERY graphic component of the OS.

You will not need CoreImage to run Tiger well.

If your computer can do it, great!

You will then need applications to make it useful beyond little effects at the OS level.

So you want Apple to sell only computers that can do CoreImage.

I want Apple to sell only computers that come with 2gb RAM standard! Heck make it 4gb.

When has a new and forward-looking technology EVER been built in to EVERY computer a company sells??

The more expensive a computer and the more expensive the gpu that better the performance that has always been true and with CoreImage it will NOT be different, you will have more capabilities but the OS does NOT demand or need them to work well.

If you want/think the Mini should have more than 32 mg vram, great!

This doesn't mean that it won't run Tiger well or that it will need CoreImage to do so, in fact the CoreImage requirements still seem to be a work in progress.

[icibaqu]

what's core image?

[Pierre B.]

It is very strange, my posts are quite clear in what they say and you read them upside-down. For example:

Tiger will scale.

Even if you do not have a CoreImage capable machine, Quartz 2d will STILL be faster in Tiger than it is now.

Where did I say otherwise? All I am saying is that a machine with a Radeon 9200 will not be able to run Tiger with all optimizations enabled.

Tiger does NOT REQUIRE that you be able to run CoreImage enhanced applications or that CoreImage requirements be attributed to EVERY graphic component of the OS.

Where did I say otherwise?

So you want Apple to sell only computers that can do CoreImage.

....

When has a new and forward-looking technology EVER been built in to EVERY computer a company sells??

In a previous post I was quite clear about that. Did you read it?

If you want/think the Mini should have more than 32 mg vram, great!

It is not a VRAM but rather a graphics processor problem. For example the Powerbooks 12" with the Geforce 5200 have support for Quartz 2D Extreme, even with 32 MB VRAM. And I already addressed previously the future-proof issue.

Judging from your reaction to the video I posted previously and your comments to my reference to Quartz 2D Extreme (you confused -- or "confused" -- it with Quartz Extreme), I see that for some reason, that I don't understand, you get upset on things I did not write nor imply. I really don't understand.

[pliny]

My point is that to say that the minis are not future proof is misleading since NO machine is future proof.

And the feature you point to as not being met, is not essential to good or even excellent performance in Tiger. (Indeed, you won't even have to run Tigerto have great Mac performance, but of course, everyone MUST have the latest....)

And there is no indicaiton that the CoreImage rqrmnts are set in stone, ie, that what will support CoreImage won't be wider.

So to summarize, my point is that worrying about CoreImage when rqmnts are not even finished or even necessary for great perfomance, is just nothing to worry about.

[Pierre B.]

Originally posted by pliny:
My point is that to say that the minis are not future proof is misleading since NO machine is future proof.

This depends on where you place your time horizon.

And the feature you point to as not being met, is not essential to good or even excellent performance in Tiger. (Indeed, you won't even have to run Tigerto have great Mac performance, but of course, everyone MUST have the latest....)

Yes, this is true and nowhere did I say otherwise, although not all people have the same expectations from their systems.

And there is no indicaiton that the CoreImage rqrmnts are set in stone, ie, that what will support CoreImage won't be wider.

So to summarize, my point is that worrying about CoreImage when rqmnts are not even finished or even necessary for great perfomance, is just nothing to worry about.

Of course there is nothing to worry about. I was not thinking about worrying, I had simply the impression that we are discussing some details about how some features are implemented/supported. That's all.

[broca]

after reading all these post it makes me realised that to some people apple can do no wrong. watever their new products being launch be it great, good or just fine to others, some have all the reasons/excuses for any apple products' short coming. its amazing and i believe this can only happen with apple users.
i strongly believe we're all bias in our opinions though we like to think we're objective in our analysis. we like to see ourselves as principled types who sift thru facts b4 forming an opinion. but for most of us, this is pure poppycock. we're perfrctly willing to ignore any fact that contradicts wat we believe.
by the way, i'm a mac user too

[chadseld]

Core Imaging is one question.. Motion is another altogether. From what i've seen/heard, motion is really demanding of computer resources. It's probably going to be painful on anything but the high-end G5.

[gzeus]

Most noticably,
if you don't do photo or video editing, the thing you'll miss w/o a core image capable video card is the ripple effect: http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/t...rd_address.mov

As for the mini being core image compatible, there still may be hope. I quote from http://arstechnica.com/articles/paed...e/mac-mini.ars :

The ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB does not support the forthcoming buzzword feature from Tiger, Core Image, which means wavy Dashboard effects get done by the CPU or not at all. But does the Radeon 9200 really not support Core Image? Until the day of the Keynote the Core Image preview page for Tiger listed video cards that supported Core Image, and the least powerful card capable was the GeForce with 64MB RAM, but now the list is gone.

To that end, I asked every single person having anything to do with either the Mac Mini or Tiger, even ones who folded brochures, and the answer was definitive: no one knows. Could the spec for Core Image be changing? While Quartz Extreme preferred 32MB VRAM when it came out, it ran on 16MB, so maybe, just maybe, the Mac Mini might actually do Core Image. Wave effects for everyone!