One of the side effects of switching digital cameras has been that stuff takes longer. More pixels per picture (and new modes that generate more images) means that it takes a lot more time to do even basic photo management. And I’m not actually very well equipped to handle this: for perfectly good reasons, it turns out that although I have quite a few computers, they are all pretty puny by current standards. I have a Mac Mini and a MacBook Air, both with CPUs in the 1.6GHz range, both with fairly slow disks. The MacBook Air has 2GB of RAM, the Mini just 1GB. (The fastest machine I own, my accursed HP DV4-2045DX laptop, just went back for service – AGAIN!)
So naturally my thoughts have been turning to getting some horsepower. A Mac, of course – that HP has cured me of any interest in Windows. I figured that I wanted something like this:
- At least 3GHz 2+ core CPU
- 4GB RAM
- 500GB HDD
- Superdrive
My first impulse was to simply get a new Mac Mini. However after maxing out all of the options, I got:
- 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo
- 4GB RAM
- 500GB HDD
- SuperDrive
- Wireless Mouse and Keyboard
- Total price: $1187
That felt quite a bit more expensive (and slower) than I’d expected. Out of curiosity, I looked at the minimum configuration iMac:
- 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo
- 4GB RAM
- 500GB HDD
- SuperDrive
- Wireless Mouse and Keyboard
- 21.5 inch LCD
- Total price: $1199
So instead of buying a Mac Mini I can spend an extra $12 and get an iMac with a 15% faster CPU and a stunning 21.5 inch LCD. Something doesn’t make sense here….
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Apples pricing on the CPU upgrades, disk and memory are all messed up.
I know a lot of people (me included) who buy a moderate/medium config
and then immediately crack the thing open to put in more memory and
a faster drive.
E.G. I currently run a macbook pro with 4G of memory and 500GB drive.
Hey Geoff – makes perfect sense! The Mac Mini is not intended for high-end photo editing, so the components you add on to make it semi-suitable for that are low-volume and high margin for Apple – they make a lot of extra $ on accessories and upgrades, and on people who want to do something for which they’ve not designed. An integrated system designed for that kind of work, like the iMac, is both cheaper to produce, and the overall margin Apple makes on it is more like the margin they’re making on the base Mac mini. You pay less for the options in an iMac because Apple doesn’t expect to make as much margin on the integrated solution as they do on a base solution plus upgrades. Pretty standard pricing practice, really, and it is good for us consumers. Just doesn’t satisfy the “home-brew” itch… oh well.
I seem to recall that the reason the Mini is automatically more expensive than a similarly-equipped iMac is that it has to use more rarified components in order to get everything inside such a small case. Certainly that’s true of the CPU speed — faster CPUs generate more heat, and the CPU in a Mini has very little to dissipate heat inside it.
Be careful with current iMacs. Ever since Apple switched to the flat form factor the iMacs have now, they’ve had frequent problems with hardware failures. (And they aren’t variations on the same problem; I suspect that trying to squeeze standard-sized components into such a flat enclosure is at the root of them all, though.) My father just got one of the smaller iMacs, and within a week of getting it, it started to have problems booting, symptomatic of the hard drive being wonky, and of course you can’t access the hard drive yourself without voiding the warrantee, so now he has to take it back for service. Phooey.
With an iMac, though, at least you can add RAM yourself, while with a Mini you get what it came with unless you want to void the warrantee or pay someone to open the case and tinker for you. I’d really love it if Apple would come out with a Mini which was, say, 50% larger, but had a user-serviceable, screwed-down-plate-covered hard drive tray — like the original PS3 — and RAM slots — like the iMac.
(By the way: Apple charges too much for RAM. For a while they had their RAM prices down to something approaching industry standards, and now they’ve pumped things back up. If you’re going to get an iMac, save yourself a few bucks by buying one without maxed-out RAM and instead shop from somewhere else like Crucial. If you’re going to get a Mini, don’t bother with that unless you want to break the warrantee. The cost of having someone certified install RAM will be roughly what you’ll save on the RAM itself, plus you’ll have to wait for them to do it. Sad but true.)
Speaking as someone who just bought a mini, I can say the only reason I bought it was to replace another computer — we already had the keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers. Getting the base model imac would have been $450 more, and we would have an extra keyboard/mouse we didn’t need (plus more HD space and a faster CPU, which would have been nice, but I don’t think my kids needed the extra power).
So I think the advantages of the mini are not based on price, but on other external factors.
(ps: something happened to your WPTouch plugin – your site is showing up without any CSS on my iphone)
I use a Mini at home (for photo editing) and an iMac at work (with the glossy screen), and the glossy screen is a distracting pain in the ass for photo editing. For many people, that may never, ever matter, but it does for me.
Glossy screen is great for looking at photos in general and for watching movies, though.