Specs and stats

The Mac mini I’m reviewing here is the $799 model, which comes with 4 GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor and a dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics card with 256 MB of RAM. Connection options include 4 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, a Thunderbolt connector, HDMI, Ethernet, digital/analog line in and line out ports and an SDXC card slot. It also has 802.11n Wi-Fi networking, and the new low-power Bluetooth 4.0 specification.

The new Core i5 series processor pushes a lot of weight compared to previous generations. Running it through Geekbench revealed scores of 6902 on average in my tests, compared to 3627 for the Mac mini released in 2010 (higher is better). Geekbench measures the maximum theoretical performance, but those higher scores should translate to noticeable speed improvements in overall performance.

While all the new Mac minis are much better at CPU-intensive tasks, the $799 model should really excel when it comes to graphics. Thanks to the dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6630M card, which marks the first time the Mac mini has had a dedicated card (maybe made possibly by dropping the optical disk), tasks like video editing and gaming go more smoothly on this mini than on any before it.

Performance

For me, the new Mac mini is replacing a much older model (2007, the first Intel Core 2 Duo version) that acted as the nerve center of my home theater setup. Compared to that machine, the new Mac mini offers many advantages: The larger stock 500 GB drive means I can depend less on external storage; HDMI out provides a single cable connection option that doesn’t require any adapters when used with an HDTV; SDXC support means I should have no problem viewing home movies or vacation slideshows from the cameras of visitors; and Thunderbolt promises to eventually make it possible to use huge, fast external storage media libraries a possibility, thanks to devices like the Pegasus RAID array.

On the other hand, the new Mac mini does away with the built-in optical disc drive, so users looking to play back their DVD movies either have to pony up an additional $79 for the MacBook Air SuperDrive, or set about converting their existing media library. Personally, the DVD drive removal is a welcome change; I long ago abandoned physical media for the convenience and reduced clutter of digital purchases and rentals. But if you have an extensive DVD movie collection you aren’t eager to part with, look at Apple’s deals on previous-generation refurbished Macs for a media center PC that will better suit your needs.

If you’re looking to use the new Mac mini as a workstation or traditional PC, this update has a lot to recommend it. I found that — like the MacBook Air I reviewed last week — it deals well with the load caused by using multiple open apps simultaneously, including demanding apps like Photoshop CS5 and iMovie. What it doesn’t do as well as the MacBook Air is load apps quite as fast, or handle shutdown and startup with the same lightning speed. That’s due mostly to the spinning disk drive which the Mac ships with by default, but Apple does offer a (fairly expensive) SSD customization option.

There’s one area where the new Mac mini has quite a bit of unique niche appeal: it’s road-readiness. With just a couple of input devices and the Mac mini itself, which has just a power cord with no heavy and unsightly brick, it actually gives Mac notebooks a run for their money in terms of physical footprint. Frequent travellers could easily pack one for use with the HDTVs now common in most business hotel rooms. And if they want a device that’s a desktop at home and offers more screen real estate than a laptop on the road, it’s quite a bit cheaper than a MacBook.

Verdict

Apple’s newest Mac mini is the best yet, thanks to a lower price tag and processor updates that deliver big CPU performance boosts with even lower power consumption. If you’re looking for a fairly future-proof home theater PC, or a low-cost, moderately powered workstation that can follow you wherever you need to go, this is the Mac for you.

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Could this be a WWDC Keynote sent from 2012?

Tech blog SemiAccurate sped up a slow news Friday with a so-crazy-it-might-be-true rumor that Apple will be switching CPU architecture. Again. According to SemiAccurate “moles,” Apple is planning to transition its laptops to ARM architecture in “2-3 years,” and “presumably” desktops, too, though without a time frame. The plan is a “done deal” according to the site.

This seems hard to believe. While it’s arguable the Apple A5, derived from the ARM Cortex-A9, can keep up with Intel’s Atom in a netbook, there’s simply no comparison between ARM chips and the Intel Core CPUs used in Mac laptops. Of course, in 2013 it wouldn’t be the A5 in a hypothetical ARM-based MacBook Air, but a CPU derived from the ARM Cortex-A15.  Based on a 32nm fabrication process, with up to 8 cores and clock speeds up to 2.5 GHz, as well features like virtualization and access to the 64-bit ARM instruction set, the A15 certainly packs enough keywords to qualify for a Keynote presentation on paper. Unfortunately, the most salient benefit of ARM architecture, power efficiency, will diminish as computing potential increases. Is the diminishing difference worth another major architectural transition for Apple, one that would undoubtedly require a vast amount of engineering effort?

Even should the computing potential of the A15 be sufficient for mainstream use in 2013, software written for current x86 Macs would either have to be rewritten or run in some kind of emulation mode. It’s hard to imagine Rosetta 2 running x86 applications on ARM being the engineering miracle the original was when running PPC applications on Intel Macs. That would leave Mac users waiting months, possibly years, for ARM versions of applications like Office for Mac or Adobe Photoshop. Considering the incredible success Macs have enjoyed since transitioning from PPC to x86 architecture, this rumor seems ridiculous.

And yet one can’t discount the possibility of ARM extending beyond mobile; certainly Microsoft isn’t. As much as Apple has grown in traditional computing over the last five years, x86 PCs running Microsoft Windows sell about 19 times as many computers in aggregate. That’s why Microsoft announcing Windows 8 will be available for ARM-based systems matters. If Microsoft sees value in the platform, then Apple, with its growing mobile focus, no doubt does as well.

Also important, if true, is the rumor reported by EE Times that Intel is seeking to become a foundry for Apple fabricating ARM chips. One could argue that Intel doesn’t care what kind of chips it sells Apple, as long as they come from Intel.

Regarding the problem of applications, while current Mac apps wouldn’t run on an ARM MacBook, it could open the library of apps that run on the iPhone and iPad. Imagine a touch-screen MacBook running Angry Birds. Considering iOS devices outsell Macs by a ratio of six to one and growing, there’s a good argument that iOS developers could quickly take up the app slack for ARM-based Macs. Apple is reportedly making the Mac App Store the “preferred” method of distribution for OS X software beginning with Lion, so that could give it greater control when it comes to handling a chip architecture transition with developers.

Finally, there’s something to be said for Apple’s desire to control its own destiny. It banned Flash from iOS, for example. Rants about security and power management aside, Apple doesn’t want Adobe controlling any part of their mobile operating system. Considering Apple’s painful CPU history with Motorola (now Freescale) and IBM, and most recently the GPU spat between Intel and Nvidia impacting Macs, underestimating Apple’s corporate obsession with controlling the “whole widget” would be a mistake. A transition to Apple CPUs would give the company much more control over its own product, in the same way the A4 and A5 chips have done for its mobile devices.

SemiAccurate has proven itself fairly reliable with similar reports in the past, including the prediction that Nvidia would eventually disappear from Mac computers, and that Light Peak would make its way to Apple products. TUAW points out the original story on SemiAccurate is tagged “humor,” but a quick look at how that tag is used in other stories doesn’t indicate that site isn’t serious about the claims made regarding Apple’s intended use of ARM. We contacted Apple for comment, but have yet to receive a response back.

What do you think? Is this latest rumor crazy or conceivable?

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But Apple apparently isn’t interested in using the mobile platform, at least not in its default configuration. The problem is that the yet to be released 32nm Core i5 and Core i7 processors include mandatory integrated graphics. Since switching to the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor, we haven’t seen hide nor tail of an Intel integrated chip, and thank goodness for that.

According to reports from Bright Side of News citing sources “close to the matter,” Apple is said to have demanded that Intel build it a custom version of the Arrandale platform that leaves off the integrated graphics. That would allow the Mac maker to then make use of its own graphics option, which at this point seems like it will continue to be NVIDIA despite rumblings about a serious rift between the two companies.

In the past, Apple has received special treatment from Intel on numerous occasions. Perhaps most relevant to the matter at hand, the original MacBook Air featured a custom-designed Merom Core 2 Duo processor that featured very low power usage. Due to Apple’s continued success in the marketplace, and its high-profile public image, Intel must consider them a valuable customer and will probably try to accommodate if it isn’t financially irresponsible to do so.

If no special, non-GPU version of the processor is forthcoming, two outcomes are possible. Most likely, Apple will just continue to use existing processor tech until Intel finally does introduce a GPU-free version. The other, less probable outcome is for Apple to either seek CPUs from AMD, Intel’s biggest competitor, or to begin producing its own in-house, something it might be prepared to do thanks to acquisitions and hires made over the years. I still think going in-house is kind of a nuclear option for Apple, since outsourcing is probably much more cost-effective.

Either way, I’d love to see a major change in the MacBook and MacBook Pro line soon. They’ve been using Intel Core 2 Duo processors for quite a while now, and while incremental processor speed upgrades are all well and good, a serious boost would be much better. Still no quad-core mobile computing anywhere on the horizon, though, despite long-standing expectations.

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For a product as cool as the MacBook Pro, it sure does get hot. Too hot, sometimes. I’ve had many laptops in my time, and I’d never go back to plastic IBM compatibles as long as Apple keeps churning out these beautiful aluminum machines. But heat dissipation is a real problem for anyone who makes their MacBook work hard.

It’s important to keep temperatures as low as possible because a hot CPU is a stressed CPU, and if a processor runs too hot for too long, it runs a higher risk of becoming damaged. Until then, a machine that runs too hot is prone to freezing or crashing.

There are two things to keep in mind before we get started. The first is that — for the most part — MacBooks don’t normally “overheat.” Sure, they get hot, but they are designed to get hot. A casual few minutes spent on Google reveals far too many people casually talking about their machines “overheating,” when what they really mean is that their machines are getting “hot.” And by “hot,” we mean “very warm.” But not painfully hot. And certainly not egg-frying hot. If your MacBook truly reaches those temperatures, you should stop using it and take it to your nearest Apple dealer for repair, not complain about it on discussion boards!

The second thing to keep in mind is that a MacBook’s fans have been pre-programmed by Apple. There’s more on this below, but it’s worth remembering that Apple has invested a great deal of time and expense developing today’s MacBook range. If anyone can be considered an expert in MacBook cooling, it’s Apple. So if you are unsure about how to proceed, or don’t feel comfortable modifying your Mac’s settings, then simply skip to the Common Sense Fix below.

I have a three-pronged approach to keeping my MacBook cool. There’s the Hardware Fix, the Software Fix and, overarching both of those, the Common Sense Fix. Let’s start with that one.

The Common Sense Fix

They might be discreetly positioned along the back edge of your machine and hard to spot, but a MacBook does have air vents. The internal fans are trying to push hot air out through those vents. Try not to cover or obstruct them with fabric or, say, thick cables.

The human body, bed covers and clothing — they’re all poor conductors but great insulators. If you rest your MacBook on your bed, lap or stomach for a long while, it’s going to get uncomfortably hot because there’s probably insufficient air-flow around the vents and because the surfaces you’re using can’t efficiently conduct heat away from the machine.

The Hardware Fix

Aside from torsional strength and rigidity, the aluminum unibody of modern MacBooks brings another useful property to the mix; metal is a great conductor of heat. Far better, in fact, than the plastic shells of most laptops. Apple exploits this property by using the entire body of the machine as an efficient means for drawing heat away from the MacBook’s processors. In other words, the entire machine (sans lid) becomes a giant heat sink.

Under minimal processor load, or in Energy Saver profiles, this is usually enough to keep the processor reasonably cool, and the MacBook’s fans will generally stay below a thousand rpm. At that speed, they’re usually near-silent in a quiet room.

But plug your machine in to a power outlet, burn a DVD and do some heavy Photoshop work and things start getting hot. The underside of my MacBook Pro (late 2008 model) can get uncomfortably warm when pushing the processor with these sorts of tasks. The fans will kick in to high gear at this point — spinning at least a few thousand rpm — enough for them to suddenly be quite noticeable.

If you absolutely must continue working, and the Common Sense Fix hasn’t stopped your MacBook from getting itself all hot under the collar, you might want to consider buying an external laptop cooler. There are hundreds of models out there, and they mostly do about as well as one another.

Don’t expect miracles though; a laptop cooler is unlikely to guarantee ice-cold conditions for your precious processors. I’ve been through a few coolers in my time and, other than some extraordinary variances in price, none have ever left a laptop noticeably cold to the touch. Moderately cooler, yes.

The Software Fix

Hardware cooling, because it’s usually pretty moderate, is only part of the solution to getting your MacBook’s temperature under control. Here is where you use the machine’s internal fans to get things really cool.

There are several software solutions for managing your machine’s on-board fans. I use one called smcFanControl, a popular free app that’s very easy to use. smcFanControl provides a constant (and unobtrusive) readout of my MacBook’s core temperature and fan speed. If I notice the machine is getting hot and want to bring it down a few degrees, I can temporarily ramp up the fans.

This is my personal solution, I’ve found it works well enough for me. What do you do to keep your core cool? Let us know in the comments.

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In an interview with CNET News on Sunday, Gupta discussed general purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU for short), and how Snow Leopard, and Windows 7, would take special advantage of this growing trend to more efficiently share the overall computing workload between CPU and GPU. Apple’s upcoming Snow Leopard OS X installment will use OpenCL to take advantage of the combined power of CPU and GPU using “heterogeneous” computing, meaning, the computer can use all processors at its disposal to get the job done.

Gupta points out that the technology is truly revolutionary, because for the first time, your computer will see your computer as having two processors as it will recognize the GPU as one as well. For an example of what this will mean in practice, he cites Google imaging software, Picasa. In Snow Leopard, the CPU will handle the running of Picasa in general, because it makes the most sense for it to do so, but as soon as you apply a filter to an image, the filter will be picked up and run by the GPU, because that’s a task which it can handle far more efficiently.

Apple products in particular will benefit from the new technology, since OS X and native applications for the Mac present such a visually rich environment. Of course, don’t expect all of your favorite programs to support GPGPU as soon as you boot up Snow Leopard for the first time. Applications need to be specially programmed to take advantage of the new tech, and not everyone is on board yet. In the past, the graphics language developers needed to use to program for the GPU has been a barrier because of its increased difficulty.

NVIDIA has revised the programming architecture to try to make it more familiar for devs used to coding in C-based languages, and they think they’ve succeeded. We won’t have to wait long to see how that pans out, with many predicting a summer launch of Snow Leopard’s final retail release.

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He writes in:

I enabled the Parental Controls on my new Leopard install, and after letting my kids play Frozen Bubble and browse to Playhouse Disney for an hour or so I found that the daemon named “parentalcontrolsd” was eating 98-100% of one of my cores (Core 2 Duo MacBook).

Anyone else had this issue with the new Parental Controls? Have certain applications possibly caused the increase in CPU usage?

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