The Mac mini as a Media Computer

Final Words

What we've touched on in this article is far from the full gamut of HTPC applications for the mini (or Macs in general). Elgato, for example, offers a series of internal and external TV tuners for Macs, including a Mac version of ATI's TV Wonder USB 2.0. You can get a remote for the Mac and there are tons of freely-available, user-designed AppleScripts that are great for browsing your DVD collection. There are even multiple open source projects underway to bring about a Mac media center type of application.

In the past, Apple hasn't seen a place for a Mac in the living room. Many have theorized that the mini is Apple's way of bringing online movie and music downloads into the living room, but there's a lot that has to happen before Apple can get to that point. As it stands right now, Apple needs to make significant improvements to their DVD player, whose image quality simply isn't up to par. The other issue is that DVD decode performance on the mini is simply unacceptable for any sort of multitasking environments. While Mac OS X does a great job of making sure that other, inactive windows don't take priority over the DVD decoding threads, as soon as you switch window focus, the DVD player no longer enjoys its priority and playback can suffer.

The mini obviously doesn't have the built-in storage capabilities to act as a media server, but with an external FireWire drive, those problems could easily be solved. In its ability to act as a DVR, the mini has some potential, assuming that either Apple or some other adventurous developer puts the time into exploiting those capabilities. But obviously, what's lacking is the media-centric interface (or 10-foot UI) of something like Media Center Edition. If Apple is truly going after this market next, it's an area on which they must focus.

We were quite impressed with the mini's ability to function as a content creation box with its performance in iMovie HD. The box is far more responsive than most entry-level machines that we've played with in the past, thanks in part to the excellent thread management and caching systems of the OS.

Through our continued use of the mini, we still find it an excellent way to get introduced to OS X; although, we are still frustrated by its performance at higher resolutions, thanks to its meager 32MB of video memory. We've heard from many PC users that while they are tempted by the mini, they will wait for what will essentially be version 2, hoping that it will have more video memory, and maybe even an updated graphics core. Given that the current mini makes use of the Radeon 9200, we'd expect its successor to use ATI's X300, which would bring it compatibility with Core Image and Quartz Extreme 2D. With the mini having just been launched, don't hold your breath for an updated version anytime soon, however.

Our recommendation still stands that, if you can, a PowerBook is a much better way to get introduced to and reap the benefits of OS X. But as a second choice, the mini still seems to work very well, even if not as a HTPC.