If you know me then you'll be suprised that I'm considering purchasing a mac but here goes......

I saw the Mini Mac yesterday and I was very impressed with it and with the potential in Tiger. I have a few questions though since i've rarely used a mac before. Can I connect to my exchange server at home? Can I connect to my windows file shares within the mac? Can I play WMV/A? What sort of games are available on the mac?

Thanks guys

the Mac Mini is rubbish at gaming a 32MB ATi 9200! I mean PLEASE ...

But for everything else its perfect, it can access windows file shares (Via SMB) it can join WiFi Networks / Ethernet networks and so on.

it can play WMV / WMA via the Windows Media Player for Mac and it can play them through Mplayer and VLC (3rd party media players)

you can connect to your window shares, and you can play wmv (although, i am not sure if you can with anything that comes with it, but i do know mplayer can), and they have windows media player for mac too.

Yes, Apple Mail.app supports Exchange as well as Microsoft Entourage


Yes, Mac OS X can even join Windows server domains


Yes With VideoLan Player and Windows Media Player


Generals, UT2004, Doom 3 is coming, Halo (which was originally going to be a Mac only game) and at least a dozen others.

To see what games are available for the Mac, go to www.apple.com/games and/or www.insidemacgames.com.

So if I got airport on the Mac Mini it would connect to my wi-fi network at home fine?

Don't forget World of Warcraft

Aiport Express == 802.11g, so it will connect just fine. I have my PowerBook and AirPort Express connected wirelessly to my Netgear router. It's all the same standard.

I just got me a Mac mini, but I have question that would make me cancel depending on the answer.

My understanding that the video card will not support some Tiger features (i.e. Image Core), will Apple release an updated Mac mini that will have a better video card for this?

yup it will connect fine it will also be able to share and transfer files with your windows computers via the wireless network it will also be able to share printer over the wireless network

Wow these Mac Minis sound pretty good, Very compatible .

It is not just the Mac Mini all Macs that run Mac Os X panther have the same connectivity.

Oh right cool .

Enough for strategy games like AOEII or AOM etc.,

Might do eventually, but maybe not for a while. Most Mac notebooks will have a similar problem.

This card is incredibly dated on the PC but because apple controls the hardware and the software you'd be surprised at how insanely well it will play games.

cool, thanks for answering the Q's. Didn't know the Mac was so compatible.

Now I can get all the Mac Beta stuff and post it main page muahahaha

Can't wait!

Those 9200's aren't as bad as most people think, sure it's not an X800, but they suffice for most things and even some games (not doom3, but most things up until now will run nicely on the mini )

As for the Windows Media, there is Windows Media Player for the mac which will handle this, however it only handles Windows Media in Windows Media wrappers, so Windows media video and mp3 audio in a nice .avi wrapper, wont work witn WMPMac, however it will work in VLC or MPlayerOSX as some already mentioned. However (and it's a big however for some people) Microsoft's new(ish) WMV3 does not play when not in a Windows Media wrapper. WMP was updated for the mac to support WMV3 in .wmv files, however if they're encased in avi, there's currently nothing that will play them.

Of course that may not be important to most people, but for some people, it can be plain annoying

Oh, and feel free to pass on mac beta's this way

Right, Halo will run and so will Battlefield 1942 and The Sims.

It seems like much more than a budget PC to me.

Do you mean that you have an exchange server at home or that you want to connect to exchange at work? I'm only familiar with exchange support in Panther and I'm not sure how they might have improved upon it in Tiger. With Panther, the Exchange server has to have Web access enabled as Mail and address book consume the XML from the Web access service.

Ask Apple for a definitive answer.

Yes. I've participate within a Windows 2003 domain with my powerbook.

Yes, with WMP and VLC. You will not have 100% compatibility. Games? UT2k3, UT2k4 + third-party mods, WCIII & WCIIIFT (use your PC/Mac CD), Rise of Nations, Sims, Sim City, Age of Mythology.

http://www.macsoftgames.com/
http://www.macplay.com/
http://www.aspyr.com/
http://www.feralinteractive.com/
http://www.freeverse.com/

Obviously, it is not anywhere near as much as the PC but every year is getting better.

just to ad to this for future reference. You will find the best PC games get ported and only a little bit of crap gets through. So even though there is a small selection, the selection we have are normally the best selling games on PC.

Good, more stuff to fill my Mac Mini drive with!

Hope you enjoy the mac creamhackered, i havent had one problem with mine yet (and i have the same graphics card, halo plays fine, if i turn on high AA it slows down a bit)

More than enough for games like CSI and The Sims as well. That's one of the main reasons I'm thinking of getting one for my wife. If I was to add a Radeon 9200 to her Blue & White, I'd already be looking at spending about $120 or so. The 550Mhz G4 in her computer isn't all that great for these games either, so I'd have to upgrade that as well. By the time I upgraded hers to the level of the mini, I'd spend about the same as just buying a mini for her.

i wouldnt "switch" ide have both though, and the mac mini tempts me.

To quote someone on Yahoo's message boards:

There is a common misunderstanding or misinterpretation about this. CoreImage and CoreVideo will work on most modern cards, they just won't have all of the features and/or won't have full acceleration on them. The technologies are designed to scale to the capabilities of the card.

Core Image information from Apple

I've just placed the order.

/waiting.....

I'm seeing at least a couple mods making the switch. With this many mods hanging around the Mac section, trolling should be pretty much eliminated.

Yup.

You may remember in the Tiger demo when he played with widgets it had that ripple effect. My 800MHz iBook's 9200 mobility does not support core image and so that effect just does not happen.

But the zooming of widgets jumping on screen / off screen and the way the widget called World clock flips round all work fine.

As you say the os will scale to what the hardware can do.

That's awesome! To bad Windows doesn't do that

I'm sure if Microsoft could they would but since there are so many OEM's and so many different types of hardware it is more difficult for them. for instance there are 1000+ different windows Motherboards and it would take them a long time to note down every single one and what it can do..

Apple know what they are aiming at since they make all there own computers.

But it is bad that Windows cannot offer such functionality.

From my understanding, Aero in Longhorn will have a similar setup. I think i read they'd be like 3 levels of Aero, which scale depending on the capabilities of the system. So Windows will do the same thing. Right now it'd be pointless considering Windows doesn't have ANY neat effects that require a modern day machine to render...

My PowerBook can do the ripple effects fine, does that mean Core Image will run properly?

I would probably say yes. To be sure, you'd need to specify the video card. I'd assume it's probably a Radeon 9700 Mobility, which is definitely fully Tiger compatible.

something that might help

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/technology.html (there is a pdf)

Yep, even halo run pretty well on 1ghz powerbooks with 32mb gfx cards.