found drama

Recently it became apparent that our trusty iMac G5 (a.k.a., “Malkovich”) may not be long in its continued operation.  The iMac seems to have shut itself off randomly on at least two occasions over the past week or so – one minute it’s chugging along, playing music and/or exporting photos from Aperture and the next minute it’s just… off.

Malkovich is coming up on its four year anniversary and has probably logged well over 25,000 hours of discontinuous uptime ¹ and it is probably reasonable to expect that it’s nearing the end of its useful life cycle.  I was hoping to get 4-5 years of total useful life out of this iMac during which time it would serve as the main computer in the home.  So we’re not too far off our target if we’re working from that estimate.  But I was really hoping to get through to next year before this came up.  These random shutdowns cast a pall on Malkovich though and I have more than a few doubts that we’ll make it to ’10.  As such, we’re trying to figure out what computer will take its place.

Some background to orient ourselves with respect to priorities here:  the mild irony of calling Malkovich the “main” computer in the home is that it actually gets the least amount of active use.  We watch our DVDs on Malkovich ²; we play our music exclusively via iTunes on Malkovich; we collect and process our photos on Malkovich.  Email, web-surfing, writing, working…?  That all gets done on our respective laptops.  So apparently when we said “main” computer perhaps we meant “media center”?

Which brings me around to the conundrum before us:  to face facts, we do not really need something super-charged to satisfy our needs ³ but we do not want to skimp on performance either.  So as Malkovich starts to fade and move toward its death bed, we ask:  replace it with another iMac? or swap in with a Mac mini and hook that up to a 1080p HDTV ⁴?

In March, the solution seemed to be a foregone conclusion:  Mac mini + 1080p LCD TV = perfect!

Since then, I’d started and scrapped and re-started ⁵ a post (which is effectively being replaced by this one) that details the rationale behind the Mac mini as home media center.  A lot of it centered around this quote from the Cult of Mac blog:

What’s most bizarre about it is that Apple won’t even allow the product to be envisioned as a living room computer. In every promo shot they show for the mini, it’s paired with a cutting-edge 24†³ Cinema Display. Apple thinks that the Mac mini is a tiny desktop computer that will be used exactly like an iMac or Mac Pro, just a lot smaller. Here’s the thing. Despite what Apple has been trying to convince us of late, small is not a useful feature unto itself. It’s only useful when you take that breakthrough design and show how a smaller profile allows for more innovative uses.

And (for the most part) I agree with this sentiment.  But I also keep coming back to this quote from The Apple Blog:

It is underpowered, it is overpriced, and, worst of all […] it is not easily upgradeable after the fact […] The hard drive options are almost insulting, with the max available upgrade being 320GB. That seems pretty clearly intended to force your covetous gaze towards the higher-priced iMacs, if you ask me.

And this quote coming from an article praising the Mac mini.  “Underpowered/overpriced” makes me scared; but I don’t want to go overboard out of fear either.  The iMac?  Or the Mac mini?

The case for the iMac. Replacing Malkovich with another iMac seems fitting enough.  Think of it as one-to-upgraded-one replacement.  This latest rev of iMacs seemed a particularly lauded release, too.  Good bumps in specs that accompanied prices that felt like the overall TCO was actually going down on a per-model basis.  What’s not to like about an apparent improvement in overall value?  The processor speeds all look good, getting 4GB of RAM is either standard or else a cheap upgrade ⁶, the available hard drive options are reasonably fast and comfortably capacious, and the 24″ model actually buys you a few more pixels than a 1080p’s equivalent resolution (making the HDTV a bitchin’ extended desktop, right…?).  Plus, let’s face it:  the latest iMacs are a damn good-looking computer.

So why not? As I mentioned above, the iMac might be overkill.  A 24″ iMac is pretty big, even with its slim profile.  If this machine is serving as our “media hub” and is hooked up to the TV to do double duty as a DVD player, MP3 jukebox, etc., then might this be too much?  How much of a pain in the ass will it really turn out to be to get the iMac to respect the TV as the main display during DVDs?  And let’s be realistic, considering that it only has a mini-DisplayPort output, it’s probably not going to be a walk in the park.  And though the iMacs are considerably more powerful, even “as low as I can go” with the iMac line-up is a higher price-point than a maxed-out Mac mini.

The case for the Mac mini. Let’s be up-front and get a few realities out of the way; the case for the Mac mini is tempered immediately by:  (1) that its RAM configuration maxes out at 4 GB; (2) that even with the fastest build-to-order processor you can get, it’s still slower than the slowest iMac; (3) that is is not easy to upgrade or service the machine on your own; and (4) the hard drive options are abysmal ⁷.  But there are also quite a few things going for the mini: (1) it has a tiny footprint; (2) it is very “power sippy” and has an extremely low stand-by power consumption; (3) as far as I can tell, it has a cult following of folks that use it as a media hub; and (4) it is apparently infinitely re-purpose-able, as scores of blog posts describe it as the perfect apparatus to [put in your car/drive your robot/manage your refrigerator]…  There is something very appealing to me about having the Mac mini hide away somewhere in the TV stand (or whatever…) emerging just long enough for DVDs to be put in.  Plus, the Mac mini appears to be the only “consumer grade” Mac left with DVI – and from what I understand, DVI and HDMI are essentially the same signal (so there would be no down-sampling).  Provided that it can play the DVDs adequately ⁸ then there should be no problem in hooking the video signal out to the TV and the audio signal out to the receiver.  Done and done.  Some of these other factors become less of a concern when you think them through: (1) 4GB of RAM may be the max but I doubt I’d get more than that on the iMac anyway; (2) the 2.26GHz may be the fastest processor but Aperture is pretty snappy on the 2.4GHz laptop I’ve got ⁹; (3) not being easily upgradeable isn’t a big deal because we would start “maxed out” anyway; and (4a) certainly there is a way to “hack” the machine to accept a higher-capacity, higher-performance drive and even if there isn’t (4b) there is Firewire 800 in the mix to allow daisy-chaning of quite a few high-capacity, high-performance external drives.

So why the hesitation? The Mac mini isn’t a done deal in my mind.  Though it apparently has a cult following as a “media hub”, it is not really designed as such.  I’ve read at least one story online about folks that have had trouble getting the Mac mini to work properly with the HDTV.  That could be a deal-breaker.  This cannot turn into a multi-week project.  If this were strictly about keeping costs down, then the Mac mini would be the clear winner (far and away…) but the experience has got to be the right one, too.  What good is the cash saved if every attempt to watch a movie turns into a one-hour prelude of frustration? or if the movie watching goes simply enough but the mini strains under Aperture’s demands?  All of these are important considerations.

Where to from here? I’m curious who else out there has worked their way through this problem.  Who has experience getting the Mac mini hooked up to an HDTV?  Plug and play?  Or plug and tweak and tweak and tweak and play?  And what’s up with tv?  How come it won’t stream my DVDs from the iMac (because that would really be the best solution)?  And don’t give me that “well, rip your DVDs” bollocks – I just got done ripping my CDs for crying out loud and I don’t need yet another project of that sort.  Next stop is probably a test drive or two up at Small Dog.  But in the meantime: thoughts?

1. Though it’s probably more like 7,000 hours of “active use” – i.e., playing music from iTunes, novel-writing, or processing pictures in iPhoto or Aperture.[↩]
2. When we started doing this, it seemed like a great compromise – we could retire our television (which wasn’t much bigger than Malkovich’s 20″ screen anyway) and reconfigure our living room such that we were effectively down to one, well-consolidtated “entertain appliance”.  But more on this later.[↩]
3. This statement is prevented from being fully true by the fact that Aperture enters the mix.  But we’ll get to that.[↩]
4. If you’re keeping score, the 1080p HDTV is not something in the living room currently.  Part of the reason that we’re looking to replace Malkovich anyway is that the 20″ screen is proving to be less and less optimal for our aging eyes as time goes by.  (Barry Lyndon just isn’t as lush.)[↩]
5. And scrapped and re-started…  Several times, actually.[↩]
6. Though as of this writing, upgrading to 8GB of RAM practically involves adding on the cost of a Mac mini: $1,000.[↩]
7. ”Maxed out” is a 320GB? “Maxed out” is 5400-rpm?[↩]
8. And I don’t see why it wouldn’t – Malkovich has been doing just fine for us for the past two years.[↩]
9. And isn’t having two cores in the processor worth something?[↩]

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