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Damn Apple..a fence sitter's dilemma

Almost ready to make the'move'...Buy the Mac mini, go with a firewire dac (seems to make more sense to my computer illiterate brain), decided on a simplified Raid backup, still worrying over format to rip cd's....And now Apple introduces a new connectivity mode : Thunderbolt. A zillion times faster than USB 2 and Firewire 800, single connectivity with audio, video, data, etc., and a whole lot of other things I don't understand.
Sure, it's only in the MBP's introduced this week, not the Mini; but trickle down is their modus operondi. Sure, I should get off the fence and make a move 'cause there will always be the next great thing coming down the pipe, but I sure hate to spend my pennies and be obsolete in 16 months. Whaddya' think?
farmdoc

Showing 4 responses by mmike84

mmike84
309 posts
 
It will be a while before Thunderbolt becomes a reality. For that matter it may not become any more widely used than Firewire. But then something will replace Thunderbolt after that. So you should probably just give up, since anything you buy will eventually become out of date. ;)

I'm sure I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this next part from Mini owners and Mac lovers. The Mac mini is a pretty limiting option (but is also cheap). I have done a lot of testing and a correctly optimized PC sounds better and more dynamic than a properly optimized mini. I suspect a big part of that is better player options. If it were my $ I'd look at a PC or an Apple desktop so that future upgrades can accommodate new technology.
mmike84
309 posts
 
8GB of ram and SSD using Snow Leopard has been the best in our experiments with the mini. We also strip off non essential OS. That helps too but probably makes more difference in the older Macs. We're on our 3rd iteration using the new one with 2.4 processor.

I'd burn to Aiff is using Mac, or Wav if using PC.
mmike84
309 posts
 
Lossless formats can be converted other lossless formats. There is some debate is Apple Lossless is really lossless. Wav or Aiff are bigger files because there is less compression and therefore are a safer choice.
mmike84
309 posts
 
I cannot really comment on that accurately anymore but the conclusions are sound. In testing it was also decided that it is best to keep music on an auxiliary drive, preferably a firewire drive.
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