Apple's Mac mini - Tempting PC Users Everywhere
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 25, 2005 7:39 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Editing Images with iPhoto 5
If you double-click on any image in iPhoto, you are essentially dropped into an Edit mode. Getting back and forth between the edit mode and the browsing mode is much simpler in iPhoto 5 than it was in 4. Just hit the Done button and you're back to browsing without the editing tools. But the real benefit of iPhoto 5's editing mode is that you now have all of your images at the top of the window for you to scroll through, instead of having to go back to browsing mode and then re-enter editing mode. You can also scroll left and right using the arrow keys at the bottom right corner of the window.
Given that it is designed for the type of photo editing that the vast majority of digital camera owners will be doing, the editing controls in iPhoto 5 aren't too surprising. You have an easily accessible row of buttons at the bottom of your picture window, so there's no going to a separate tool box or pulling down another menu.
The first one is rotate, which is self-explanatory. The next tool is a drop-down for dimensions (or ratios) to constrain the image canvas to prepare it better for printing; and next to that drop-down, the crop button that will finish the deed.
Then, there are the usual buttons: enhance, red-eye reduction, a retouch brush, B&W and sepia filters. And then the most important button - the Adjust button.
Hitting the adjust button brings up a translucent dashboard that has sliders to adjust the following items: brightness, contrast, color saturation, color temperature, tint and sharpness. There are also sliders to straighten the image as well as adjust the exposure and crop out the high/low color levels of the picture.
All of the sliders work in real time and for the first time, I found myself actually adjusting things like color saturation and temperature on a regular basis for the images that I imported into iPhoto. It was just so easy, since all of the useful controls were all presented for you right there.
The straighten slider is particularly neat because as soon as you start moving it, a grid appears over the image to help guide your image straightening - one of the most useful features of iPhoto. For the first time, I actually had straight images without spending a lot of time on them.
Straightening a photo in iPhoto 5
Editing images in iPhoto is very easy, but unfortunately, not a Photoshop replacement for me. The problem is that saving (exporting) images from iPhoto is a bit of an ordeal compared to doing a simple Save As under Photoshop.
The application is clearly designed for the needs of your normal digital camera enthusiast. You can easily email the photos, print them, make them into a book (which you can then order printed and made from Apple directly within the application) or even order prints using the integrated Kodak Print Service (also built-in directly to the application). However, for web publication on a site like AnandTech where photos need to be ftp'd over, iPhoto does lose some of its appeal. So for my needs, iPhoto is faster in some cases, but I can't get rid of Photoshop all together. For example, iPhoto won't let me do a custom resize of an image that doesn't scale the length and width by the same proportions, something that is sometimes necessary for our front page graphics. While iPhoto 5 produced all of the images for this article, one required launching Photoshop. The one thing that I did like about iPhoto's file export is that you can give it width and height constraints for the images and it will handle all resizing for you. Unfortunately, it doesn't always stay within those bounds if you have images of varying sizes in the selection that you're exporting.
For management of your pictures of friends, family and your hobbies, iPhoto works wonders, but it does leave me wishing that there was a more professional version of iPhoto that would add features like non-constrained sizes and ftp export. I'd like to be able to replace Photoshop completely, simply because it's too expensive of an application and too feature-filled for the needs that I have; unfortunately, iPhoto wasn't the complete replacement that I was looking for, although it came extremely close.
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wildgift - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
I bought one, and it's nice. It's very quiet (meaning it doesn't add to the noise in the office), reasonably quick, and very easy on the eyes. It is a decent development machine, at least for smaller database driven websites, and is portable enough to tote to the office. There's definitely something to be said for carrying your entire development environment around, but without spending all the $$ for a laptop. The price/performance ratios suck, but the overall fit and finish, and very nice software, more than compensate for the approximaely $150 premium you pay for going with a Mac. A SFF PC / OS combo to match the Mini simply cannot be purchased. A fairly comparable SFF PC (like the AOpen that's quiet) with the same RAM and larger hard drive, and slightly faster CPU, costs almost the same, and lacks the software. (Yes, I'm getting one of those too.)Also, going with any Mac at all gets you the better aesthetics that Windows lacks, and Linux totally lacks. You get better typefaces. You get better color calibration. Printing is smoother (and the addition of gimp-print is a big plus). You can type in any language you know. Even the screensaver photos are nicer. With iWork, you get nicer templates. Even the old AppleWorks clip art is pretty good (not really good, but, ok for "free" clipart). These things matter a lot if you work with documents.
If you're in the Unix niche, a Mac is nice because it has Unix under the hood. It's not quite the standard Solaris, BSD, or Linux environment, but it's close enough for most things.
The Mini is a pretty good computer, and a very good *product*. It's not the monster of spec benchmarks, but, most people, including technical people who you might think would care, simply don't care about those numbers.
steveo561 - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link
Interested in a FREE MAC MINI???I just got mine FOR FREE...EVEN SHIPPING...NO JOKE
Just copy and paste the link EXACTLY as you see it below:
www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=16680884
All you have to do is go to the link, sign up for one FREE offer, and have some of your friends do the same and it's all yours for FREE.
www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=16680884
steveo561 - Monday, March 28, 2005 - link
Interested in a FREE MAC MINI???I just got mine FOR FREE...EVEN SHIPPING...NO JOKE
Just copy and paste the link EXACTLY as you see it below:
www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=16680884
All you have to do is go to the link, sign up for one FREE offer, and have some of your friends do the same and it's all yours for FREE.
www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=16680884
MarshallG - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
I love Anand's Mac articles. It's great to see an obviously pro-Windows guy like Anand look at the platform with such an open mind.Our home PC just died and this looks like a great replacement. I like the fact that I won't worry about viruses or spyware. I might get my 70 year-old mother one for the same reason.
But I'm surprised that Anand makes little if any mention of the Unix core of these machines. This is Linux for people who don't want to deal with driver problems. You can open a shell window, and run Perl or a zilllion other UNIX languages and apps. I'm really impressed by that! Now I can *really* teach my children how to use computers.
WorkingHardMan - Friday, February 11, 2005 - link
The way Tiger has been described by Apple is that Tiger will still handle the pixles if the GPU can not. Having said all that, the mini isn't really being marketed to the kind of people who want or need high quality 20" and 23" displays. One of the Apple desktop computers would make more sense for that crowd.Xmate - Thursday, February 10, 2005 - link
I'm sorry if this issue has already been addressed, I'd apreciate if you could restate the solution if it has been:OS X Tiger is supposed to use to GPU instead of the CPU to render all the pixels on the display correct? Well, while the Mac mini seems to be a very good solution for a PC user wanting to try out OS X, but from what I can see, the mini simply doesn't have nearly enough power in the GPU to power any of Apple's Cinema Displays. I have currently heard that most people are happy with the mini 20" CD combination, and I might (not certain) have heard people being happy with it even with the 23". With Tiger this is almost definetly not going to be the case.
I was wondering if anyone has any input on that, and if they know of some possible solution that could be implemented to solve the problem.
Thank you for your help,
Stefan
Wightout - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050120....PhoenixPyre - Sunday, February 6, 2005 - link
Yeah, that Dell configuration isn't normal. To get those specs normally, you would have to pay well over $499. Not to mention it would be under the Small Business section of Dell.com and you would probably have to pay a good amount for shipping (as noted in #189).jaxcs2002 - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Hey good aricle but you tried to discuss too many things with this article. Two notes:1)The comparison Dell and the mini is fair but Dell doesn't sell any standard configuration computers. Every week (really, not kidding here), they run some kind of a promotion. You were able to snag a free LCD when you browsed the Dell page that day, but did you get free shipping? I guarantee the next week, you won't be able to get an LCD but maybe extra memory and a larger hard disk. They do this obviously to make each week a sale and to induce you to buy immediately.
2) You make note that the comp is not for Apple power users and then promptly seem to forget that fact. What user would buy a mini mac and hook it to a 23" Cinema Display? It is interesting to note that it would not do well, but the Dell standard vidcard (integrated probably) wouldn't either. Judgeing from your article, it would probably be fine on a 15 or 17 inch screen.
I think it would have been helpful, especially since you hint at it anyway to talk about its utility in performing more "average joe" type taks such as usng it in conjunction with the apple air port as a music file server or as video server. You know, those tasks that a buyer of an ipod might do with a mac mini. In every way, you seem to perfer its bigger cousins but this a mini, what tasks does the mini do well?
pitdog - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
sorry for the double post....new to the forums