Grandia 3 arrived the other day but I haven’t got around to trying it out yet. I’m looking forward to it. All indications are that the superb battle system has remained intact and it plays like a dream unlike a number of other big name RPGs. *glares at FF XII*

A friend of mine was wanting to watch RahXephon so over the weekend we went through about five discs of it after watching the latest Elfen Lied and Maburaho DVDs. I’m still not entirely sure what I think of Maburaho but I’m enjoying Elfen Lied quite a lot. There’s only one disc left to finish the series though and it’s hard to see how they can give it a satisfying ending in that little time. I’m especially wary of this after the total let down ending of Tenjho Tenge. I won’t give anything away but the last few episodes of Tenjho Tenge are nothing but filler setting up a sequel, are out of character and not in the manga as far as I can tell. Nothing that would stop me buying the DVDs since the previous story arc was great but I’d happily stop watching before the last 2-3 episodes. It was good to watch RahXephon again though, so many little points to pick up on second time through.

I see today Apple released the new Intel based Mac mini. The mini has since it’s release targetted the low end computer market. It was slow but it was adequate. The new mini on the other hand is, in my opinion, a total dog. The old mini had an ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB of VRAM, the new one has an Intel GMA950 using 64MB “shared memory”. The GMA950 is, to put it bluntly, the slowest GPU on the mainstream market, slower than the Radeon 9200 it replaced. Simply using this new GPU will start taking some of the 512MB of system RAM as soon as you turn the computer on. How much will it take? Here’s what Apple says in small print on their web site…”Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 80MB, resulting in 432MB of system memory available.”. Yes, that’s 80MB immediately gone and that’s the *minimum* you’ll lose.

It gets worse. The low end model has a 1.5Ghz Intel Core Solo CPU. Yes, that’s right, a single core CPU. For the foreseable future, a lot of Mac compatible software will be PowerPC native and running these programs requires emulation on the new Intel Macs. According to benchmarks, a 2.0Ghz Intel Core Duo (Yes, a dual core) will emulate PowerPC code at about the speed of a 1Ghz PowerPC G4. What will the 1.5Ghz Core Solo (single core) do? I don’t know either but it will be significantly slower again emulating a 733Mhz G4 at best. What is the speed of the model this new Mac mini replaces? It was a 1.25Ghz G4. A 1.5Ghz Core Solo running native software will be many times faster than a 1.25GHz G4 right? Actually, clock for clock, the recent G4s hold their own against the G5 in benchmarks. Yes, the recent Intel based iMac is faster than the G5 iMac it replaced but that was a *dual core* Intel CPU vs a *single core* Power G5. A single core Intel CPU such as this one in the Mac mini will not be many times faster than a G4. It will be faster, it has a faster bus for a start but four times like Apple claims? I’m sorry Apple, but I’m seeing pigs flying here.

Surely there can’t be anything else wrong with it surely? Oh, no, wait. The entry level PowerPC G4 Mac mini sold for around NZ$949 with gst included. The new model? NZ$1,199.00 including gst. This is before buying a keyboard, a mouse and a screen. Sure, you can get something faster by buying the 1.66Ghz Intel Core Duo model. That will be faster, but at NZ$1,578.99 you could just get something good instead.

On the plus side, the hard drive has been upped from 4200RPM to 5200RPM which addresses the most critical flaw of the earlier models but unfortunately that isn’t enough to make this heap of junk look good. Oh, and about that S-VHS/Composite output…You have to buy the dongle separately and because there’s only one monitor port and the dongle uses it, you can’t even use a monitor while leaving the thing plugged into the TV.

This new Mac mini is without a doubt the worst Mac ever released. Yes, that’s right, even worse than the 90’s Performas and the Quadra 630.

There were other Apple products released today as well, but they’re too minor to even be worth talking about.