It's wee, and dead sexy. It's the most affordable Mac ever. (Well, new, anyway.) But what's the most remarkable to me about the newly revealed Mac mini is that Apple has taken the cross-platform, hook-it-up-to-anything approach that made the iPod such a hit and finally applied it to a Macintosh.
What this seems to suggest is that Steve & co. are branching out in their quest to get more Apple hardware into (or under) the hands of Intel users. Even if it means plugging a mouse with two buttons and a clickwheel into that beautiful cunning little Mac mini. It's a compromise in (ahem) elegance from my heroes in Cupertino, who may be trying once again to offer a "computer for the rest of us." Only now it's more like "a Macintosh for the rest of them." After all, the iPods got many folks closer to a Mac than they'd been since Star Trek IV. And the Mac mini is way, way cuter than any 90s-era Macintosh clone. (Just close your eyes, and don't think about it. Brr.)
The big difference between the iPod and the Mac mini, of course, is that you can use an iPod (and iTunes) with Windows. It's a gadgie made by Apple; it is not the Mac OS, and running a Macintosh -- no matter how small and cute -- means running Mac OS. (Go on with your Virtual PC talk. You can't make me believe that anyone, besides Mac users who are forced to, use that instead of just using a Windows machine. And it's still not the same as just moving around in the native OS.) Even if you don't have all Apple gear, you're still moving from Windows to Mac OS with the Mac mini -- an enterprise that is still just as fraught with frustration now as it was two days ago. If the affordable adorable box fishes them in, will the allure of the Tiger keep them happy?
Now, don't get me wrong. I think it's really snazzy, and I know lots of Mac users, who haven't upgraded systems due to prohibitive costs, whose desktops are about to get a whole lot of new desk space. But they're not who everyone's wondering about. Maybe there's a great untapped market of Windows users who have been waiting, patiently, for a Mac box to plug into all their pricey, non-Apple peripherals. I guess we'll see.
Posted on January 12, 2005 to appletalk
Previously: Nothing but books
Next Time: Riffage
Main: cleaning out ferryboats
The title says it all. It's my ongoing one-woman show, with new works being put into rotation as they come up.
cleaning out ferryboats
all writing, all the time, just because
the sign of angellica
an aphra behn web site
reflections and illuminations
art, technology, spirit