Small Is Beautiful Macworld
24.11.09
Tiny Mac
Yet the Mac mini’s $499 price—the lowest ever for a Mac—is only the second most startling thing about the new machine. The most startling thing is its size: 6.5 inches square and just 2 inches high. Its looks recall the ill-fated G4 Cube, but the Cube was nearly five times taller, not to mention nearly four times more expensive. Having already tested their ability to cram a remarkable amount of stuff into a tiny space with the iMac G5, engineers at Apple have outdone themselves.
In the mini’s 85 cubic inches, Apple fit a G4 processor (1.25GHz or 1.42GHz), an optical drive (Combo or SuperDrive), a 40GB or 80GB hard drive, the standard ports, and room for the optional AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth. It’s not a crippled Mac by any means; but if you start adding keyboards, mice, wireless cards, and the like, you’ll spend far more than $499.
Will the Mac mini help Apple make inroads on Windows’ market share? There’s no way to know. But the iPod has introduced a whole new audience to Apple’s skill at creating excellent products—the Mac mini’s low price may get those same folks through the door of an Apple Store again.
The Mac mini should also be of interest to those of us who are already in the Mac camp. For a few years, I’ve had an old Power Mac, which I use as a Web and music server, in my office closet. Now I could replace that server with an unobtrusive (and much more powerful) Mac mini. It would also make a great second machine—in the den or the kids’ room, for example.
Tinier iPod
In any other context, the Mac mini would be the belle of the ball. But at Macworld Expo, it was upstaged by the tiny iPod shuffle, which costs as little as $99 and weighs less than an ounce.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a backlash against the iPod shuffle from the usual chorus of second-guessers (the same folks who thought the iPod mini was doomed to fail). After all, the iPod shuffle has no display and holds only a few hundred songs.
But consider this: If you want a pretty interface and a big collection of music, Apple has a few other products you may have heard of—the iPod photo, the iPod, and the iPod mini. The iPod shuffle is a different beast, designed for people who want to have an ultrasmall, ultra-inexpensive player that lets them take along a respectable slice of their music collection.
Realistically, how many songs do you play in an average iPod session? For me, using Apple’s assumption of four minutes per song (no prog-rock epics for Steve Jobs), the number is 15, because I usually listen to my iPod for about an hour at a time. The only time I’ve listened to more than 100 songs in one sitting was during a
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