I Want This…

January 12, 2005 · Filed Under technology

I want a Mac Mini!

This is a seriously cool, not to mention strategically solid (& possibly brilliant), thing that Apple has done. I dare say that this could be more significant in the long run than any Mac since the original. Which is saying something, given the impact that the iMac had a while back. It’s a killer design (but, then, Apple’s always had great industrial design…), and a great marketing concept. Allowing industry standard peripherals (USB keyboards/mice, DVI & VGA monitors, wired & wireless networking, etc…) to be used with a Mac in a seamless plug-&-play fashion, and all at a low cost point — well, that’s the kind of marketing & strategic savvy that Apple should’ve had, but never did! It gets the Mac about as close to a licensed “commodity” computer as Steve Jobs will ever get — and that might be good enough to (if Apple doesn’t screw it up) cause a gigantic stir in the industry.

Apple has become of late a company largely defined by iTunes & the iPod. The strategic significance of the Mac Mini is that Apple is leveraging the impact & cachet of the iPod/iTunes buzz, and using it to help the Mac. The iPod has shown that Apple’s industrial & interface design does appeal to the masses. OS X is THE BEST OS out there, in terms of putting a beautiful & easily usable interface on top of a rock-solidly stable & powerful modern operating system.

I’m running Linux (the Debian-based Xandros 3.0) on my main desktop at home, and that probably won’t change in the short term, as I like tinkering & playing around with Linux. However, I would like nothing more than to be able to replace the Windows XP based PC that is the family computer with a Mac Mini at the earliest opportunity. Getting rid of Microsoft OSes would be such a nice thing to be able to do. Windows works, but I’ve never really trusted it. Neither have I ever developed the affection for Windows that I have for the Mac or for Linux.

-ghp

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Tags: macintosh, osx