New mac mini

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Love mac or hate mac I think this bears a little looking into, Apple long famous for not having a computer in the under  1000 bucks catagory announced the release of the headless mac mini, which is roughly the size of a trade paperback book 6 inches deep and 2 inches tall comes with no monitor or keyboard and mouse all for under 500 bucks. Ok its 499 and for that you get a basic machine, but I can soup it up with all the extras and still only pay 1100 bucks and for that you get a DVD burner an 80 gig hard drive, wireless capability and bluetooth. Obviously the 499 version is a little worse, but still a nice machine for casual use. I have a spare monitor, and since I bought a bluetooth mouse and keyboard I dont need those. So whos the Mac mini targeted at, College students and Dell Owners. The macine is really sweet actually.

So if you havent bought a mac because "they cost too much" you should check it out. If you dont like Macs OS or other things then dont worry, PC's will still have more market share.

Personally Im looking in to getting one, if only because I get a sweet federal govt discount.

Also debuted is the new flash based ipod, which is about the size of a pack of trident and weighs as much as 4 quarters.  I dont know if this will sell or not, but It is a 99 dollar Ipod, and priced competitively with other flash players.

Im not wowed,...

but the Mac mini is nice, especially for casual computer users.

Hey maybe someone can contact Mac and see If I can get one to try out

(note... I dont really think this warrents attacks against Mac's, If you dont like em for some reason, no foul, no harm done, but please dont wade in with pointless Mac's suck posts I just thought it would be interesting for people like Gemm who in the past has designed his PC to emulate OSX because he couldnt afford it.)

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Thinking about it a little more, this is a great idea when it come to selling macs to schools. Telling the principle, No, you can keep all of your old monitors usb keyboards and usb mice is pretty smart. Man did USB ever make periphial switching easy.

So what uses does a computer like this have.

well the cheapie is good for the internet, email, wordprocessing, music (itunes) and some home photo stuff .

Nothing spectacular there.

but the priceier one actually looks like a pretty good inexpensive video editor and and publisher (especially with a dvd burner)

The new ilife Suite announced today has increased potential in video, as apple and sony have teamed up imovie now supports hd burning and editing (so if you got a new sony hd camera, its all good)

Music wise their Garage band software has gotten much more detailed, with tuning features for live instruments, a ton of new loops and other stuff. I've played around with Garageband on my current mac and I have to say its a really easy music editing and writing program. Its interface with real instruments really helps.

Now you can do a ton of tracks too.

iphoto now has professional photo editing tools, ones that can adjust exposure, touchup the photo and other nifty stuff.

and that stuffs all included in the basic package.

So its got some great software,...

anyhow, I just thought it was neat.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

I think I know why macs are so much more the expensiver. Since they bundle the computers with their own suite of software and such that may drive it up a tad. Just a thought I had.

[Spriggan]

It took them long enough.  Mac realy looses out on a lot of prespetive customers becasue you can buy a DELL or Gateway for only $500.  But they come with monoters so I think if Mac realy wants to compeite then they'll have to come up with something for close to DELL's price.  Though I have a fealing that Apple realy dosen't care much about compeateing with the Budget PCs.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

yeah a monitor would have been nice, except people said they didnt want one... (iMac)

What you get is the main box, no keyboard, no mouse, no monitor. Keyboard and mouse cost 58 buck extra if you want apple hardware... market price if you dont. Monitors are cheap right now, so you can pick and choose, apple 20-30 inch displays for buku bucks, a middle of the road or third party lcd or plasma or a Cheap CRT.  

Im not conviced that they are really trying to compete with Dell or Gateway, just aiming for the under 1000 bucks market. People didnt like the imac because of the locked in LCD, (what if I want a better monitor later!) this gives users a lot of options.

One thing I dont like is the reemergence of the power brick, absent on most macs for a while. But what can you do, I have paperbacks bigger than this thing. It crams a lot of stuff into a tiny space. On their main page they have six or seven stacked on top of each other taking up as much space as a small tower (with pretty much the same specs)

I think theyre banking on singles, college students, and families that want a computer.

I wouldnt buy it untill Mac OS X tiger comes out though, (for any forum people who are intrigued) It'd be like buying a dell a few weeks before longhorn came out. Your going to want the new OS, with a lot of new functionality and features and paying extra for it isnt prudent. The good news is that OSX tiger will be out in the first quarter of this year.

So a few more months.

They have a whole slew of new features and anyone with quicktime can see what they are at the apple site.

The most interesting one for me is the improvement to ichat av which allows multiple teleconferences (audio or visual) which seems like the perfect way to go for online rpgs... although I'd stick to audio so I dont have to see your ugly mugs.....

So yeah no monitor semi crappy, but like I said I have one sitting around gathering dust and I suspect a lot of other people do to. If someones avoided buying mac because of the price and has a 2-3 year old pc that they arent happy with its attractive, just save your keyboard, mouse and monitor.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

it's the return of the cube...but smaller!!

I love it. But then, I already have a mac and don't have a need for another computer.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

you know you'll lust after it untill it devours your soul...

dead by dawn! Dead by dawn!