“The Mac Mini, newly launched, is Apple’s attempt to capture some of the interest generated by the iPod and use that to drive computer sales. The com- pany also hopes to recapture some of the excitement that followed the launch of the original iMac. Subsequent iMacs have been excellent, but their relatively high price limits their appeal,” Stephen Pritchard writes for The Independent.
“The appeal of the Mini, though, lies in Apple’s design and engineering know-how as well as its software… The included software… is what really counts. The machine comes with Mac OS 10.3 and the iLife 05 suite of multimedia applications. For Mac users, buying a Mini might well be better value than upgrading their current machines; the software, on its own, would cost £160. And for the home user, the iLife software is quite special, with the Garageband music package standing out for its features and ease of use,” Pritchard writes.
“For work purposes, the Mini runs the Mac version of the Microsoft Office suite perfectly well, although the basic version will struggle with more demanding applications such as digital video. Businesses, though, might want to look at the Mac Mini because Apple’s operating system is based on Unix, with all the security advantages that entails. Macs are also easy to use and less vulnerable to viruses than Windows PCs,” Pritchard writes. “For some applications, such as accessing corporate information over the internet, the Mac Mini is cheap and effective.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Another excellent review that states what we’ve been saying since the Mac mini debuted, “It’s the software, stupid.” You cannot get what the Mac mini offers from any Wintel box assembler ay any price.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
The Seattle Times: Apple’s new Mac mini is ‘tiny, beautiful and dirt cheap’ – February 05, 2005
Why does Windows still suck and why isn’t everyone on a Mac? – February 04, 2005
BusinessWeek: Apple’s Mac mini comes with elegant, stable Mac OS X and very good software – February 03, 2005
Overclocking Apple’s new Mac mini – February 03, 2005
Tests show Apple’s new base model Mac mini could serve 80 percent of world’s web sites – February 03, 2005
Apple’s Mac mini is an attractive option to Windows-based PCs – February 02, 2005
Computerworld: Apple Computer ‘has a hit on its hands with the new Mac Mini’ – February 01, 2005
Is going after ‘Joe Six Pack’ a mistake for Apple Computer? – January 28, 2005
Report: Best Buy to sell Mac mini, could accelerate ‘iPod Halo Effect’ – January 28, 2005
Associated Press: With Apple’s Mac mini ‘you could abandon Windows altogether’ – January 27, 2005
USA Today: the software loaded on Apple’s Mac Mini gets you more bang for your buck – January 27, 2005
Wintel box assemblers keeping a close eye on Apple’s new Mac mini – January 27, 2005
CBS News: Grab a new Apple Mac mini ‘and kiss the old Wintel machine goodbye’ – January 27, 2005
AnandTech reviews Apple’s Mac mini: ‘tempting Windows users everywhere’ – January 26, 2005
Apple cuts Mac Mini upgrade prices for RAM, 80GB hard drive, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme – January 25, 2005
Windows users can give Apple’s elegant OS X operating system a try with new Mac mini – January 25, 2005
Apple’s ‘Mac mini’ should be your next computer – January 25, 2005
Analyst: Apple Mac worldwide market share could increase to 4.5 percent by end of 2006 – January 24, 2005
At least they’re starting to get it.
I can’t wait to see how this affects market share this year.
i bet sony gonna come out with a comp w/ ilife on it
yea
or maybe they re making a product that would go with the mini
after all they were talking about high defintion and who better to implement then sony?
Why would Apple need Sony’s help with HD? The Mac mini has a mini-DVI output that can send a full-rez digital signal to an HD TV.
What could Sony do for Aple, make a Mac-mini-syncable Walkman? Maybe it would write a playlist onto a cassette tape so you could carry your Walkman around and listen on those big old 70’s headphones.
The Mac Mini sucks.
It doesn’t think for me, can’t tell me tomorrow’s horse racing results or lottery numbers. It can’t provide me with the secrets to women, or the other big mystery (the universe dummy)
It’s useless I tell you, useless.
(at least you can surf for porn and not get viruses, and can make movies and listen to music, and draw, and write and generally be creative. It’s great for that tho!)
I bought a Mac mini and used the included iLife disc to update my G5 Powermac. I also installed the included Quicken 2005 and the games on my Desktop. I then deleted them from my new soon-to-be server.
The software included with the mini that I moved to my desktop would have cost $150 after taxes, etc. The savings on the software paid for the memory upgrade. Who said Macs are expensive?
Crazy big list of Mini related articles:
http://macspeedzone.com/html/hubs/central/macmini.html
Stupid Dude,
The secrets to women:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735200300
While the US Apple Store still lists shipping time as 3-4 weeks, the UK Store says “Now Shipping.” Does that mean that the mini is finally shipping (at some unspecified length of time) or that it’s shipping _now_?
IowaGuy, From what I hear, your best bet at getting a mini right away is to go to an Apple store but even then your chances are not good. I checked inside the UK site at the UK store just now and it says 3-4 weeks shipping when you go to the select page for the Apple mini.
Hey! I am from Iowa originally. Living in Japan now. I went to the Ginza store and they only had one mini on display (right in the middle of the first floor) and it was stuck to the counter somehow so you could not pick it up, but man that thing was small!!! Really sexy.
Two Mac mini anecdotes, and – off-topic – a shuffle anecdote.
MM #1: My friend – a fellow member of Macintosh Hezbollah – has been on at his nephew (who attends an Oxbridge college) for some time to leave the creatively and technically bankrupt Windows platform for some while.
Standard resistance: too expensive, not enough software, what is the point of a Macintosh (my response to this: to be MS’s R&D platform).
Intro of Mac mini: too cheap to resist, combined with failing Windows platform, nephew takes plunge and purchases Mac mini through university scheme.
Goes to the college IT administrator to get mini registered on network. Nephew (by now converted to the way of truth and light) is professing his love of OS X to administrator.
Administrator generally agrees and then says (and I’m paraphrasing): “If more people chose the Mac as their computer, I’d probably be out of a job”.
MM#2: #1 Nephew’s cousin (in other words, another of my friend’s many nephews, and hereafter referred to as GadgetBoy) discovers that his cousin has a new piece of kit.
Combined with the fact that elder brother has a G4 LCD iMac, GadgetBoy realises that e is falling behind on “cool computing”, and purchases a Mac mini.
iPS#1: GadgetBoy has also realised that – at his current age and stage of musical development – he isn’t going to fill up his iPod 40GB for some while. Has sold said unit to a friend and downsized his life to an iPod shuffle.
And that’s just two members of one family.
Got the Mac Mini from AppleStore UK last week. Now it sits alongside my A/V system downstairs and streams iTunes from my G5 upstairs. Audio feed into the surround sound system, video fed into the plasma, controlled via Apple BlueTooth mouse/keyboard.
The Mac Mini is a KILLER media-server. Then [as others have mentioned] you get iLife’05 bundled in. Amazing value.
Interesting to note that people leaving the London Apple Store actually take the Mac Mini box out of the white plastic Apple carrier bags and walk down the street proudly displaying the Mac Mini in it’s packaging…
The only program left on my Mac that I actually use, from MS, is Excel…
Man that’s nice…
Lately I’ve been playing with iWork (Importing PPT files for school, same with Word files…) iWork is just a pleasure to use!
Someone echoed what I’ve been saying ever since iWork was released… Look for some ‘easter eggs’ when Tiger comes out.. we may get program specific ‘widgets’ that will clear up some of the ‘pallette’ complaints about iWork.. and other programs in the future!!
I think I’ve got a friend ready to get a mini. She is a former Compaq/HP employee so she is pretty entrenched in Windows. Emails I sent her recently were bouncing so I called her and she said her Outlook was all messed up and kept closing after opening. She has reinstalled the program but nothing she has tried has worked to fix the problem. When I asked her if she’d ever used a Mac and she was proud to say yes – but like 10 years ago. As soon as she gets a look at OSX she’ll make the plunge.
My parents are pretty content for the moment with their PC. They had it built by a local assembler so they don’t have the problems related to integrated chip sets that Dull and the others use to cut costs.
But, now that I’ve got a G5 and they’ve seen the light (and heard even more about it), they are patiently waiting until they upgrade too a mini.
One down, 90% to go….
‘although the basic version will struggle with more demanding applications such as digital video.’
The one thing that all these journalists and reporters get wrong is in their belief that the Mac mini will struggle to do digital video. I use a 1.25MHz iMac, the same configuration as the lower-end mini, the only difference being I’ve got 512Mb RAM. I use Final Cut Pro with no problems at all; effects that can be rendered in real time ARE rendered in real time, no frames are dropped and there are no other issues with it. OK I have 512Mb but to say that it will struggle is completely wrong.
The Macs that we use where I work in print and design are mostly all 400Mh G4s with a Gig of RAM except for my G5 dual 1.8 with a Gig of RAM for outputing commercial print/production jobs. That means that most of the Macs here at work are a slower spec than the Mac Mini and they all work fine.
I do digital video on a 400Mhz Pismo with 512MB/40GB and OSX 10.3.7, and while it might not be blazingly fast, the end product is still a quality movie. The time required to render frames might be longer, but the software still works fine. So a Mac Mini with an over 1Ghz G4 ought to be a dream (given sufficient RAM).
Magic word is “over” as the Mac Mini is going to be all over everwhere!