MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Apple Online Store

5 Day Most Commented

Opinion Archive

Current Headlines

Latest Joy of Tech

  • Latest Joy of Tech!

MacNN

AppleInsider

Macworld UK

TUAW

MacRumors

Yahoo! Finance AAPL

iTunes Top 10 Albums

Mac OS X Downloads

Thu, Aug 21, 2008 - 11:16 PM EDT  —  AAPL: 174.29 (-1.55, -0.88%)  |  NASDAQ: 2380.38 (-8.70, -0.36%)

Computerworld: Apple Computer ‘has a hit on its hands with the new Mac Mini’
Tuesday, February 01, 2005 - 01:14 PM EDT

"Here's how I know Apple Computer Inc. has a hit on its hands with the new Mac Mini. No sooner had I opened the box than our Technology editor joked: 'Who wants that cheap Mac thing?' Now, when's the last time someone used the words 'cheap' and 'Mac' in the same sentence? Another co-worker almost grabbed it from my hands; still another popped up, gopher-style, over an office partition to ask how much it weighed; yet another asked whether it could be used for digital video editing (yes, it can)," Ken Mingis writes for Computerworld.

"All this commotion, and the Mini -- sent out by Apple for review purposes -- still had the plastic wrapping on it," Mingis writes. "It's meant to be Grandma's or Junior's first computer, or maybe a second or third computer for the house. Or maybe, for those enterprising IT folks out there, it's meant to give them a chance to try out a Mac at work to see whether it has a place there, too. My hunch is that it does."

Full article here.

  • Social Web
  • E-mail






Always -- Free ground shipping with orders over $50 at the Apple Store.

Reader Feedback: ( = registered)

Feb 01, 05 - 02:27 pm Comment from: Jason from Omaha

all my windows friends are wanting one... it's a hit!!

good job APPLE!!!!

Feb 01, 05 - 02:31 pm Comment from: Dlis

first

Feb 01, 05 - 02:40 pm Comment from: effwerd

Er, he does also happen to work for a computer oriented magazine and thus the people in his office would be a bit more interested than the general population.

Feb 01, 05 - 02:53 pm Comment from: Neydis

Apple should sell them in six-packs!

Feb 01, 05 - 02:59 pm Comment from: eric

Right ... grandmas computer ... just another "toy" from Apple .. why play with your computer when you can spend so much time configuring, updating, reformatting etc ... that's what a "real" computer does ...

Feb 01, 05 - 03:11 pm Comment from: Dan

Still blows me away, a mini with SuperDrive and a 20" screen is the same price as a 14" iBook with same. Now if I could only find a battery...

Feb 01, 05 - 03:20 pm Comment from: Randy

Can you "chain" "cliuster" these things together to make a "Super Mini" computer. Don't know the correct term. I know places have done it with the G5s.

Feb 01, 05 - 03:25 pm Comment from: Buffy

Yes Randy, there is a company in Texas who are using them in server clusters. Of course with 10/100 ethernet and laptop drives, Im not sure how fast it really is. Of course I have seen people have already upgraded to fatser HDD and get a noticable difference

Feb 01, 05 - 03:26 pm Comment from: rogozhin

Randy:

Check out Xgrid [http://www.apple.com/acg/xgrid/], Apple's free program that, along with a couple of ethernet cables, allows you to cluster Macs together. It's a mini Big Mac!!

Feb 01, 05 - 03:41 pm Comment from: rogozhin

More on Xgrid, courtesy of MacDevCenter:

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/05/11/xgrid_pt1.html

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/05/18/xgrid_pt2.html

Feb 01, 05 - 03:56 pm Comment from: MacMan

Mmmmm...Mini Big Mac. Great taste without all of the fat!

Feb 01, 05 - 04:04 pm Comment from: TN_Buc_Fan

I occured to me, does anyone know what the implications are of clustering several of these together? I'd be interested to see how it compares to more expensive systems.

Feb 01, 05 - 04:14 pm Comment from: Jack A

My brother in law is going to Jump into the Apple experience by buying THREE of these. One for him, one for his Mom, and one for his Dad so they can all video chat. Up til now he has been on windows but has been too bummed out by all the viruses.

Feb 01, 05 - 04:44 pm Comment from: C?BS!

"Suddenly, you're out $873 for a Mac with the previous-generation processor and only 512MB of RAM."

Let's see, 1.2Ghz G4 = 1.8Ghz P4? "Previous generation"? My corporate beige box PC has a 20GB HD (admittedly I have unlimited network drive space), and 512MB memory. For this we paid $1500 and pay $2000 per year to our IT department for "support".

$873 and 1/10th the annual support budget sounds pretty good for an equivalent machine to me.

Feb 01, 05 - 05:12 pm Comment from: Bill

Buffy, where did you see the info on upgrading the hdd?

Feb 01, 05 - 05:17 pm Comment from: Uncle Rat

Neydis:
Apple should sell them in six-packs!................

What a neat Idea. and Twelve Packs and by the case.........

I have just decided to keep my Apple stock. Apple is really, really going to make money.........or IBM is going to pay a premium for the stock when it decides to buy the company.

Feb 01, 05 - 05:25 pm Comment from: Bill

Buffy, Nevermind, I found it smile

http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Benchmarks/12705/minihd.html

Feb 01, 05 - 05:40 pm Comment from: Quaptro

Here´s my question: How many mini Macs have been sold so far? A million? Two million?

I´m guessing it is under 5 thousand.

Feb 01, 05 - 06:44 pm Comment from: Knock Knock

A hit on its hands, yes, but has anyone been hit in the HEAD with one?

My mini never hit anyone!

Magic word: face. Don't let the mini hit you in the face either.

Feb 01, 05 - 09:44 pm Comment from: BuriedCaesar

Nice "guess" Quaptro... we'll probably know soon enough when they hit the 100,000 order mark for the mini.

hmmm... magic word is "growth" smirk

Feb 01, 05 - 10:58 pm Comment from: Mac Yak

My mini has been shipped! I just got the e-mail!

WOO HOO!

Now all's I need are the peripherals, but I ain't care!

So that's another sale right there smile

Plus some more sales when I buy the display, the wireless keyboard and the wireless mousie...

Feb 01, 05 - 11:25 pm Comment from: mike k.

Since no one else has raised the issue in this thread i will ask:

aren't any of you worried about how the Mac mini could become a dangerous airborne projectile in the case of an earthquake?

yet another example of how Apple just doesn't get it when it comes to computers.

/Enderle

Feb 02, 05 - 12:19 am Comment from: Bill

Mike - Notice the low profile and stable footprint of the mini. Plus, Apple removed all of the potential for exploding glass. This may be the most natural disaster friendly computer, EVER!

We can all breath a big sigh of relief.

Feb 02, 05 - 07:51 am Comment from: Random Coolzip

I really hope Apple breaks out the sales figures for the Mini in the next quarterly conference call, rather than lumping them in with the iMac or something...

I suspect they will; the Mini was likely seen as something of a gamble initially, and Steve will want to be able to say "I told you so..."

Feb 02, 05 - 10:36 am Comment from: Steve Jobs

Quaptro:

You are wrong in your guess. The answer is:

ALL OF THEM!

When will you bozos remember the saying:

It's better to keep your mouth shut and have people wonder if you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Reader feedback page 1 of 1 pages:

Always -- Free ground shipping with orders over $50 at the Apple Store.

Add Your Feedback:

Register or Login

Name:

Email: (optional)

Emoticons | Allowed HTML Tags

Remember my personal information   Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the "MDN Magic Word" you see in the image below: