“The Mac Mini is an appliance PC, it has limited upgrade options and it has an aggressive advertised price… at the entry price of $499 you don’t get a keyboard and mouse, you get about half of the memory you need for Tiger the next OS from Apple (and it is a single slot so you will not be able to just add memory but need to replace it), you get a very small 40GB drive (you can get a 40GB drive in an iPod), and a relatively low powered (for Apple) graphics subsystem,” Rob Enderle writes for TechnologyPundits.com.
“I actually think, were I to buy a Mac (which is incredibly unlikely), it is the one I would choose. It will be more than adequate for pictures, simple movies, and music and it is more flexible then the iMac. Still, I’m not a fan of crippled products and Apple has a reputation for providing an excellent out of box experience which will be lost with this product. I think this truly should have been a headless iMac and the fact they crippled it to prevent iMac cannibalization reminds me way too much of the [failed PC Junior] for me to be comfortable,” Enderle writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Whew, thankfully, there’s no “Kiss of Death III” for the Mac mini from Mr. Enderle. Strike three averted; that was close. The Apple Mac mini is now destined to become a raging success!
(To really understand the Mac mini, think of it as an amazing $499 software bundle and OS package that is literally unrivaled in personal computing history that includes a free Apple Macintosh computer.)
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Kiss of death II: Thurrott wants an Apple Mac mini, calls it ‘drool-worthy’ – January 12, 2005
Kiss of death: Dvorak likes Apple’s new Mac mini – January 12, 2005
I think it will be surprisingly snappy for being “crippled.”
consider the source… you truly expected nothing different did you?
LOL MDN!
He’ll come around – as soon as he sees no one wants to listen to his drivel anymore. But I don’t care as to when. Just stop reporting on him, please. You give Enderle attention he doesn’t deserve. He’s just farting in the wind.
another great MDN take.
I agree the memory slot sucks but the rest of it seems A-OK to me. Hell I did an hour long iMovie on an 800 MHz eMac two years ago and it did not seemed crippled. Gimme 1.25 MHz any day.
Good Grief! The guy finds 7 flaws with the product in the first paragraph and then opens the second paragraph stating this model is his preference. Somebody find this tool a 32 step program to get him out of this mental straight jacket.
To be serious, he does marginally have a point. The Mac mini does have an extremely small hard drive (40 GB holds relatively little; I have that amount in music alone). 256 MB of RAM is nowhere near enough to run their next generation of operating systems, as well as most of their future programs. Limited upgradeability also risks this computer becoming obsolete quickly, and that’s pretty apparent considering it’s running on a G4 (and we are all on our knees waiting for Powerbook G5’s). And there are a few other minor flaws…
On the other hand, this computer is intended solely as a Trojan Horse type thing. SJ is looking for people to try it out for their simple practical applications: listening to music, surfing the web, doing their e-mail, and writing up reports. If you want a serious computer for multimedia, large quantities of music, productivity, etc., then this is certainly not the way to go and you should get an iMac or a PowerMac.
But either way this computer offers relatively little for what a Macintosh typically can do. Considering a 12″ Powerbook runs faster than the entry model, I’m not sure if this product is truly the Mac that everyone wish it could be.
P.S. Eeek! Why is my MDN Magic Word “window”?
MDN is behaves like an Enderle Puppet.
Enderle pulls the strings and MDN dances.
When Enderle trashes the Mac, MDN gets all riled up, and when he comes out with something positivve, MDN dances with jubilee.
Stop paying attention to this guy. He’s got you on a string.
The Mac mini has a FireWire port. Add a FireWire external hard drive of however many GBs you need – very large drives of this sort are available for low prices. Case closed (pun intended).
Just because he is an idiot does not make the complaint about RAM any less valid. Apple could easily have done one of 2 things:
1) Provide 2 RAM slots instead of just 1
2) Put the 256 MB factory RAM on the motherboard, leaving the 1 RAM slot open. That’s what they did with the iBook.
Some people like to point out that some resellers will provide a free upgrade to 512 MB. For other computers like iMacs or Power Macs, they only have to add an extra 256MB to the existing RAM. But for the mini Mac, they will have to give away a 512 MB stick because there is only 1 slot. I think fewer resellers would be willing to give away a 512 compared to a 256. Even if you can find one who will give away a free 512 MB of RAM, what if you want a SuperDrive or Bluetooth? As far as I know, these options are available only if you buy directly from Apple.
I hadn’t quite realized it before, but looking at this article and some of the others on this site, it becomes clear: Enderle is in fact not all that literate, in terms of being able to write in English without comma splicing, misspelling basic words like “than,” and the like.
This piece reads a lot like something written by a high-school student–not just for the poorly-informed warmth of its opinions (what are his qualifications, exactly, for second-guessing the strategy of what is currently the highest-margin computer company? Self-publishing an amateurish web site?), but for the sloppiness of its prose.
It seems likely that, like Paul Therrott, he got to be so often quoted simply by spewing out prose reliably, with a clear, punchy, anti-Apple angle, in large quantities, which is to say, pretty much just by being there–not by being right about anything in particular over time. But at least Therrott’s prose is better.
wait wait wait, doesn’t like crippled products!!?!?! What the hell do you call a WINDOWS PC??? jeez, how much more crippled can you get. Take decent hardware from a pc maker, and put WINDOWS on it, ew.
Well this product is already a raging success and it’s not even out yet.
In 3 months we’ll be hearing about how this is the best-selling Mac..
and the AAPL story will go into overdrive…
This guy is way to cozy with MS to even be seen with a Mac mini at his place. Surely guys like Rob Glaser come over all the time drinks.
“Apple does have a very strong marketing program which mitigates some of this, but in the end, buyers often aren�t as ignorant as we often think and betting on that ignorance has never been, in my experience, a long term path to success. “
He gets sarcastic/ironic near the end there…
Or maybe I’m just giving him to much credit.
Touch�.
Okay, what is with people and the “upgradeable” thing. Who the heck upgrades computers these days among the consumer market for which the Mac mini is targeted? I mean, my parents have had a Dell with Windows 98 for like 5 years now. Do you think they have ever upgraded it? Nope. Do they want to now? Nope. This Mac mini is perfect to get them off of Winblows 98 and onto a real OS with real security. They can’t afford any of the other Macs and quite frankly don’t need what they offer. They have a good monitor, keyboard, mouse and great stereo speakers. All they need to do is kick out that Dell tank and add an elegant Mac mini. It will save them space and a ton of money and will do more for them than they will probably ever need. This product is perfect **for the intended target market**.
these stupid lamer bill gates loving fools… GET A CLUE
Rob sounds… what is the word? Oh, yeah:
beleagured!
If Dell made a bargain basement PC with only 1 RAM slot, I doubt that Mac users would be as forgiving as they are with the mini Mac’s 1 slot. If cheap bargain PCs included the Radeon 9200 with 32 MB dedicated memory and Apple only included “shared graphics”, would Mac users be defending it with the same “average consumers don’t need anything else” defense?
MS Blaster, give it a rest … the fact that there is only 1 RAM slot is much less of a problem than having “shared graphics” … fortunately Apple includes real video cards … a Radeon 9200 with 32MB memory is nothing to sneeze at. I’m pretty happy with my 4 year old Pismo running on an 8MB video card … of course I have 512MB RAM … but it
is pretty cheap to buy RAM these days … I remember paying hundreds for a mere 8MB not that long ago (well about a decade … no time at all on geological timescale … I managed to survive the impacting comet thing!) …
What Apple should do is supply the Mac Mini with 0 (zero) MB of RAM and allow the user to source the RAM elsewhere …
I think the machine will be a success regardless … and maybe Apple may see fit to include more RAM by default (or a lower price) at a later stage … early adopters will have to bite the RAM so to speak unless they can get some sort of deal for bulk orders … e.g. replacing an old computer lab of PC’s (or even Macs!) with these nifty space saving beauties!
I do wish the mini was available with no memory chip at all. Buying a 1 GB chip from Apple is extortion–more than $400!!!!!!!#@$@#~~~~~!!!! On the other hand, if you order the base model then you end up tossing out a 256 MB chip. So I would bet most people would just pay the extra $75 and live with 512MB.
I know I’ve picked up the phone a couple of times today thinking of changing my order to just 256…but tossing out 256MB just bothers me!
I knew the PCjr and the Mac Mini is not PCjr. It was a joke on all levels including the marketing.
Uh oh. Brought to you by the magic word church.
Hey, four of my PC friends are now actively looking into the “crippled” mac over there mangaled PC’s?! Hey, they think its great and now want to try the Mac line of computers because they find it tooooooo damn hard to do what I tell them I can do on a 800mhz iMac with ther 1.6 to 3 ghz PCs………….but it nice to know we still have educated nimrods welling to expose themselves for others to see!
I guest if he “purchased” a mac then he would have to admit how wrong he has been and its hard to eat crow!
Why does Enderle fail to mention that the $500 Dell also comes with a “small” 40gig HD & 256 MB of RAM, although I doubt it’s as quiet. Not to mention no DVD drive, no FireWire, no modem, no iLife, and no OSX!
It also doesn’t come with a floppy drive. OK, Dell did something right!
Enderle sounds like an unhappy person. My main disappointment with the Mac mini is that Apple’s cheapest monitor (20″) is $999.00. Why Apple didn’t include a smaller/cheaper monitor option for those who want to pair the mini with a gorgeous Apple display is beyond me. But I don’t think Apple is catering to Mac enthusiasts as much as it’s catering to PC users who are willing to chuck their tower and move their monitors, keyboard and mouse to the Mac mini. That much is brilliance. If I didn’t have an iMac already, I would want the Mac mini but would never pair it with a butt-ugly mismatcher monitor, etc. I wish Apple would have a $15 LCD display for $299.00 or something like that. Oh well, I got most of what I wanted from Macworld so I’ll focus on the positive. Apple is kicking butt!!!