“At a riotous MacWorld keynote address earlier this week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs contradicted earlier promises and introduced two products he had previously said Apple would never produce: A sub-$500 Macintosh computer and a flash RAM-based iPod audio player dubbed iPod shuffle. And contrary to my pre-MacWorld analysis of the rumored low-end Mac, the Mac mini, as the computer is known, looks awesome. In fact, it’s so good, I expect Apple to sell millions of them this year. We can bicker about the missing features (no keyboard, mouse, or screen–stock components that come with a typical $500 PC, which is also more expandable), but it doesn’t matter. By hitting the $500 sweet spot, Apple now has a credible vehicle, finally, for increasing the Mac’s market share. And the display-less iPod shuffle? It’s a stroke of genius with an amazingly small form factor (think pack-of-gum small) that will also sell in the millions in 2005. I’ve berated Apple when it does the wrong thing, but with the Mac mini and iPod shuffle, Apple has proven that it can deliver when it needs to. Very, very impressive,” Paul Thurrott writes for Paul Thurrott’s WinInfo.
“Apple [also] revealed… that its profits for the quarter ending December 31, 2004, were up almost 500 percent to $295 million on sales of $3.49 billion. Apple credited the surging iPod for the improvement, and though iPod sales in the quarter fell short of the 5 million units analysts were expecting, the 4.6 million iPods the company did sell is still an impressive number. Even Macintosh sales were up, with Apple selling over 1 million Macs in a quarter for the first time in more than 4 years. Apple’s iTunes Music Store, which made only a small profit, has sold over 230 million songs to date, the company noted. Let’s recap: Apple’s kicking butt with the iPod, and it has a new iPod out that will likely sweep up the two-thirds of the portable digital audio market that Apple doesn’t already own. And though the Mac is now stuck with less than 2 percent of the PC market, the recent Mac sales resurgence occurred before Apple announced the Mac mini, which should dramatically improve matters. Apple–and the Mac, from what I can tell–are back,” Thurrott writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While it makes us extremely nervous, more than a touch lightheaded, and fairly nauseous, we pretty much agree wholeheartedly with Thurrott about the iPod shuffle and the Mac mini. Yikes! Please cut it out, Paul, you really are scaring us! 
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Kiss of death III averted: Analyst Enderle calls Apple’s Mac mini a ‘crippled product’ – January 13, 2005