“I’ve been a fan of the small computer since I first saw a little cubic box encasing a mini-iTX board. From there I’ve admired all the small boxes, as well as the numerous homebrew machines developed by combining mini-ATX or mini-iTX motherboards with various components and cases. While this trend has been going on for years, people still seem to prefer large tower cases. Now we see the Mac mini and the interest in small computers has been revitalized. It’s time to rethink the whole idea,” John C. Dvorak writes for PC Magazine.
“The Mac mini design is somewhat different than the typical little PC; it’s more along the lines of a laptop. In other words, Apple has taken the small-form idea seriously,” Dvorak writes. “I think Apple’s marketing machine should be able to invigorate the small-model business on the PC side of the market. We hope that the little devices will not overheat and bring bad PR to that segment. If all goes well, this means you can expect a Dell mini, an HP mini, and everything in between. We also hope they will give some thought to design.”
“If indeed the market for small PCs skyrockets, you then have to ask yourself, ‘Why the heck does Apple have to be the company that once again lights the fuse?’ How humiliating,” Dvorak writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What’s humiliating about the fact that Apple is the company that once again lights the fuse? Aren’t you used to it by now, John? Exactly how many decades of proof do you need? We expect Apple to lead. The only way it could be humiliating is if you hate Apple for some reason, work for a Wintel box assembler like Dell, or don’t like being proven wrong time after time after time. Perhaps you’re starting to realize that you’re on the losing team, John?
Dvorak goes on and on about what he thinks a small form factor PC should be, but he’s way off base as usual because he still seems to refuse to understand what a Mac is and what it can do. Dvorak seems to think iLife, Mac OS X, Safari, and the rest of the Apple’s applications are the same as the software available for Windows, it must all just be marketing hype – there are no differences. It’s as if he sees no value in Apple’s Mac OS X operating system and Apple’s software and the synergy they all have with the Mac hardware and the users. Everything for Dvorak seems to be seen from the Windows perspective, so it’s only natural that what he imagines a “PC mini” should be ends up being dull, uninspired, and pedantic.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
FrankenMac mini, it’s alive! Man rips apart Mac mini, turns it into PC – January 31, 2005
Where Apple leads, Wintel follows years later – January 31, 2005
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – December 20, 2003
*sigh*
what’s it gonna take with this guy?
He probably hasn’t touched a Mac in years…
Dvorak couldn’t pour water out of a glass if the instructions were on the bottom…
Pete: LOL. reminds me of the old joke about what does it say on the bottom of Coke bottles made in **** (fill in your favorite country)? ans: open other end.
“I think Apple’s marketing machine should be able to invigorate the small-model business on the PC side of the market. We hope that the little devices will not overheat and bring bad PR to that segment. If all goes well, this means you can expect a Dell mini, an HP mini, and everything in between”
This guy is an idiot.
The sad thing is MINI PC’s have been around for about 4 yrs now…The Mac FanBoys would never know though, They only bring their heads out of there butts once a day to look at the “Windows” news on MDN.
http://us.shuttle.com/
Just like all PC manufacturer, Devorak seems to think making an inexpensive PC means removing components and features and to make a small computer means more removing more components and features. Just like that PC guy who Mad a “PCmini” but had integrated video, shared RAM, and no CD, but had to have Analog I/O ports!? They dont understand what people need/use in their machines for. The Macmini is a wonder of engineering where you get a REAL usable computer, not a half assed box of commodety cheapo pieces of hardware and no software.
DVORAK IS A PUNK! I’M THE NEW RATIONAL VOICE OF THE MAC WEB AND ONE DAY ALL YOU IDIOTS WILL REALIZE THAT! THE MAC MINI IS AND WILL BE A FAILURE UNTIL, WELL, IT’LL JUST ALWAYS BE A FAILURE.
http://www.billpalmer.net/2005/01/am-i-only-sane-voice-left-on-mac-web.html
I AM THE ONLY SANE VOICE LEFT ON THE MAC WEB!! I TOLD ME SO!!
“NoMacForYou” brilliantly illustrates the point of the article: That while so-called mini PCs existed before the Mac mini (ever heard of the PowerMac Cube, too? – way more than “4 years” old), they were made with the wrong approach.
The “Shuttle” link that he supplies is textbook shit-box Wintel crap. Ugly, bulky, bloated, and lacking any form of emotional attraction at all.
Perfect. Thanks for showing us – through your ignorance – just how pathetic the Wintel crowd truly is.
magic word: gave …as in “Your flames gave us more laughs than you could ever imagine.”
How humiliating,” Dvorak writes.
No one has been humiliating you but yourself John. And you have been doing a pretty good job of it.
Please, Ugly, Bulky, Bloated and lacking any form of emotional attraction. Speak for yourself bitch. Ive sold tons of these. And people love em, They adore them.
And thanks for showing me once again how closed minded, ignorant and pathetic “some” of the mac crowd can be.
Tell me. Do you like it when Steves sandpaper covered penis plugs you in the ass? Or is that just a normal computing experience?
the cube was out before the shuttle sff’s. i’m sure any good mac fanboy can tell you that.
the shuttle is also 8 times larger than the mini.
Man, that shuttle is FUGLY. It looks like a little filing cabinet.
Yeah, Your right, the cube was out first, but as I recall, it died the next day.
Magic word: any …as in “Any thing that the NoMacForYou tool says at this point just makes us all laugh!”
…Ive sold tons of these. And people love em, They adore them.
Does it get any funnier than that?? Classic!!
Keep digging moron.
This story and it’s comments are so true. John D. just doesn’t get it. And Apple is the one leading the inovation not the PC folks at Dell or any of the others for that matter. Look at Microsoft for instance. Bill Gates said that Longhorn would be a totally new inovative operating system a year ago. Today he is saying that there will be some good features but more of an update. Nuf said.
Wow, dude, thanks for pointing me in the direction of those Shuttle thingies. I was looking for a new toaster oven.
Loser.
You always have to consider the possibility that at any given time you might be on the wrong side of an argument’s fence in an era of progress and change.
Oh the irony.
Well if everybody is going to be making their own version of the Mini, it’s certainly going to be humiliating for Dell after that ill-considered outburst last week about iPods being a fad and Minis inconsequential.
Dvorak is a perfect example of the situation where there’s none so blind as will not see.
All the time he insists on wearing his Windows blinkers, he’ll be continuing to miss what everybody else is starting to discover … Different can in reality be better.
The bit I thought was telling was his comment about bringing bad PR to the segment by overheating.
Seeing as the Mini is only using a relatively small amount of energy, it’s not generating much heat and the tiny fan that runs almost silently will run faster if it finds it needs to.
I’m not so sure about how the PC copycats will fare when they try to package things up into similarly small cases. It should be possible as their laptops are compact, but I’ll be interested to see if they can make it stunning, small, capable and silent all at the same time. I bet that many will struggle to meet even two out of four of those targets.
Hey Check this out. They say a picture is worth a thousand words:
http://sys.us.shuttle.com/Why_Compare.aspx
I will say tho that it took big brass ones (or maybe just last gasp desperation or stupidity) to put that up. When are these guys gonna wake up to the fact the mini is another paradigm shift from Apple and that game has again changed?
Funny, that shuttle link, I still see the same things, no special engineering, absolutely nothing of interest. A black square instead of a black rectangle. Lots of INTEGRATED GRAFX! plus, no prices. Just another , more space saving way to get viruses.
I also LOVE their naming structure, G4,G5, lots of cube shapes and they talk all about the “digital lifestyle” while not including the proper software! Wow, I wonder who they are trying to be?
BSOD: You didnt answer the question…
Brought to you bby “Feeling” as in – BSOD has lost the feeling between his ass cheeks.
THIS JUST IN!! Shuttle Computer Inc. announces that visits to its corporate web site, http://us.shuttle.com/, increased exponentially and in one day received more visits than for the entire month of January, 2005.
Speaking from Shuttle’s corporate headquarters in Taiwan, company president Nomac Foryou stated, “Clearly, this astounding increase in awareness of the Shuttle brand points to a shift in the marketplace toward file cabinet-style PCs… or it could be because I posted a flame to an MDN thread. One or the other.”
This “DvORaK” is an a$$hole Apple sellout. The only one who humiliated him was himself by writing all those STUPID article bashing Mac since he deflected to the dark side. He deserves the humiliation Big Time!!!
Dvorak is irrelevant.
A HP mini will never happen; they’ll be lucky to even be in the PC business in a year. And a Dell mini will never happen; a mini takes original engineering talent and simple cool class, things Dell doesn’t have.
Humiliating is when Apple strongly competes in the lower-end market with a standout product. And does it while supporting their in-house engineering AND pulling a respectable profit.
Any engineer will tell you that the limiting factor (in order) of the Apple Mac mini design is the CD/DVD drive, followed by the hard disk, and then the processor.
Unfortunately, the limiting factor (in order) in PCs is the power supply, the processor, the EXPANSION BAYS, and then the disk drive(s). You’ve really got to appreciate the forethought by Apple to remove floppy disks several years ago. I now have several dozen disks at my house that I use for coasters.
Personally, I haven’t needed to “expand” a single system I’ve owned (PC or Mac), albeit the graphics card (PC), the modem (PC), the firewire (PC), and a couple of hard disks (the PC again)…. Well, I guess I have, but not recently with my Mac. Who needs expansion bays if you never plan on expanding? In any case, USB and FireWire are there to save the day.