Chicago Sun-Times: ‘Apple’s Mac Mini is a device of the most cunningly crafted evil’

“The Mac Mini is the first desktop computer that I’ve ever lost inside my sofa. I didn’t have time to set it up on the day it arrived, and a week later I found myself nervously retracing my steps. (‘OK. I know I was eager to look at it, so I took it out of the box. Then I took it upstairs with the rest of the mail, which I read while watching TV sitting on the … no, it couldn’t be there, could it?’),” Andy Ihnatko writes for The Chicago Sun-Times.

“Indeed it was, safely tucked between the cushion and the armrest. The Mini is without a doubt the smallest full-featured desktop I’ve ever seen. It disappears on your desk. If its footprint were any smaller, you’d have to fold your DVDs before inserting them,” Ihnatko writes.

“The Mac Mini is a device of the most cunningly crafted evil. This isn’t a computer: it’s Apple’s stealth bomb, designed to infiltrate homes and offices hitherto untouched by the presence of a Mac. At $499, I suspect that Apple has finally found the ‘Sure, what the hell?’ mark that will finally win over a great many PC users, ironically enough by encouraging them to pull a screen and a keyboard out of an old one,” Ihnatko writes. “It’s a maneuver worthy of a Romulan. Mac Minis will be the first Apples in a hitherto all-PC corporate network. They’ll make up the first Mac lab in a school system, and it’s the computer that moms and dads will buy for the family room. And the funny thing about Macs is that they win converts. They’re demonstrably easier to set up, use and maintain.”

“Viruses and spyware are nonexistent. And when Apple releases its new OS around the middle of the year, the Mac’s technological lead over Windows, already huge, will instantly double. To expand its market share, Apple could have done two things: introduce an ultra-cheap Mac, or release something into the water supply,” Ihnatko writes. “It’s hard to conclude that Apple settled for a second-best solution.”

Full article, another excellent one by Ihnatko, here.