The Mac mini
Some people - make that many - have hailed the Mac mini as the killer device. I kinda, sorta agree. It definitely has it’s audience. Just that I am not sitting with them for this show.
Two reasons: price and function.
Price? This is supposed to be the poor man’s Mac! I thought so too!! But good breeding and a fine engineering education have made a skeptic out of me. So I ran up some numbers at Apple Singapore’s store. If I were to buy one, it’s got to be the speedier model with the beefier hard disk. What good is iDVD if there’s no DVD burner to mate with? WiFi is must nah? I don’t have an old PC so let’s throw in the Wireless Keyboard and Mouse. So we have:
- 512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
- 80GB Ultra ATA drive
- SuperDrive (CD-RW/DVD-R)
- AirPort Extreme Card
- Wireless Keyboard and Mouse kit
- 56K v.92 Modem
- Mac OS X
- Accessory kit
Total (with tax) S$ 1,748.55
Whoa! And no display yet! How about this sweet looking box with higher end components then?
Function? The first thing that came to my mind and certainly a thousand other minds (c.f. unique ideas theorem) was that this cool box would be perfect as a home entertainment hub. Connect it to a TV with S-video and play me some DVDs. But that’s not happening. Why? No S/PDIF -> no digital audio -> can’t play the 5.1 Dolby sound track on DVDs. A home entertainment hub that can’t play DVDs?
While we are talking audio ports, has anyone complained yet about the lack of any line-in? The preloaded GarageBand without that audio source is pretty much useless, no?
So where were we? Yeah, it has got its audience. It’ll sell a ton. But not for me.