It's a Mac, Mac, World

So the great yearly moment for many Mac devotees, the Jobs Speech of MacWorld, has come and gone. I'm not a full member of the Cult of Mac, but I get their newsletter all the same. I use a Mac Mini almost exclusively at home, except to sneak into the occasional Guild Wars session, and it's one of my favorite computing purchases in about a decade.

I think the Intel move for Apple is a bold and intelligent one ... and I think that so far they are executing it brilliantly. However, that doesn't stop me from being dismayed that yesterday's announcements included nothing new in the $500 range of computers. No revamped Mini. No new low-end notebook. MacWorld is usually a splash, but this felt a little more like a ripple to me.

Also, I'd like to clear some things up. My rebuttal to TUAW's take on a Mac console was one my most hit pages ever and while it oddly generated no comments over on this side of the URL, there was more than a plenty forum comments about it. And as many discussions on the net goes, there were more than a few misconceptions.

Mainly, I never really suggested nor thought that Apple would release a game console, merely agreeing that they might position the Mini to be more suitable in the living room. I didn't think we'd get an iBox revealed yesterday. My logic was going down more of the path of the perils Apple faces by entering the living room without contemplating the fact that people game there now in more and more numbers. So everyone who kept "pointing out" that Apple would be crazy to try and release a new console against the 360 and PS3 was really, really, really not reading at all.

With the iMac, Apple is eclipsing the living room. The Mini could have a place in this strategy as well. And games would be a powerful component to that strategy.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer had a decent write-up on this, by the by.

As far as predictions go though, I'm not holding my breath. Especially after Apple released another iMac without better media inputs and controls. It's a monitor that I can watch all sorts of movies, play music and talk to an iPod. Why make it so hard to watch TV too?

But I'll just end with the simplest way I can summarize my stance on the whole.

It would totally rock to be able to download games off of iTunes.




tagged: mac, apple