New Mac Offerings

Apple had another big brouhau today and announced two new children, the Intel Mac Mini and the iPod Hi-Fi. The Hi-Fi is clearly for the cult of iPod types, of which I'm not really a devotee. The mini was something I was hoping to see.

However, I'm a little disappointed in it. Sure, it's great to have a Mini that is 4x faster (theoretically) than what is on my desk. Yet, it's $100 more. Granted, I dunno how many people bought the Mini for it's base price in the first place - so it's still within a pretty affordable range. Still, it didn't add on any new multimedia features for that price, except for Front Row and some other software selections. Still can't hook it up to a sweet 30" Cinema. Still no built in PVR features.

It seems Apple doesn't want the Mini to come to much in conflict with the Media PC's out there, despite the obvious cross-over with the digital life angle. The Mini almost feels like a hobbyist machine at this stage, something for computer geeks with either an extra monitor hanging around or people with a hankering to shove a CPU into an old guitar case or something. It's so close to being that "cheap computer to hook up to your TV, which is quiet and unobtrusive" ... but so far away.



tagged: mac, apple