Obvious Diversion

The Mac Mini is clearly the biggest thing Apple released at MacWorld today, but not just because it has broken the price barrier in owning a mac.

There’s something more insidious here. Yes, it’s greatest impact will be on enabling switchers to take the leap from one platform to another at a near consumer electronics price point. I can think of multiple people who have been interested in an iMac, but don’t make the purchase because they already have a monitor from their last computer and can’t justify letting it go. I’m very happy that Apple has finally answered this scenario.

Creative Uses

The more interesting thing to me about the Mac Mini is it’s secondary market here made up by more adventurous consumers. The Mac Mini is a clean slate of power in a consumer-friendly form-factor unencumbered by even a mouse and keyboard. Buy it and make it what you want it to be. What will you use it for? Scanning the reactions via RSS, the list shows quite a wide variety of uses from the obvious first Mac purchase to be pared with an old PC monitor, a Tivo replacement, a music server to replace a car stereo, a home media server, a second computer for the home. I’m thinking of one as a test Apache/MySQL/PHP staging server for my web-based applications. This product opens up the mac world to the type of use exploration that been exercised with cheap, near-disposable PCs for years and years.

A Soho Pro Version (Please?)

There’s a part of me that wishes they would offer, for $100 more, a professional version of the Mac Mini that came with a copy of Mac OS X Server. This could make for an inexpensive answer to a mail and web server for small offices and independent professionals. I know it doesn’t have a lot of hardware power, but you don’t really need the power of an xServe for these situations. They could go as far as packaging some of their clustering technology with it so that if your small office grows past 20 employees, you can go grab another Mac Mini, add it to the network, and they combine their efforts. Plug and play power. There’s a definite market there.

Where’s the 17 inch Display?

One Additional Thought: where’s the 17 inch LCD display that one would purchase with this new Mac? I doubt those consumers looking to buy a $500 Mac are going to pair it with a $1000 display.