Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

A significant moment for Apple

While I'll happy admit to being a relatively recent convert to using Macs, I'll deny being a swivelly-eyed zealot. Zealots can see no wrong with the chosen target of their zealotry, and I can list a good few things that I don't like about my Powerbook, not the least of which is the inability to use both the keyboard volume controls and Exposé without holding down Fn for at least one of them. And hey, I don't see the point of the iPod Photo either.

One thing which I do religiously, however, is watching out for new product releases from Apple. The main reason for this is to see what a company that's both fantastically imaginative and ferociously secret about its works in progress will pull out of the hat this time, and they're rarely disappointing. When Steve Jobs delivers one of the big keynote speeches at Macworld there's a pretty good chance that he'll announce something jaw-dropping, surprising, or just so plainly obvious that it's amazing nobody's thought of it before. And that's why I'll happily admit to having sought out a phone with a web browser attached upon arrival at Heathrow to find out what had been announced during the Macworld SF keynote. And my, what had been announced..

The iMac G5 is a design tour de force, and the PowerBooks are probably about the best notebook computers on the market, but I'm finding it hard not to conclude that the Mac mini is the most important computer Apple have produced since the original iMac back in 1998. There's much more to it than that, though. While the original iMac was a signal of Apple's intention to get serious about producing affordable machines which everyone could use, the Mini is a signal that Apple wants people who already own computers but are frustrated with them to chuck the system units away and recycle the keyboard, mouse and display into something more productive. Because of the potential growth in sales that breaking into this market would represent, it's probably not unreasonable to suggest that this is the most significant machine Apple has ever shipped.

This is long overdue, as the more recent versions of the iMac have been significantly more expensive than other home computers. While the dollar price has remained more or less constant since the $1300 iMac was introduced in 1998 (the 1.6GHz G5 costs $1299) the price of competing Wintel-based machines has dropped through the floor, making the iMac substantially more expensive compared to the competition. What was needed to fill the gap was a machine the price of a low-end mass market PC, and that's what Apple have delivered.

The reaction to the mini's announcement in the Mac community has been confused - admiring and muted at the same time, with lots of dismissive comments made about the relatively low-powered G4 processor and the fact that it costs an absolute packet to spec a mini with 1GB of RAM rather than the default 256MB. Claims are appearing that the "minimum usable configuration" costs anything from $1000 up, which is generally the result of maxing out all the specs and adding a keyboard and mouse. At the same time, people looking for a second (third, fourth..) Mac and UNIX nerds in general are eyeing it hungrily as a small home server machine or terminal.

It seems to me that a lot of people are missing the point. If you're the kind of person who thinks that a computer needs a gig of RAM to be usable, then guys, pay attention: YOU ARE NOT THE PRIMARY MARKET for the Mac mini. If you're a high-powered Mac user who wants a high-powered machine, go buy an iMac or a G5 Power Mac, as they're the machines which are aimed at your demographic. Complaining that it only has a 1.2GHz G4 is like complaining that a Smart car has a small engine. Maybe it does, but the Smart will still get you from A to B. It just won't do it quite as fast as a Golf.

If you're the average home user - there are a whole lot more of them than there are power users - and you're frustrated with your Windows box, then hi! You are the target market and this machine is for you, at least as far as Apple are concerned, and they're hoping that you'll buy one, and that when a friend mentions how much trouble they're having with their computer you'll suggest that they buy one of these inexpensive little boxes too. They aren't the fastest Macs out there, and if you do much more than read mail, browse the web and manage your music with iTunes you'll want more than the standard 256MB of memory, but they'll certainly do the trick if you just want to replace the Dell that you currently use for reading mail and browsing the web.

Hardcore computer users have a nasty habit of assuming that everyone's usage patterns are the same as theirs, and will often pretend that the "frustrated home user" category doesn't exist at all other than as phone calls from family members looking for tech support because they're so frustrated with their Dells. In reality, these are the silent majority of computer owners nowadays and the mini is aimed squarely at this majority who just want to do their stuff with the minimum of fuss and stress and phone calls to irritable relatives who "know about computers".

With this in mind, it seems to me that Steve's hardly going to need to deploy the reality distortion field much to convince an enormous number of people to buy the mini. In combination with the iPod shuffle, the Mac mini represents a newfound conviction in the mind of Steve Jobs that the time is right to make a serious assault on the mass market and I've got a nagging feeling that he's right.

Posted by mpk at January 15, 2005 7:23 PM | TrackBack