iPod Shuffle, Mac Mini, iLife '05, iWork

A number of announcements from the Mac World keynote this afternoon. The iPod Shuffle is pack-of-gum sized, no screen, weighs less than an ounce. Ships today, $99 for the half gig, $149 for a gig. The Mac Mini is the headless iMac... 6x6x2.5 with all the expected plugs, starting at $499. Lot's of tiger bits, spotlight, virtual folders in Mail.app. iLife '05 will ship Jan 22. iPhoto gets folders and video support. iMovie supports HD. GarageBand gets 8 channel recording. iWork includes Keynote 2, and 'Pages' the new word processor and ships the same day as iLife.

Comments

Perfect Terminal

[hbuschme]

The Mac Mini will be a perfect X-Terminal to use with a Linux box in another room. You'll have a silent and small box on your desk and the fat and loud server is down in the basement. Great.

Never owned a Mac in my life but I'm getting one..

[WIAKywbfatw]

The Mac Mini looks like it's the thing for me. I've never owned a Mac in my life - I've used a few in my time and I've been to a few Mac Expos with Mac-owning friends - but I think that's about to change.

This is the Mac for all of us who said Macs were too expensive. For around £400 (yeah, Apple just like the rest of them loves screwing non-Americans when it comes to exchange rates) I'll have a nice little toy that'll give me some first-hand experience of MacOS 10.4 plus my girlfriend will have a easy-to-use machine that she can play with when I'm hogging my PC.

Hopefully, it'll work with the PS/2 keyboards and mice that I've got lying around, if not then I suppose that I'll be shelling out for USB ones but that's no great loss.

Mark my words: these babies are going to sell like hot cakes.

http://www.macmerc.com/

[slapout]

http://www.macmerc.com blogged the thing live. I hope they don't made me posting it here.

01:59 PM - The speech is wrapping up. Please stay tuned to MacMerc for coverage. I'll be moblogging photos from the Apple booth in a few minutes. And if you haven't already, please PayPal us a buck or two (button left column). Thanks!

01:54 PM - Shipping starting today. Accessories rolling out in the next four weeks.

01:54 PM - 2 models: 512MB for $99 and 1GB for $149.99.

01:53 PM - Autofill: button in iTunes to make a playlist sized for the iPod shuffle. You can also manually fill it. You can also use the iPod Shuffle as a USB flash drive (choose how much for songs how much for data).

01:50 PM - iPod Shuffle: really tiny (smaller than most packs of gum), no screen, weighs under 1 ounce. Cap on the bottom, USB 2. 12 hour rechargeable battery. PC/Mac. Looks about the size of a flash key drive.

01:46 PM - There is one more thing: iPod marketshare is 65% over double last year. But Apple is going after the remaining flash player market.

01:45 PM - Motorola: iTunes client on Motorola phones. Showing Motorola e398. Phones shipping this spring.

01:43 PM - iPods on cars: BMW, Mercedes, Nissan, Volvo, Scion.

01:40 PM - We have the iPod and the iPod mini (something else coming???). Holiday 2004 quarter iPod sales: 4.5 million vs. 730K a year ago. Cross 10 million iPods sold, 8 million in 2004.

01:39 PM - Moving onto iPod...

01:37 PM - iTMS sold 230 million songs so far. On pace for 1.25 billion.

01:36 PM - Mac mini is in stores January 22nd.

01:34 PM - The Mac mini fits in the palm of your hand. Hook it into your own keyboard and mouse, or Apple's. Comes with Panther and iLife 05. Price point:$499 $599.

01:34 PM - The Mac mini looks like a 3" tall CD drive. A short cube. All the connections, DVI and VGA.

01:33 PM - Introducing the Mac mini -- ThinkSecret was right!

01:32 PM - "Why doesn't Apple provide a stripped down lower cost Mac?"

01:32 PM - iWork available January 22 for $79

01:27 PM - Phil is out to do a demo of Pages. Start with a blank page or a template. Import photos in pages through iPhoto library (iLife is integrated). Designed by the Keynote team. Word processing with a sense of style.

01:21 PM - iWork announced, to replace AppleWorks. Built from the ground up for OS X. Includes major update to Keynote: 10 new themes, animated text, powerful animated builds, presenter display, interactive slideshows, self playing kiosk slideshows.
PagesOther part of iWork, advanced word processor. 40 Apple designed templates.

01:21 PM - iLife 2005 will be priced at $79. Goes on sale a week from this Friday. Free on all new Macs.

01:18 PM - Traffic update: about 100,000 pages an hour. Please donate if you have found this useful--the webhost enjoys being paid. (PayPal button sidebar left). Update: Thanks guys, keep em coming. We sprung for a dedicated server for our coverage.

01:15 PM - John Mayer is on stage showing the new GarageBand (he helped introduce the first version). Notes, "I didn't win any grammy's for playing the piano."

01:14 PM - GarageBand '05: Up to 8 track recording. Real time music notation (taken from Logic), pitch and timing fixing, recorded tracks now can act as loops, create loops, vocal transformer. Also a new Jampack (#4)

01:09 PM - iDVD '05: 15 new animated themes, OneStep DVD creation (video to DVD in one step), All DVD formats(+R/W).

01:05 PM - Spotted on stage, small metallic box with Apple logo...

01:04 PM - The president of Sony is on stage talking about HD. Steve is a fan of Sony's prosumer HD video camera (just $3499).

12:58 PM - iMovie 05: Faster, non destructive trimming, more transitions and effects, mpeg 4 video, Magic iMovie (auto movie). Biggest feature: HD.

12:45 PM - iPhoto '05: Better searching, More formats, far more powerful editing, more book designs, better organization (folders, c

Small Form Factor PCs?

[Mad_Rain]

I was thinking about getting a little Small-form factor box to run something like MythTv, something along the lines of a AMD64. But checking out the Mac mini just makes me wonder about how I could get that going. Anyone think that this box could be a useful solution to that kind of project? I think the fairly standardized hardware would make that pretty simple to do, but being a non-mac person, I have no idea.

And damn - just in time to consider when upgrading my parents old machines. ;)

Re:Small Form Factor PCs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing to note. A DIN slot (car radio standard size) is 2"x7", the mini mac is 2"x6.5".

If it had a radio faceplate and a laptop drive, this would be the best car stereo ever.

Proof of the iPod dominance in the marketplace

[amichalo]

An interesting note from MacWorld is something Jobs said about the iPod Mini.

Before the iPod Mini was released, the flash player market was double what it is today. That means the iPod Mini did NOT canibalize hard drive player/iPod sales but instead got Flash player buyers to spend more money on buying a Mini and claimed the upper end of the Flash Player market.

This means the iPod Shuffle is being sent in to sweep up the low end market where people are buying $49 128 MB players.

Re:goodbye bank account

[Infamous Coward]

Hidden costs indeed. If you upgrade the Mac mini to 1GB of memory through the Apple store, the additional cost is $425! So that $500 marvel is now $925. And for OS X to really sing, mucho memory is required.

Sadly, the math is starting to break down...

Re:Mac Mini

[Trurl's Machine]

What I can't quite make out is if the MiniMac is fanless?

I'm typing this right from the showroom in mini-MWSF in Paris. Silent work is also quite important for me. What can I say is that Mini Mac is totally silent when it works (I literally did press my ear to it). Maybe it has a fan that kicks in once in a while, like in iBooks, but when it just runs - it runs with no fan.

Mac Mini Mod

[lsmeg]

OK, so how long till someone mods the Mac Mini to fit in one or two PC drive bays? :) Maybe route the usb through to the PC's usb headers, a custom bracket in the back of the PC for DVI... Hmm, that could actually work...