Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the that-sure-didn't-take-long dept.
pentae writes "BYODKM are featuring some of the first in line to serve up Mac mini accessories. Exactly how much market share will this buy Apple once the affordable, stylish Mac steals the Windows users who love their iPod?"
Stealing Windows customers?
by
agraupe
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'd be worried about this, if I were Microsoft. But I would also be worried about this if I was distributing a desktop linux distro. Now that Apple hardware is (relatively) cheap, and damn sexy, I might have to buy one. I'd probably dual boot OS X and Gentoo, but there are others who will probably go for the nice look of OS X, along with BSD under the hood, and leave Linux/*BSD for ever. The only thing that is working in Linux/*BSD's favor is multiplatform compatibility (i.e. you can run the same OS on x86 and PPC), and selection of application. Fink (is that it?) is working on taking one of those away. All this being said, is it necessarily a bad thing if Linux is relegated to the server room with a small percentage of workstations, with Apple picking up the rest?
Re:Stealing Windows customers?
by
doon
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I've gotten rid of windows a long time about, and the Mac Mini, finally allowed me to get my wife off windows also. It wasn't for lack of trying, it was just that the pricetag made it ok (My wife is an accountant by day, artist by night). So the mac appealed to her artistic side, and didn't upset the accountant side. So with her pc scheduled to become another small server, we are down to 1 box @ home that has Windows on it, and that box dual boots FreeBSD 5.3 (where it spends most of its time).
As for it stealing Linux/*BSD users away. I can see this sort of happening. My primary workstation now is an 17" Al powerbook, It replaced a Dell Inspiron running slackware. I still use various forms of *nix everyday. My firewall @ home and my other laptop here are OpenBSD. My file server and workstation run FreeBSD (5.3 on workstation, 4-Stable on the file server). At work all 36 Servers run FreeBSD 4-Stable. So while it might not be on our desktops everyday, we still use it.
-- To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
Pretty weak accessories
by
agent+dero
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
These accessories I'd think can be useful, but not *that* useful. I mean, what is the point of the 'Mac Mini skirt?'
I'm really trying not to troll here, but I think worthwhile accessories would be to the tune of, a dock type thing, that has a built-in USB pro-audio card that looks kind of like this "Mini Skirt."
The Mini is already stylish enough, and I think the only merit of the two latter products is stylistic, if they expanded the usefullness and capacities of the Mini, then i'm all for it;).
-- Error 407 - No creative sig found
That "Grandstand" looks like a Mini oven
by
Dammital
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
They've got a monitor pedestal that closely encloses the Mini. As densely packed as that Mac is, there is probably a reason that the case is made of aluminium. I'd be careful about insulating that box.
Exactly how much? That's a tall order. A percentage point...maybe two. Not much more than that though, I wouldn't imagine. It looks like a nice system, but I wouldn't imagine that the iPod set Apple seems to be targeting would see the value in having multiple computers. I don't mean geeks with iPods, now, I mean the people who bought an iPod as much because it was the thing to have and be seen with as it was a nice piece of useful technology. It's harder to be seen on the Metro or walking around campus with a Mac Mini. Maybe if they made distinctive earphones for it.
As cynical as I'm being here, I would like to see the mini both on my desk, and putting a dent in the market!
-- "These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Re:Computers, or fashion items?
by
drinkypoo
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
As long as you put 512MB of ram in it, the mini should be capable of running anything your mom wants to run for the next few years. If you want to do video editing or something, well, the G4 can do it, but you'd be better off with a G5. Frankly no 1+ GHz computer is really a toy, ANY of them can run the office apps and such. To me, 1GHz was the line that had to be crossed to get decent performance. Sure, most of us said this kind of stuff when the 386DX came out - it's a 32 bit processor! blah blah blah! And of course, not all 1 gig chips are created equal, compare via to an athlon xp sometime, but I've never met a 1 gig chip that couldn't do everything the average user needed to do with a modern operating system slowing it down:)
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:I honestly think...
by
FLAGGR
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Except that'll never happen.
Imagine how much money they would make selling their OS for ~200$. Now imagine what they make now, even with their tiny market share, selling 3000$ minimum machines:) Apple would lose so much money moving the PC platform, its not even funny.
I picked up a Mac Mini Last Weekend but....
by
ttlgDaveh
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I wandered down to the Apple Store in London last Sunday and came back with the base Mac Mini and am extremely impressed with it, this being my first foray into the Mac world.
Anyway, having just looked at the accessories (Coral link as the original is/.ed) I wouldn't pick up any of them, they look a bit crap and the Grandstand appears to be the only one with any use and then only if you have very limited desk space.
From the story title I was hoping for something a bit morethan bent plastic/metal.
Overpriced Keyboard
by
midifarm
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The overpriced Apple keyboard is a whopping $29! I know that may seem ourageous to those that buy $9.99 Best Buy specials, but I prefer a keyboard that doesn't feel like crap.
Peace
Re:Good idea
by
theblueprint
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Well, I bought myself an iPod for Christmas, and I've gottnen used to it "just working". I wonder how much of a better computing experience I can get with a mac, and have tried our grapic design dept's G5 to surf/. while they're at lunch...I think the real draw is knowing that all of your apps can work as well as iTunes.
I've looked at getting a mini, but I think that for the money, I might be able to get something like a G3 tower on eBay for around $300. I'm more interested in a tower-style system since there'd be more room for larger drives. I've got too much music (200+GB) to be accomodated in a mini, and this would be an even lower-cost solution. The high quality of my iPod makes me comfortable purchasing a used mac.
And no, an iPod on window isn't as easy to use as a mac. I've had i/o errors trying to connect my iPod, and few of my friends pcs have firewire ports, and if they do, they're the four pin connectors. I'm guessing that a mac would be much more accomodating to my ipod.
-- "from the bricks to the booth...I predict the future like Cleo the psychic..."
What the macmini needs is an external HD
by
Ralph+Spoilsport
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
That looks just like it, only without the CD slit.
This way, one could stack the MacMini on top of the drive(s), or vice versa, in a neat little pile.
The mac mini isn't big enough to hold my MP3 collection (right now, teetering around 105 gigs) and certianly won't be big enough to deal with the video I want to run through it. So I need 7200rpm ATA drives in a MacMini box.
Personally, I would cheerfully build my own using some hideous noisy case - I'm not that picky. But Mrs Spoilsport is VERY picky about that kind of thing - heck: she thinks having visible stereo wires to te speakers is like having one's underwear showing or having toilet paper stuck to one's shoe.
She tried to get me to go to wireless speakers, and I said "You Buy 'em". We still don't have wireless speakers, thank Bog.
But, i we could get a MacMini with matching drive(s), it'll make the transition to the full on digital system a simpler effort, as it would please the aesthetes in the home (And to think - I'm the one who makes a living as an artist!)
RS
-- Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Re:Strongly Disagree
by
Kplusplus
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Microsoft couldn't do this because almost all Linux distros are GPL. And the GPL explicitly forbids mixing free and proprietary because of it's viral nautre. That is one of the reasons that Linux itself doesn't underly OS X.
You want to point out that OS X isn't free, but the actual operating system underneath, Darwin, is free and open for all to play with. If someone else wants to build thier own GUI and drawing system on top then they are free to do so.
You believe that OS X harms OSS because Apple claims that it is the best of both worlds. The fact of the matter is that OS X IS the best of both worlds, I have free and open source to everything underneath my toolset and a platform that proprietary software doesn't run from. I can look at the source to CoreFoundation that is toll-free bridged with all the Cocoa foundation objects. I can look at the filesystem code, or networking code, and it's all free. I can use Gimp or Photoshop, I can use vi or Dreamweaver, I have the CHOICE to use either. Isn't the entire point of OSS that warm feeling you get when you have choices? I don't have to use anything and can compare them directly next to each other.
If Gnome or KDE was closed sourced would you be making such a gripe? All OS X is doing is it packages a completely free and open OS with a beautiful DE on top of it, and you never see the ugly scrolling lines. Gnome + GRUB does the same thing. You get a somewhat pretty startup, you get dumped at a login screen if you have that setup and you get a pretty desktop never needing to open a terminal to get anything done.
OSS Developers that get new macs are a good thing because like an earlier poster said, they can finally aim their efforts at making products that are better than OS X rather than as good as windows.
-- -"I'm one of those Mac people that will break a bottle on the bar and hold it to your throat for bad-mouthing my system"
Re:Good idea
by
Durandal64
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
It's not about hip; it's about statistics. Apple's research showed that between 6% and 10% of iPod owners who were not already Mac owners would consider a Mac as their next computer as a result of their iPod experience. Another sizable portion said that they'd love to own a Mac, but that the price was prohibitive. That's why Apple made the Mac mini.
4 million iPods were sold last quarter, and 90% of them to Windows users. So that's 3.6 million Windows users with iPods. If 10% of them switch to Macs as a result of their iPod experience, that's another 360,000 Mac users, or an over 33% increase in unit sales. (Apple sold just over a million Macs last quarter.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be worried about this, if I were Microsoft. But I would also be worried about this if I was distributing a desktop linux distro. Now that Apple hardware is (relatively) cheap, and damn sexy, I might have to buy one. I'd probably dual boot OS X and Gentoo, but there are others who will probably go for the nice look of OS X, along with BSD under the hood, and leave Linux/*BSD for ever. The only thing that is working in Linux/*BSD's favor is multiplatform compatibility (i.e. you can run the same OS on x86 and PPC), and selection of application. Fink (is that it?) is working on taking one of those away. All this being said, is it necessarily a bad thing if Linux is relegated to the server room with a small percentage of workstations, with Apple picking up the rest?
These accessories I'd think can be useful, but not *that* useful. I mean, what is the point of the 'Mac Mini skirt?'
;).
I'm really trying not to troll here, but I think worthwhile accessories would be to the tune of, a dock type thing, that has a built-in USB pro-audio card that looks kind of like this "Mini Skirt."
The Mini is already stylish enough, and I think the only merit of the two latter products is stylistic, if they expanded the usefullness and capacities of the Mini, then i'm all for it
Error 407 - No creative sig found
They've got a monitor pedestal that closely encloses the Mini. As densely packed as that Mac is, there is probably a reason that the case is made of aluminium. I'd be careful about insulating that box.
Exactly how much? That's a tall order. A percentage point...maybe two. Not much more than that though, I wouldn't imagine. It looks like a nice system, but I wouldn't imagine that the iPod set Apple seems to be targeting would see the value in having multiple computers. I don't mean geeks with iPods, now, I mean the people who bought an iPod as much because it was the thing to have and be seen with as it was a nice piece of useful technology. It's harder to be seen on the Metro or walking around campus with a Mac Mini. Maybe if they made distinctive earphones for it.
As cynical as I'm being here, I would like to see the mini both on my desk, and putting a dent in the market!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
As long as you put 512MB of ram in it, the mini should be capable of running anything your mom wants to run for the next few years. If you want to do video editing or something, well, the G4 can do it, but you'd be better off with a G5. Frankly no 1+ GHz computer is really a toy, ANY of them can run the office apps and such. To me, 1GHz was the line that had to be crossed to get decent performance. Sure, most of us said this kind of stuff when the 386DX came out - it's a 32 bit processor! blah blah blah! And of course, not all 1 gig chips are created equal, compare via to an athlon xp sometime, but I've never met a 1 gig chip that couldn't do everything the average user needed to do with a modern operating system slowing it down :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Except that'll never happen.
:) Apple would lose so much money moving the PC platform, its not even funny.
Imagine how much money they would make selling their OS for ~200$. Now imagine what they make now, even with their tiny market share, selling 3000$ minimum machines
I wandered down to the Apple Store in London last Sunday and came back with the base Mac Mini and am extremely impressed with it, this being my first foray into the Mac world.
Anyway, having just looked at the accessories (Coral link as the original is /.ed) I wouldn't pick up any of them, they look a bit crap and the Grandstand appears to be the only one with any use and then only if you have very limited desk space.
From the story title I was hoping for something a bit morethan bent plastic/metal.
Some guy has done this already here's his site (it seems to be down at the moment?). But not to make this post completely worthless, here's a guy who made a raid out of floppy drives.
Stupid Cheap Guitars
Peace
Well, I bought myself an iPod for Christmas, and I've gottnen used to it "just working". I wonder how much of a better computing experience I can get with a mac, and have tried our grapic design dept's G5 to surf /. while they're at lunch...I think the real draw is knowing that all of your apps can work as well as iTunes.
I've looked at getting a mini, but I think that for the money, I might be able to get something like a G3 tower on eBay for around $300. I'm more interested in a tower-style system since there'd be more room for larger drives. I've got too much music (200+GB) to be accomodated in a mini, and this would be an even lower-cost solution. The high quality of my iPod makes me comfortable purchasing a used mac.
And no, an iPod on window isn't as easy to use as a mac. I've had i/o errors trying to connect my iPod, and few of my friends pcs have firewire ports, and if they do, they're the four pin connectors. I'm guessing that a mac would be much more accomodating to my ipod.
"from the bricks to the booth...I predict the future like Cleo the psychic..."
This way, one could stack the MacMini on top of the drive(s), or vice versa, in a neat little pile.
The mac mini isn't big enough to hold my MP3 collection (right now, teetering around 105 gigs) and certianly won't be big enough to deal with the video I want to run through it. So I need 7200rpm ATA drives in a MacMini box.
Personally, I would cheerfully build my own using some hideous noisy case - I'm not that picky. But Mrs Spoilsport is VERY picky about that kind of thing - heck: she thinks having visible stereo wires to te speakers is like having one's underwear showing or having toilet paper stuck to one's shoe.
She tried to get me to go to wireless speakers, and I said "You Buy 'em". We still don't have wireless speakers, thank Bog.
But, i we could get a MacMini with matching drive(s), it'll make the transition to the full on digital system a simpler effort, as it would please the aesthetes in the home (And to think - I'm the one who makes a living as an artist!)
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Microsoft couldn't do this because almost all Linux distros are GPL. And the GPL explicitly forbids mixing free and proprietary because of it's viral nautre. That is one of the reasons that Linux itself doesn't underly OS X.
You want to point out that OS X isn't free, but the actual operating system underneath, Darwin, is free and open for all to play with. If someone else wants to build thier own GUI and drawing system on top then they are free to do so.
You believe that OS X harms OSS because Apple claims that it is the best of both worlds. The fact of the matter is that OS X IS the best of both worlds, I have free and open source to everything underneath my toolset and a platform that proprietary software doesn't run from. I can look at the source to CoreFoundation that is toll-free bridged with all the Cocoa foundation objects. I can look at the filesystem code, or networking code, and it's all free. I can use Gimp or Photoshop, I can use vi or Dreamweaver, I have the CHOICE to use either. Isn't the entire point of OSS that warm feeling you get when you have choices? I don't have to use anything and can compare them directly next to each other.
If Gnome or KDE was closed sourced would you be making such a gripe? All OS X is doing is it packages a completely free and open OS with a beautiful DE on top of it, and you never see the ugly scrolling lines. Gnome + GRUB does the same thing. You get a somewhat pretty startup, you get dumped at a login screen if you have that setup and you get a pretty desktop never needing to open a terminal to get anything done.
OSS Developers that get new macs are a good thing because like an earlier poster said, they can finally aim their efforts at making products that are better than OS X rather than as good as windows.
-"I'm one of those Mac people that will break a bottle on the bar and hold it to your throat for bad-mouthing my system"
It's not about hip; it's about statistics. Apple's research showed that between 6% and 10% of iPod owners who were not already Mac owners would consider a Mac as their next computer as a result of their iPod experience. Another sizable portion said that they'd love to own a Mac, but that the price was prohibitive. That's why Apple made the Mac mini.
4 million iPods were sold last quarter, and 90% of them to Windows users. So that's 3.6 million Windows users with iPods. If 10% of them switch to Macs as a result of their iPod experience, that's another 360,000 Mac users, or an over 33% increase in unit sales. (Apple sold just over a million Macs last quarter.)