Hopeless Geek

Some folks just aren’t getting the idea behind the Mac mini. A shame, that, because this product is going to take over and help make switchers out of a good chunk of PC users, despite what some may think. So far it seems that the largest complaint about the Mac mini is the lack of a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

You know, those things it was intentionally designed around not including.

So since he’s the only person that I can find that’s posted a semi-coherent rant about this view (though I’ve seen it elsewhere in bits and spurts) I’ll sift through Bill’s issues with the Mac mini and see what clarity can be brought to this.

• comes with not one, not two, but three components missing, any of which whose absence renders the whole thing unusable. It’s not just missing a monitor, it doesn’t even have a keyboard or mouse. This isn’t just about selling a car with no engine in it, this lemon doesn’t have tires or a windshield, either.*

Bill Palmer

A master of the obvious if ever I saw one, Bill raises issues similar to those that were raised about the lack of monitor-spanning on iBooks and its lack of PC Card slots. “The iBook isn’t a serious machine,” was the common understanding. You know, they were right, it wasn’t a “serious” machine because it wasn’t designed to be. It was brought into this world with one purpose: a cheap portable Mac. The Mac mini was brought into this world for one purpose: a stripped-down computer aimed solely at people replacing a modern PC.

To that end, the Mac mini does its job well. Just like a “pro” PC upgrade, upgrading to a Mac mini is as simple aas unplugging the old CPU and putting this fellow in-line. For the more serious users of their PC, they’ll know how to put a KVM in the middle and switch between the two. It works, for them, just like a second PC CPU would work. For the more advanced users that this product is aimed at the Mac mini works just as they expect. Already two die-hard PC fans I know have placed orders for the Mac mini. They’re excited. They’re happy. This is just what they wanted because this was aimed at them.

Let me paint a picture for you. A potential low-end Switcher, who only knows Apple as the iPod maker, and who has little familiarity with the Macintosh, wanders into an Apple Store at the local shopping mall. After he gets done playing with the iPods in the front of the store, he spots a computer with a $499 price tag and makes a bee line for it. Nice little machine there, except whoops, that $499 price doesn’t include a monitor. Since he’s on the low end, his existing PC is three or four years old, and his aging piece of junk 15 inch CRT monitor is just about to die, so he wants to do what nearly all low end computer buyers do when they buy a computer: buy a new low-end monitor to go with it. So he asks the Apple Store salesperson where the monitors are, and the salesperson cheerfully points him in the direction of Apple’s least expensive monitor, the 20 inch Cinema Display, which costs a mere $999.
Bill Palmer

That’s a nice story. It has nothing to do with the Mac mini. For a small amount more that same person will be directed to the eMac or iMac, “switched” and then sent home with their new toy. The Mac mini was not aimed at that customer. I can’t emphasize this point enough. The “low-end Switcher” is not the market that this toy is aimed at; the mid-to-high-end PC user is the target market. The Mac mini was created for the sole purpose of answering the question: “Why doesn’t Apple sell a stripped-down Mac for PC users?”

The Mac mini is not Apple’s answer to eMachines. Do not make the mistake of seeing it as such. It is exactly what it was designed to be: a drop-in replacement for an existing, modern Wintel PC. If a customer has an old set of peripherals, or wants to replace them, then that user needs an eMac or iMac. Those are the solutions to that problem. The Mac mini is the solution to something else and doesn’t need to be brought into that equation. You might as well extoll the virtues of the iPod as a hard drive and complain, “Why would I want my hard drive to play music?”

Think it’s not gonna happen? Alright, you tell me how the above story has a different ending.
Bill Palmer

After the salesman sees that the user is trying to make a complete system on the cheap, the salesman does what salesmen do and directs the customer to the cheapest complete system: the eMac. The customer asks why it’s more expensive and gets the answer: because it’s a complete system. The customer may or may not buy this more expensive item, but at least understands the reason behind the price difference.

In fact, imagine the above story happening, except that the guy isn’t savvy enough to know that his existing keyboard and mouse aren’t going to work with the Mac Mini.
Bill Palmer

Yes, let’s also imagine that the customer’s house has 480v wall outlets and gets thunderstorms nightly with multiple lightning strikes. Let’s also imagine that the customer has an IQ in the general vicinity of his pant size. While we’re at it, the customer’s home just got electricity last week and he’s still unsure of how, exactly, to operate electronic devices; his toaster still confuses him.

Yes, let’s expect the absolute worst and then base our entire opinion of the product around it. Yes, because that’s the most logical angle to approach this from.

News flash: People are idiots. Just because this is a fact does not mean you build your product line around it. You build a product to answer a need. There was a need for an all-in-one home machine, thus the iMac. There was a need for an even cheaper version for schools, so there’s an eMac. There was a need for a more powerful machine, so we have the Power Macintosh. There was a need for a high- and low-end portable, so there exist the PowerBook and the iBook. Now there’s a need for a drop-in replacement for PCs to get the Mac “out there” and used and now there’s the Mac mini. Just because some fool’s going to do something stupid is no reason to abandon the fundamentals of capitalism: find a market and make a product to sell in it. If people are so absolutely stupid that they don’t know what they’re in the market for that’s their own problem. To Apple’s credit they do have sales people to help guide the fools to the right product for their market, as do all stores that sell anything. That’s why salesmen exist: to sell the right item to the right people. Let them do their jobs.

Was it just me, or did I hear Steve Jobs say this morning that the G5 iMac is currently Apple’s best-selling computer? Well, you can scratch that off the list, because the Mac Mini completely illegitimizes the iMac.
Bill Palmer

Once again, a common opinion among those taking up arms against the Mac mini is that it’s the new consumer model. No, the Mac mini is not the new consumer model. The Mac mini is a prosumer model. Price does not dictate market, functionality does. Is the Mac mini an answer to any problem a low-end consumer has? No. Then the Mac mini is not a low-end consumer product, now is it? Does it answer any professional problem? No. Then it’s not a professional product. Does it answer any prosumer problem? Yes, that of the cheap-ass switcher. So it’s a prosumer product. Thus, the line-up is as follows:

Low-end consumer/education:	eMac
Consumer:	iMac
Switcher/Prosumer:	Mac mini
Professional	PowerMac

Think about Apple’s new desktop lineup from top to bottom. At the low end (Mac Mini), you’re responsible for bringing your own monitor. In the mid-range (iMac), the monitor is built into the computer. And on the high end, you’re once again responsible for bringing your own monitor. You don’t have to play a game of “Which one of these doesn’t belong?” in order to see just how ridiculous this is. ... The desktop lineup used to be so easily explainable and understandable, and now it’s just inexcusable.
Bill Palmer

It does seem quite ridiculous when described that way, I agree. However rather than lambast Apple over the creation of the product for a market that it makes little sense to be in, it should be moved into the proper market and evaluated there. When a multi-billion-dollar company creates a product I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt that they might just know what they were doing. It’s not always the case, but it generally is. So, if, upon first glance, the product doesn’t fit into the market you describe, you probably have assigned the product to a market it was not aimed at. In this case, again, this is not the low-end computer. That’s why it fits in so poorly. Square peg, round hole. Don’t complain about the existence of the round hole, find the square one instead. Prosumer. High-end switcher. Consumers with a brain.

The referenced article goes downhill from here so I won’t bother answering further objections to the Mac mini.

For the market the Mac mini was aimed at, it’s a grand slam hit. It’s out of the park. It’s exactly what people wanted and exactly what those people will buy. Already, and without soliciting ideas, mind you, I’ve heard the following excellent uses of the Mac mini:

• Home server. Install Mac OS X Server on it and treat it like a headless Xserve for a third of the cost ($499 Mac mini + $499 Mac OS X Server (10-client) vs $2999 Xserve).
• iTunes server. Load up all your music on it and let it just manage your music. Hook it up to your TV with the DVI to Composite adapter and use it to power your home stereo and get visuals on your TV set.
• Cluster node. For Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro users this is a significantly cheaper way to get some extra render nodes when the cost of the Xserve prohibits adding them instead (the machines that are clearly superior for this task). For home developers this would make an excellent distributed GCC node. Get a pair of them and get the Developer Tools installed and then just put them in the corner somewhere.
• Web test bed. For PC users that do not plan on making the switch, this makes an excellent machine to just have in the KVM to make sure sites work on the Mac. No more excuses.
• Programming test bed. If you want to make sure your software runs on a weak Mac, this is certainly the way to do it. Sit it on top of your G5 and switch between the two to test. Build a profile of all your users with just the two machines.

The list goes on, but here’s what I’m going to do with it:

I have an iBook as my primary machine because, honestly, it’s exactly what I wanted. Sturdy plastic, small form, big-enough keyboard, ports enough to expand it, G4 processor. It works … and well. Yet, I have a hard limit on the amount of data I can carry around. My iPod is larger than my iBook’s hard drive. So, I get a Mac mini and …

• Hook up my three external Firewire drives to it and leave them on, for once.
• Setup some share points so I can access the drives and still perform my backups, albeit wirelessly (and slower) now.
• Setup iTunes on the machine to use the music on my drives and share it on the AirPort network. This also turns this into my iPod docking station.
• Get the DVI to Composite fob and hook it up to the TV. Use my existing Bluetooth fob, keyboard, and mouse to control it wirelessly. It’s now a WebTV on crack. I can:
  • Hit the web
  • Read email
  • Play DVDs
  • Rip the DVDs and store them locally for random-access playback with VLC
  • Play games on my 37” TV rather than my 12” iBook
  • Play my music with visuals on and have some auditory and visual goodness in the background
  • Preview iMovies and iDVDs on a television ahead of time…

Now, sure, a lot of that could be done with a second iBook and the video adapter for it … but for twice the cost. I can throw $500 at Apple now and again, but not $1,000 (or $1,500 once I get it the way I’d like it). But $500? Not cheap, no, but not overly-expensive, either.

And I don’t need a monitor when, for $20, I can turn my TV into the perfect one.

For me, the prosumer, this is a hit and just what I wanted. Thank you, Apple.

Someone else gets it: Car customizer offers ‘Mac mini Auto’

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