For year , Apple ’s share of the worldwide information processing system market remained muck up in the single digit . Conventional wisdom concord that the high price of Macs was responsible for for the small market portion . But that statement has always been problematical , and with the institution of the Mac mini , it has lost much of its stay oomph .
However , the Mac mini ’s winner wo n’t depend on its low price alone . While the $ 499 price tag end is a bang-up way to pull the attention of potential Mac buyers , converting those people into genuine Mac users would be somewhat hard if it were n’t for a major change in the way we use our reckoner today .
Media Machines
Apple started using the phrasedigital huba few years ago , because Steve Jobs and company realize that digital media were expire to be at the nerve of why people used their computers , especially in the home .
Apple ’s unbelievable success with the iPod and the iTunes Music Store has conduct out the wiseness of that strategy . But while digital medicine is a major part of Apple ’s future , it is n’t the only big trend out there that ’s breaking in the Mac miniskirt ’s favor .
Over the retiring few years , digital photography has hold out from oddball to mainstream . Most estimator fan have grease one’s palms digital camera , and now even the computer - shy are buying them in criminal record numbers .
Throughout this passage , Apple has been right there , ready to help oneself . iLife follow spare with every new Mac , so even the $ 499 Mac mini come with a full suite of top - notch digital medium software . iLife ’s apps are all easier to use than anything useable for Windows , so when it come to the digital stuff multitude really care about , Apple is n’t playing taking into custody - up with Windows . It ’s years ahead .
Priority Formats
As you may have guessed by our two successive cover taradiddle on the subject , everyone here atMacworldthinks that the Mac mini could be Brobdingnagian for Apple ( see “ Inside the Mac Mini ” to find out what makes it tick , and do n’t miss our review of the miniskirt ) . It ’s not just the most of import Apple product to be stick in since the iPod ; it ’s the most significant Mac to be introduced since the original iMac .
In the yesteryear , many hoi polloi despise the Mac because they recollect that their home computer had to repeat the machine they had at work . If a Mac could n’t unravel the database they used at the office , connect to their company ’s Exchange mail system , or surmount any of a zillion other compatibility vault , bribe one for their homes did n’t make sense .
But consider what people use their household computers for these days : Safari ’s got WWW browse comprehend , and if that does n’t suit your taste , there ’s always Firefox or OmniWeb . Mail is a childlike , fully functional chain mail program . And Microsoft Office for the Mac permit you work with any Word , Excel , or PowerPoint single file .
But the most important file formats for today ’s dwelling computer users are n’t .doc or .xls : They ’re MP3 and JPEG . And which company is the leader when it comes to give the great unwashed easy admission to and curb over their music and film ? The same company that ’ll now sell you a $ 499 computer — or , rather , a $ 499 digital media appliance . ( For more on how the Mac mini compare to a likewise priced PC , see Dan Frakes ’s looking at at the Mac mini - Dell PC damage war . )
A Computerized Appliance
The Mac ’s special chance for success really hit me a few weeks ago , while I was impose some champion — personal computer users at dwelling house and at work .
Soon after my arriver , they set about postulate me about the Mac miniskirt . One of them had used a acquaintance ’s Mac to build a Quran in iPhoto and had been very impressed . So they ’d consider about the number of digital photos they ’d taken since their unseasoned girl ’s birth , and about how loose it had been to utilize the friend ’s Mac to pull wires and organise those photos , and to make record book , swoop show , and more .
The Mac mini ’s monetary value may have spurred their pastime in a Mac , but what really made the Mac a contender for them was a variety in how they viewed it : not as a PC , for working with Christian Bible processors and databases , but as anappliancefor managing all their digital photos and music .
I think this transmutation , more than anything else , will give Apple an advantage over its PC challenger . Because while Microsoft is the big name in personal computer , what company has the hottest product in the consumer electronics world ? Thanks to the iPod , it ’s Apple .
