Psyched about the Mac Mini
I admit it, I’m totally geeked over the new Mac Mini. When we upgraded my wife’s old G3 tower to OS X a few years back, I was surely impressed with the “unix with a usable UI”, but it didn’t seem like a real replacement for my windows desktop, especially with the price/performance ratio (perceived or real) of Mac hardware. When we sold the G3 and got a G4 PowerBook, and eventually upgraded to Panther, I started thinking, “hmm, maybe I could use one of these as my desktop…” but again, I didn’t want to fork out for a pricey Mac in addition to my PC. And all the cheaper Macs came with CRTs, and moving to that from my 19″ LCD was going to be an unpleasant experience for both my eyes and my back.
Now that the Mac Mini is out, it seems like perhaps a perfect fit for me. Still not convinced I can switch 100% of what I do to the Mac, but willing to give it a shot. I’ll be able to run “real” apache, php, mysql, instead of the not-identical Windows ports (I’ve resorted to Virtual PC, which actually works pretty well). With the Mac Mini, I can keep my 19″ DVI LCD, my nice mouse, etc. and for a reasonable investment (say $600 for the higher-end Mini; I’ll hack my own RAM upgrade with a spare PC2700 512M DIMM I’ve got), I’ll see if I can be won over to the Gray side (if Linux is Light and MS is Dark?)
I went to order one on apple’s store site last night, and unlike the day before (when it said “order now and receive it by January 22nd”, it now says “ship time: 3-4 weeks”. Ugh! Well, I guess I’ll be standing in line outside thePalo Alto or Burlingame Apple Stores come January 22nd, when they are supposed to be available.
So AAPL is sitting just below $70 right now, buoyed in large part by massive, almost impossibly good iPod sales last quarter–I think it’s got a little way to come down, but I feel the Mini is going to be a big hit (and although the iPod Shuffle seems kind of silly to me, I suspect at its price points they’ll sell a ton of those, too.) I’m predicting the stock to maybe hit $100 in 2005, and split. Of course, I’m the guy who thought “Webvan can turn it around!” and promptly lost over 99% of my investment, so my stock pick track record has its share of missteps.
I’m actually kind of sad I just bought my parents a new Dell, too. And had to spend 2 days copying over stuff from their old dead PC, and teaching them how to use stuff, especially digital camera image importing, etc. That kind of stuff is trivial on the Mac. If I end up loving the Mac later this year maybe I’ll send them one too, and they can sell the Dell. Sounds like a good Mac Mini slogan: “sell your Dell!” I am convinced a lot of people with iPods and PCs are going to get Mac Minis, love OSX and iLife, and buy more expensive (read: higher-margin) Macs. Even if they just encourage more developers onto the platform, it’ll be a win for consumers. It’ll be an interesting 2005!