Roger Born already updated his previous Apple Product speculation blog with the new product, but I wanted to discourse further on the new Intel Mac Minis.
As more Apple product based on Intel comes out, we can start to pick out the strands of Apple’s marketing strategy for the Mac line.
Initial view of the Intel Mac Mini spec looks like that little silver box has turned into a real powerhouse – not only is there the expected Core Solo model but a Core Duo machine as well. The same high speed memory bus as the other Intel Macs, up to 2 Gb of RAM in two slots, SATA drives – won’t these machines cannibalise iMac sales? OK, its $100 more than the old models, but you can blame the sparkly new Intel chips for that. I guess we now know why the MacBook Pro was speed-bumped before shipping.
Ahh – but look at the Mini’s video card – an Intel special that is so cheap that it doesn’t even have its own memory (it takes up to 64MB of system RAM for its own use). I have used onboard chipsets like these back in the bad old days when I used to build PCs, and they are normally not good at all.
Now, these cards are notionally slightly faster than the Radeon 9200 in the old machine, but that business of not having their own VRAM could sap performance in a bad way. I will be interested to see how iMovie performs in this environment.
The machines are available now – but anyone thinking about one might want to hold off until some benchmarks are published.
But I mentioned Apple strategy, didn’t I? So here is what I think:
1) The iBook replacement, when it comes out, will be broadly the same machine as the new Minis. After all, that’s how the Mini was first conceived – an iBook in a small desktop case. The only differentiators are likely to be the LCD screen size (widescreen? hopefully) and maybe an upgrade to that video chipset.
2) Looks like Apple will use the ancillary items such as the video cards to differentiate the consumer and pro lines. This makes sense – consumer users not running pro apps don’t really need high-end video, and it allows differentiation of consumer and pro according to software functionality. I think they were really stung by how close the iBooks got to the PowerBooks in performance.
3) Intel is not being used to drive down price – at least not yet. Obviously, Core Solo/Duo is brand new, but Intel traditionally has a rolling markdown on their products as they age. Be interesting to see if Apple passes this on.
4) Apple is not seeking to break out just yet with the Mac. The Intel offerings seem designed to appeal to the current Mac user base. I think Apple will look to the base software set to continue to drive switchers. Having said that, Intel Mac Mini will be a very strong switcher machine if the running Windows problem is solved – my first Mac when I switched was a G4 Mini.
5) The base software set continues to evolve in a clever way. Extending Front Row to stream remote Mac content is a clever move – just think how many Minis and Mac notebooks are going to spend time now connected to the living room TV, streaming video from the main family Mac in the study? That could drive a whole lot of new sales from the existing user base, even if they don’t want to switch their main machine to Intel just yet.
As a final comment, looking at the other product released today, the iPod HiFi, whatever it sounds like, it is terribly ugly. Where was Jonathan Ives when they drew that on the whiteboard? Was he on a holiday back here to good old Blighty? It looks like it fell out of a timewarp from 1976!
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