High Holy Day of Apple Enthusiasts

Despite all of the drama surrounding this year's Macworld San Francisco keynote address (Apple suing ThinkSecret, no satellite feed or webcast of the keynote), the announcements bode well for my favorite corporation.

The rumored item I was looking forward to the most arrived in the form of the Mac mini. Why should I care? I already have a Powerbook, and if it had a vagina, I'd have sex with it. What do I need a second Mac for?

I'll tell you—for my living room.

Throw in an Airport card and Bluetooth, get the S-Video output doohickey, and I'd have a DVD player, a wireless media server and Internet router, and more. No more need for the beloved Airport Express, the Belkin 4-port Ethernet router, or the Ximeta hard drive. One box to rule them all.

I'm disappointed, however, that the largest hard drive they sell it with is 80GB. I was hoping for a build-to-order option for 160GB for storing music and backing up my Powerbook. (And until I see evidence to the contrary, it doesn't look like it the hard drive can be upgraded without voiding the warranty.) Furthermore, the S-Video output should be built in. Finally, like all Apple computers, the amount of included RAM is criminally small.

Still, maybe that's a little crazy. A DVD player and surround sound amplifier and all the speakers could be a lot cheaper than a decked-out Mac mini. I can already surf the web from my couch. I can already plug my Powerbook into my television. As much as I'd like to run some sort of web server out of my house, I've tried dynamic DNS before and never could get it to work properly.

So really, if I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars that I don't have, then it should really be on a new digital camera that can support RAW files. And now that the new iPhoto can process RAW files, I guess I'll have to get that, too.

Finally, I would just like to say that the iPod Shuffle is not for me, but it's pretty cool. It's not much different than any other small flash-based MP3 player, and it seems like it would be pretty easy to lose the cap like any other thumb drive. Otherwise, though, This is for joggers and folks who like to make mixes and folks who prefer to listen to CDs. Not a bad device, and priced well, too.

There are all sorts of new things Apple, all detailed on any Mac news site.

One last thing—your "Macs are too expensive" argument has now been trounced. The Mac mini starts at $499.

Okay, one more last thing—where the Hell is Asteroid?

UPDATE: Some thoughts on iWork:

• Keynote 2 can export to Flash, which is a brilliant addition.
• Pages is surely a great word processor/desktop publisher, but it is sorely missing HTML output. Give the average human being the ability to make their own web pages and sync them with .Mac. Perhaps Pages 2.
• No spreadsheet?

UPDATE 2: So I'm having trouble finding a definitive link, but it's looking like the Mac mini has no user serviceable parts, not even the RAM.

UPDATE 3: One last update before this post leaves the home page. From MacInTouch (which I should read more often):

I went back to the booth later and got a little more info on upgrading the Mac Mini.

1. Apple "does not recommend" that users upgrade the memory themselves - you're supposed to have a service provider do it if you want to add more after purchase - but doing it yourself does not void the warranty unless you damage something. A booth person told me the memory slot is easily accessible once you get the case open.
   
   
2. The hard drives are 2.5-inch (notebook drives) - that's why Apple isn't offering higher capacities (80 GB is about the largest available, at least in volume, in the 2.5-inch format). The booth person said she thought the Apple drives spin at 5,400 rpm, but she wasn't sure, and I haven't found any confirmation. The drive isn't readily accessible, so even when larger capacities become available, upgrading won't be easy.
   
   
3. You can add AirPort Extreme for $79 and/or Bluetooth for $50 if you're ordering the Mini from the Apple Store, but if you want to add wireless later, your only choice will be a kit that includes both AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth for about $129 ($112 to dealers). This stuff also is not user-installable, supposedly because it involves adding antennas as well as cards.

Nice to know that you can indeed upgrade the memory on your own and save a few beans. As for the hard drive, according to Daring Fireball, the hard drive is actually a 4,200 rpm and that the hard drive isn't that difficult to replace. However, about the biggest 2.5" notebook drive that's available for less than ridiculous prices is 100GB for nearly $300. For that price, you can plug in a sizeable Firewire or USB 2.0 drive and achieve similar performance.