Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
As you’ll see if you go along to the Apple website, they’ve released two new products. The Ipod Shuffle is a very cheap memory stick driven ipod, rather than the capacious harddrive versions. Obviously being solid state has power and durability benefits, but loses out to the massive storage of harddrive based versions. There’s no display on these new ipod shuffle’s, which obviously cuts costs, but also usability.
Their other new release is a mini imac, at reduced cost. Again they’ve cut the cost by doing away with the display… you’ll need your own keyboard, mouse and display. This will add 60quid for Apple mouse and keyboard, and varying amounts from around 100 to several for a flat panel (interesingly the only Apple Accesory screen listed costs 700quid). Obviously this will bump the base £340 cost of this imac up to a more expensive £500 and above.
It’s a move that’ll make it much more available, but as ever that higher price puts it in line with cheap PCs.
Talk is they’re aiming at Ipod customers… but all of those should either have, or have access to a computer already (otherwise they’ll struggle to put tunes on it).
It’s a good move, that bound to attract customers, because now there’s a whole market open to them, with the cheap end as well as the top end.
Whether it’ll really make much of a dent on PCs is yet to be seen. After all Linux is free, and yet that hasn’t exactly put Microsoft out of business.
Posted by Phil on January 12, 2005 07:20 AM | Categories: Technology
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As Bob mentiones, the Mac Mini is still expensive for the performance you get compared to a cheap barebones PC. Of cource when you add a legal copy of XP and Office into the balance the price difference evaporates, something a lot of anti-Mac-ers always forget to mention.
I suspect it won't make a noticeable dent in the PC market but it may well hike up Mac sales enormously as it makes a nice and cheap upgrade solution for people with old Macs. And it's cheap enough to be bought for third or fourth box by PC geeks.
Posted by: sjon at January 13, 2005 11:21 AM