Just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock, Apple announced some new toys yesterday at Mac World. Perhaps the biggest departure of Apple’s traditional strategy they introduced two new, lower end, hardware devices: iPod shuffle and Mac mini. iLife 05 brings some new updates for iPhoto, iMovie, etc. Apple Works is getting replaced with iWork.
While I’ve always admired the iPod, the price is well outside what I would feel comfortable paying. I enjoy music, but not enough to justify that cost. The iPod shuffle is certainly with the price range I’d be willing to spend, with the single biggest reason being that I’ve been on the look out for a nice 1gig USB2 flash drive anyway. This way I can get one that also plays music. I think this things will fly off the shelves and you’ll hear a lot of people use the same excuse I just did.
The Mac mini is more of a risk than the iPod shuffle for Apple. For starters the 256MB memory isn’t really enough for Mac OS X. But the potential for such a device to easily fit into media setups could make this box a winner. My prediction is that if the Mac mini does well it is because the computing community finds a creative use for it as a media center piece. On a side note, am I the only that keeps wanting to to call this mini Mac instead of Mac mini?