...more recent posts
Verizon is turning on the fiber in Tampa. Here is a quick overview of the Verizon FIOS service. Ridiculous ridiculous speeds. Finally the U.S. is joining the rest of the developed world.
5 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up for $34.99 a month
15 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up for $44.99 a month
Yum. We'll see this in the NYC area this year, but maybe not inside the city until next (Nassau and Westchester first it looks like.)
I'm giving RSS another shot. It's obviously superior for browsing lots of sites, but there is something about ripping all content out of it's web page context that I don't like. So I doubt I'll drop the browser all together, but I expect to continue with RSS for a lot of sites that aren't my absolute favorites but that I want to keep track of anyway.
I'm using the very good and very free NetNewsWire Lite (the free lite version is at the bottom of that page.)
And speaking of RSS, CNN has a ton of new RSS feeds.
Well they did it. Yesterday Apple introduced the Mac Mini. Starting at $499. For that price you get a 1.2 Ghz G4, 40 Gig hard drive, and combo DVD player / CD burner. Slightly faster processor, bigger hard drive, and DVD burner are all options. As are keyboard and mouse which don't come with the machine (nor monitor, of course.)
It is absolutely tiny at 6.5'' x 6.5'' x 2''. Aluminum sides with a white plastic top which sort of splits the difference between their pro aluminum look (used on PowerMacs, PowerBooks, and the Cinema displays,) and the white plastic consumer look (iMacs, iBooks, iPods.) It's nice I think, and certainly the smallest PC on the market. Remember the Apple Cube? The Mini fits in the small air space underneath that machine! It's really pretty ridiculous.
Not including a monitor, keyboard, and mouse helps cut costs, and answers long time requests from potential customers who already have these items left over from their last machines (macs can use standard PC components.) The eMac, for instance, has been pretty cheap for a while (around $800,) but a lot of that cost is for the built in CRT monitor which is wasted on a lot of people who already have a decent monitor, but just want a new machine. The Mini Mac now gives people a chance to try out a Mac for a price that might cross into some people's impulse buy range.
The other not so obvious advantage to not including a keyboard is the small size this allows the packaging to be. Check out the box. Cute, no? Classic Apple. I'll bet they'll be stacked up next to the cash registers in the stores. Just grab one and go. About the same price as buying a Kate Spade bag.
Performance should be fine. It will lose in benchmarks to the latest PCs, but that is all theoretical. For email, web surfing, iTunes, a little photo editing, home video editing, etc., the Mini is more than powerful enough. It's not going to run the latest 3D video games that well, but that's not really what it is for. Everything else will be fine. I would bump the RAM to 512 megs for an extra $75, otherwise the base specs look good.
I think the only possible criticism is the use of 2.5 inch notebook hard drives. They obviously needed to do this to achieve the small form factor. But a lot of geeks will probably moan that they would rather have it be slightly bigger, and use faster 3.5 inch drives. I have to admit that I am in this camp, since with a 3.5 inch 7200 RPM drive the Mini looks like a very cheap OS X server. But again, that's not the market they are going for. For home use (or even business use) the smaller drives are fine.