macBlogger - Apple Mac Blog

There are unconfirmed reports speculating that Apple are about to close up shop on two of their most affordable desktop releases. The young and headless Mac Mini and the 17″ iMac are soon to be binned. One of the major barriers for potential purchasers of Mac systems is price. Macs have always been dubbed as expensive hobbyist toys (or along those lines anyway).

The Mac Mini, which is currently available onwards from ¢629 to ¢809, was meant to accommodate those who were financially restricted.

There is some speculation that Apple conceived the Mac mini under pressure from shareholders who wanted a sub-$800 Mac, but never really saw much in the design itself. It’s almost as if the mini stood in direct contrast to Apple’s fundamentals from the get-go.

I’m surprised at Apple’s decision, if this is true of course, because the Mini has great potential. I don’t think it’s been marketed as well as what it should have been. For money you can attach a Mini to your front room TV and use the TV screen as a monitor. This will allow you to not only browse the net but you can also use the Mini as both a DVD player and as a Hi-Fi system. The Mini is also very portable and can of course be hooked up a normal PC monitor and can be used as a desktop.

Introducing Apple TV.

This little guy has stolen the limelight from the Mini but it’s nowhere near as feature rich and powerful as the Mini. There is nothing on the Apple TV that you couldn’t do with the Mini. It doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s just poor marketing. They should have evolved and promoted the Mini more instead of introducing a sub standard off shoot of it.

I’m not a happy camper. I was looking forward to tracking the development of the Mini in the hope of some day soon purchasing one and using it as a home entertainment system.

When the time came for me to choose which iMac I was going to purchase there were only three options. A 17”, which I thought was a bit small by today’s standards, a 20” which I ultimately bought and a 24” which I couldn’t afford and felt it was a bit of over kill. Those extra 3” over the entry level 17” are a godsend. Not only for the improved screen size and the more cinematic feel but also because the 17” looks set to be discontinued.

The decision to axe the smallest iMac comes as display prices continue to track downwards, making the cost difference for Apple between a 17-inch display and a 20-inch display almost negligible. Demand from display customers for larger sizes coupled with more productive manufacturing plants in Asia have been the guiding factors in those lower prices.

Eliminating the low-end iMac will also improve logistics for Apple, which will need to track and stock considerably fewer parts.

This is surprising if true. It doesn’t seem logical to remove the entry level iMac and replace it…..well…with nothing. I realise that the iPhone is the new darling and it requires a lot of TLC but you would hope that Apple would have an affordable desktop solution on the market in the not too distant future. Apple are getting a lot of good press and more and more home users are making the switch. Not all of them can afford to pay more than ¢1,000 on a system. Apple are raising the bar on price but they’re not satisfying growing demand. Removing the Mini and the 17″ iMac is a dangerous move.