Proud owner of a Mac Mini

After months of Apple desire I finally jumped in and purchased a Mac Mini. It was incredibly difficult to resist with its reasonable price point. I was concerned about the speed of the Mini, but for all of my day-to-day tasks I find that it's perfect. I'll blog some of my thoughts on it over the next few weeks.

Impact of Napster Superbowl Ad

At this year's Superbowl, Napster took iTunes head on. Napster's concept is based on a service. There are no gimmicks. You pay $14.99 per month and you have access to a million songs. However, the catch is, you only have access to the song as long as you keep paying your monthly fee. The music expires as soon as you stop paying. On the other hand, Apple's iTunes has no monthly fee, but you only hear what you pay for. Most tunes are $.99.

So what's a customer to make of all of this? A lot of the decision is based on how often you cycle through a variety of tunes and how much you're willing to pay for. At $180 a year with Napster you're talking a lot of money for me. However, many do pay out this much for music in a year. The problem with the Napster service comes down to the ownership factor. When a Napster user leaves the service they are left with absolutely nothing, but their auditory memories. This is where the Napster model fails. The desire to own music is as rock solid today as it was during the L.P. While the Napster ad might generate some consumer interest and a brief spike, it's model does not hold for the long term.

Mac Mini All Hands On Review

I finally made it to the Apple store to check out the new Mac Mini. Just looking at it you can't help but think "how on earth did they cram all that in there?" Apple continues to amaze with its new designs starting first with the new iMac and now with the Mac Mini (which thankfully doesn't have an "i" in front of it). The power adapter is quite large and is so disproportionate in size to the mini it seems out of place. The Mac Mini is not for everyone. As a consumer you really need to understand the limitations of this thing. I still find it incomprehensible for Apple to not include 512 megs of RAM. I'm sure that the decision was made to hit the $499 price point. Apple is so good at providing a comprehensive out of the box experience I just can't see why 512 megs would not be standard. How many people actually use 256 megs and are content? None the less, the Mac Mini is real eye candy and irresistible despite its speed limitations for what's current CPU technology for a desktop.