Apple’s attempts to build a living-room console for watching TV and movies has been one of the company’s conspicuous non-successes. Apple TV has sold a few million units, according to analysts, but that’s not Apple-scale success. CEO Steve Jobs has referred to it as a “hobby.”
On the other hand, Apple’s Mac mini, meant as an entry-level desktop computer, has become a popular TV console among Mac fans who feel most comfortable connecting a Mac to the living room TV.
Apple’s press release spells out the TV-readiness of the new Mini: An HDMI output jack for connecting directly to a big-screen television. An SD memory card slot for looking at photos and videos from a personal camera. Double the hardware graphics performance of the previous model (the graphics chip is now the same as that in Apple’s least expensive MacBook models.) Compact 1.4-inch high, 7.7-inch wide and deep body. Yet the slim box includes an integrated power supply, which removes the need for a giant power adapter to add to the clutter of a typical home entertainment system. The entry-level model has four gigabytes of memory standard, rather than the two in most low-end computers. That will reduce the amount of halting when using video-intensive applications. It’s more than powerful enough to double as a home server, another use case that Apple has picked up from customers.
One more thing, though: The Mini’s price has crept upwards from its original $499 in 2005 to $699 for the new model, which adds $100 to the previous model’s base price. Analyst firm Kaufman Bros. has dubbed the price “the only disappointment.”
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The new price effectively repositions the Mac mini. In the age of netbooks and superphones, Apple has made a counterintuitive decision. Rather than remove hardware until it had a $299 computer, Apple has beefed up and redesigned the Mini as a fully-powered Mac for $300 less than its cheapest laptop.
