There’s an old cartoon that goes something like this: It’s a diagonal split screen below a man is receiving a PC from Lucifer and above the same man is receiving a Mac from an Angel – the caption, Welcome to heaven here’s your Mac … welcome to hell, here’s your PC.
Considering only 3-5% of the world market in computers is on any Apple platform, it is amazing how this company has captured our imaginations. I am “tri” of course. Logic Pro, Final Cut, Nuendo, Motion, After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop all run on Powerbooks and G5s in my world and my other laptop and every business desktop in my life is a Windows machine (except for the few Linux boxes we play with as web servers and such). That being said, most people are not “tri” or even “bi,” they show a strong preference for only one kind of computer and operating system. You know who they are, Mac people or Linux adepts or the vast majority of the planet – Microsofties.
So it is with great interest that we all watch the introduction of relatively cheap Mac’s for the masses. At $499, it is about the same price as a full blown iPod and it does a bit more. Click here to see what Apple has to say about their new baby.
What do we have to say about it? Well, after you add a monitor, keyboard and mouse you’re looking at about $1,000 US, so it’s not really that cheap. 1GB of memory is not very much in the real word, so you’re not going to be doing much serious multi-media. This looks like a very nice computer for email and iTunes in the playroom. But, one never knows how technology from Apple will capture the mind? Jobs has a way of making you want stuff, just because it is way cool.
Take the new iPod Shuffle, for example. There is no reason on earth to own one. $149 for 240 songs, stupid! Yet, I can’t wait to buy one. See … it doesn’t make sense. Anyway, I’d love to complete this review, but I have to log on to Apple.com and order my Shuffle! 