Yesterday, I watched most of the belated keynote stream. As usual, Steve Jobs was on form. Despite the odd glitches, it all went pretty smooth, although the applause weren’t really as frantic as they have been several times in the past. This despite the introduction of what seems like the Macintosh LC for the 21st century, the Mac mini. Now, perhaps it wasn’t such a big surprise as it could have been, seeing as Apple did the dubious deed of taking Apple rumour site Think Secret to court after it had publicized “gossip” regarding BOTH the Mac mini and the new iPod Shuffle (which is pretty good value, considering it costs less than many brand name 1GB USB memories). Now, I’m not going to discuss whether Apple did the wrong thing, but personally, I think it’s stupid and likely to alienate hardcore Apple fans.
But back to the applause: I was pretty damn excited when I read the live report on irc 2 days ago, and even more so when I saw images of the Mac mini. Of course, I’ve got G5s myself, but still: it is a great argument for switching to mac from Windows. The cost is no longer an issue. If you have a virus-infested Windows box with some years of usage, you might want to consider moving to a different platform. Unless you’re an avid gamer or numbercruncher or video/graphics pro for example, in which case the Mac mini is far too pussycat.
Strangely, I react upon Apple’s world domination schemes like a true non-conformist: vaguely considering a switch. Of course, I won’t do it. Having used macs since I borrowed an upgraded Mac 128 in 1990, I’m not likely to turn somewhere else. What else is there? SUSE is becoming a great desktop linux, but it lacks apps, and has still got some configuration quirks. Windows has great games and great virii. OS X is slick, stable & swift, and one can still run X11 apps on it, if needed (through the brilliant Fink project, for example). Nuff said.