voyage to mars

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

I'm genuinely excited about the new Mac mini and the iPod shuffle. I can't explain why, because I don't need either of them. My PowerBook performs well, thank you very much, as does my iPod mini. But like many similarly afflicted male adults out there, I have a weakness for gadgets, particularly gadgets embossed with a seductive apple shaped logo. (I have a problem, but at least I'm not afraid to admit it.) So, yes, I'll probably be picking up a mini and a shuffle - sporting fashionable lower-case names, no less - this spring. (Right, so I need help, and fast.) Let's face it, however: these are both beautiful examples of modern technology, and Apple deserves to win market share against the PC. Competition is good; just look at what it's done for the console business. Competition breeds better hardware and better games, and while there may be some frustration and confusion for the consumers, monopoly - or a single standard - isn't the answer, not in a technologically driven industry. Twenty years from now, maybe we'll be ready for a single format, at which point the Big Boys can compete on content, not platform, but for now we can enjoy the thrill of the race: Nintendo DS, PSP, Xbox 2, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Revolution - and who knows what else to follow.

So yes, I for one would love to see Apple emerge as a real competitor to the Wintel hegemony. Not that I have anything against PCs or Windows; quite the opposite, I use Windows most of the day, and I have few complaints. Without Microsoft, there would be no PC game industry. But healthy competition is a good thing. So I'll vote with my wallet and buy a Mac mini and an iPod shuffle, thank you very much. See how I justified that decision? Smooth.
¶ 22:25

Comments:

Competition in the console business killed the superior of two consoles of a generation. Dreamcast vs PS2(any which way), knocking sega out giving sony a huge market share. Quality this did not bring. The gamecube is a good console, not as many but enough good games, lucky that Ninty has a huge market share on handhelds or it'd be like Sega right now.

The mac had as good if not better games than the PC, other issues have led to developers not developing for that platform.

While the ipod shuffle is a good product, there are dosens of solid state players that have been out there for ages and are exactly the same, plus cheaper.

I like the ipod mini, the smallness of it, but what are the possible upgrade paths? Once you buy a monitor, mouse and keyboard for the thing you're going over the price of a laptop/ibook which would actually be more powerful. If you had a old iMac and want to upgrade you don't have a spare monitor, if you have a power G4 or G5 you'd be stupid/crazy to downgrade.

Two reasons why people buy apple, style, branding, and FUD. Wait that's three, nevermind.

Half the time, this capitalist society that is meant to promote freedom, democracy, and advances in technology not to mention the resulting better products, is a complete pack of lies. I don't want competition, I want choice.

Nintendo and Microsoft will be using the same processor and gpu manufacturer for the their next gen consoles. Sony will be using the same processor manufacturer. Either ATI or Nvidia will be in those consoles, aswell as the the PC. From three consoles with three different processor, and gpu. If this trend does persist Ragnar's prediction will be dead on and there will be only one platform.

# posted by Anonymous : 1:19 AM

Anyone noticed the footer in the ad for Ipod shuffle:

"2 Do not eat iPod shuffle."

This player might be an affordable mp3 player, but advertising the player (not to mention naming it) almost solely on it's ability to play random tracks seems a bit stupid.

Now if it had some advanced mood system, but come on don't make me laugh.

# posted by Anonymous : 1:25 AM

Did I hear wrong, or is the next-gen X-Box supposed to be called X-Box Next? Or is that just a code name?

# posted by Anonymous : 7:19 AM

The way I read it was that Xbox Next is what marketing is using now, Xbox 2 is what the media dubbed it, and the codename is "Xenon".

# posted by Anonymous : 10:23 AM

Dude, this graphic totally applies to you: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif

# posted by PastaQueen : 4:16 PM

Does this mean that we'll see a mac version of Dreamfall?

It would truly be a hit on that platform since we've been lacking in the games department lately...

I too love my powerbook and will probably be getting a Mac Mini.

As for upgradeability, at $499, you don't really need to care about upgrading the darn thing. Buy a new one in a year. Besides, if you're the type that likes to upgrade, you're probably better off with a G5 anyway -- it's not the right target audience. If you brought a $400 dell, you probably wouldn't be able to upgrade it very much either

As far as upgradability for Apple's tower-based machiens goes, things are very good. There have even been a bunch of creative upgrades for the now-defunct G4 Cube (including a Dual-processor upgrade!). I could theoretically put a 1.5ghz G4 chip into my G4-450. And, yes, it would cost just as much as a Mac Mini, but I'd get to keep all of the goodies like my 64-bit PCI SCSI card and drive array. These things still haven't made it over to the PC world...

My 450mhz pentium 3 system would max out at around 550mhz unless I also dropped in a new motherboard and RAM, and by then, it's practically a new computer. When you buy an apple, it stays with you for a LONG time.

# posted by Andrew : 3:19 AM