Why no Intel Mac Mini?

January 15th, 2006, By Duncan Gough

Following on from the Mac expo this year, there are lots of questions about the missing features on the new MacBook Pro laptops.

First of all, the success Apple have had porting OS X to Intel chipsets has been impressive. I know that there are many long-winded technical reasons why this has happened, why this has been easy, why it has been (as software developers are keen to say) ‘trivial’. None of which alters the fact that porting OS X must have been a mammoth task. No matter how trivial, Apple has succeeded with a large-scale software project at a time when most non-trivial software projects are delivered over budget and late.

However, there are still grounds for complaint, which Ars technica sums up pithily:

There was then applause, applause for the Apple Computer team, for Intel, for living, and just like that all the nightmares were banished, if not a few ghosts. They had been invisible in the other-wordly light of the RDF, so bright was the iPod Halo Effect over Steve’s head. But in the post-orgasmic denouement of the Keynote’s the phantoms could at last be seen lined up against the walls, the famous and the anonymous, the latest of the late being Altivec. There was the one-button mouse. There was Steve Wozniak—who isn’t dead but sometimes says really weird things like a ghost might—holding an Apple II. The entire Apple Human Interface Group was accounted for—except for Tog whose ghost is haunting his website. A very bitter platinum spirit with a gray beard bemoaned the loss of “Teh Snappy” and the spatial Finder.

However, the specific complaints relate to missing components and a kind of pseudo-souped-up laptop that makes the move to Intel look rushed in order to be ahead of schedule. The MacBook Pro is missing so many key components that the decision not to debut the Intel line with an Intel Mac Mini seems strange.

* Where the MacBook Pro is missing a modem, the Intel Mac Mini could get away with it.
* Where the MacBook Pro is missing a faster Firewire port, the Intel Mac Mini could get away with it.
* Where the MacBook Pro is lacking in higher desktop resolution, the Intel Mac Mini could get away with it.
* Where the MacBook Pro is vague about battery life, the Intel Mac Mini could get away with it.

So, why could the Intel Mac Mini have debuted well without these features? Because it is intended as a cheap alternative. The Mac Mini is whisper quiet and small, so the missing features, like the modem, would be understandable given its form-factor. The Mac Mini is not portable either, so the battery life issue doesn’t even crop up.

All things considered, I’m hoping for an Intel Mac Mini sometime soon, esepcially given the distant grumblings that several interesting annoucements were dropped from the Keynote at a late stage.

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