Apple Insider is reporting that Apple plans to discontinue the Mac Mini. I can only hope they’re wrong. The last two Macs I’ve bought, including the one that powers this site, are both Minis; and I’ve assumed I’ll be able to buy more in the future.
The Mini is a wonderful apartment computer: fits in a small space, draws little power, makes almost no noise. I’m tempted to replace my dual G5 tower with a Mini next go round. The expandability of the tower is nice, but to be honest all I ever do is plugin one USB or Firewire device after another. I’ve never actually bothered to pop the hood and install a new drive or ATA card or anything.
If I were buying a new desktop today, a tricked out Mac Mini with 2 gigabytes of RAM and 160 GB hard drive would cost $1249. By contrast the minimum Mac Pro (1GB, 250GB) starts at $2200, and goes up to $2499 when I add enough RAM to run Parallels. I could use the bigger hard drive in the Mac Pro and might want a more powerful graphics card (though I’m not sure about that) but otherwise the Mini is adequate for my needs.
Small is beautiful. More importantly, small is convenient and cheap. Add an HDMI port, a cable card, and DVR software and the Mac Mini could become the digital hub that AppleTV so much isn’t. We need more Minis, not less. Please Apple: don’t kill the Mini.
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