Web Logs
1/13/2005 - Apple's New Crop
Macworld Expo was last Tuesday and just about every rumor of what Apple was going to announce came true. All except the FireWire audio interface, but NAMM is next week. My take on the new products:
- iPod Shuffle - A great device and well designed to not cannibalize higher-end iPod sales. They'll sell a ton of these.
- Mac Mini (Or Mini Mac as I know everyone longs to say) - I have mixed feelings about this one. I wasn't a fan of the first cube and couldn't see who it was marketed to. I can see the market for this machine, but I think it's a lot smaller than Apple imagines. Their trouble is two-fold: one, the machine that would sell well, a stripped down Mac build on cheap, standard parts, would cut too deeply into other Mac sales, and two, Steve Jobs just couldn't stand selling a cheap "Wallmart-Mac". So we have the Mac Mini. Let's hope it's enough.
- iWork - So-so. Not the Microsoft Word replacement they should have shot for.
- iLife - The new features in GarageBand look excellent. Let's just hope they ironed out most of the bugs in the program's old features.
