Separated At Birth
peharri said:
Well, you can always attach an external CD or DVD drive I guess. Actually, my major issues with the above spec would be more to do with the lack of networking. I think it should have 802.11 built-in, with Ethernet available as a USB or Firewire dongle.
They'd make great little home servers. In fact, if you sold them and also sold the 770-like device I've mentioned in the past (a "client" 802.11 device like the Nokia 770, with a web browser, able to access iTunes and iPhoto shared libraries, etc), you could probably change how we all use computers.
Of course, it'd be a little over-engineered for such a task. I wish I had a few million dollars, I'd put this kind of stuff in production.
Yes! Peharri, we must have been separated at birth because you and I consistently come up with the same ideas in these threads while others are cracking jokes about Chinese characters and Powerbook G5s. I fooled around with photoshop last week trying to come up with something I had envisioned, and that was an Apple set-top box that functioned mainly as a home internet and iLife server.
Obviously Apple has considered something like this as was evidenced by the recent comments concerning bringing functionality and media into the living room, but rather than develop a different box with limited computing features they chose to use the Mac Mini to meet the demand. Perhaps we are both a little ahead of the times, but I think something like this could be a hit.
Imagine a sleek black box with the glowing translucent Apple logo in the shape of a DVD player--wide, but not tall or too deep. The box includes:
*a wireless internet hub (802.11n/g);
*a Blu-ray drive;
*iLife software to pull up iTunes, iPhoto and access shared data from other machines via Bonjour;
*a 500 GB HDD to centrally store media files that is also accessible/updatable by a remote administrator via Bonjour;
*a firmware version of Front Row as the interface as you press "input" from the television remote.
What did I forget? I don't think the demand is out there yet, but as more content is available in the iTMS and the networking becomes more seamless between machines, Apple may have another product to market separately from the Mini. For now I can understand why Apple wants to get the Mini into as many homes as possible, but the above described device may be something that consumers would look at if the price is right. Ultimately, that's the problem with such a solution--how do you cut costs to make up for the expensive video card, blu-ray drive and hard disk? With the processor? I'm not sure.
