Look, I can bash Apple with the best of them, from Apple, we saw them take a crappy GPU INTEL GMA on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd GEN WHITE MACBOOK and see the OPEN GL go from 70%, 120% to 171% with Leopard, but still no games, but you could run MOTION and PRO APPS (reported on BAREFEAT.com), nothing else mattered, no games, no fast dedicated GPU, so what did APPLE do? They released another GMA X 300 or X1300 and the benchmarks went from 171% DOWN DOWN DOWN to 70% making PRO APPS useless. Point is, laptops sell the most, PC or MAC.
Now, for the 1st time, not sure what the benchmarks are but if it does what I think it does, the MINI has just become a mini studio, PRO AUDIO (Firewire), Video (FIREWIRE) and ability to run Pro Applications, Motion, Adobe Illustrator - to me, that's a big deal. Not that I need a MINI but its nice to know that you can throw a few hundered down and throw them in edit bays, 2,3,4 and have a machine capable of running PRO APPS and FIREWIRE AUDIO devices. This is a huge deal. You can have two (2) machines for the price of one iMac.
This is a great back up device to, you can daisy chain them and create servers if you wanted, heck, if you don't mind voiding the warranty, take the HD out and put in larger HD, although w/FIREWIRE, you can have 10+ external HD's and a audio/video firewire device on one machine.
It really is a big deal, will have to wait to see the bench marks but if it runs any pro app and has firewire and comes un under $<1000.00 US, this is a huge step for Apple.
I will agree given the economy, they may not sell, simple economics, people want a DVR, COMPUTER, all in one device these days if they are going to plop down $$$ in the worst economy in almost 70 years.
Shame the laptops still lack 1394 (non mb pro).
Guess Apple realizes that since laptops sell much more, then can do what they want.
