BYOKMD doesn’t work for low-budget consumers

The Mac Mini hasn’t been a great success in large part because of Apple’s flawed Mac Mini strategy. Yesterday, Steve discussed Apple’s philosophy on consumer products, he said,”It’s an All-in-One World”. But the Mac Mini is the farthest thing from an all-in-one machine. Most low-budgeted consumers don’t already have a display and/or peripherals. So, when checking out the Mac Mini, they don’t understand the Mac Mini’s lack of a display, mouse, or keyboard; and they ultimately look to alternatives because of this. The Mac Mini doesn’t offer everything out of the box, and that turns off many low-budget consumers.

Additionally, customers realize that the price of a Mac Mini with a display, mouse, and keyboard would be around the same price as a MacBook or an iMac.

AppleTV is replacing the Mac Mini as the affordable media center solution

Initially, many Mac Mini users were using their Mac Mini as a home media center. And now, Apple’s cutting into it’s own marketshare, since the AppleTV has replaced the Mac Mini as the preferred Apple media center for half the price. This effect will only snowball as the AppleTV gains more functionality and popularity.

$599 > $499

When the Mac Mini was unveiled, Apple was getting a lot of positive feedback for finally offering a budget-driven Macintosh for only $499. But Apple quietly increased that price $100 for each model on the February 28th special event in 2006 and has yet to lower the models back to their original prices, while other PC manufacturers have continued to lower their prices. That extra $100 makes a big difference for a lot of people, especially when the consumer has to buy a separate mouse, keyboard, and display in order to use the computer.

A proven failure

Right now, the Mac Mini seems to be going through the “Cube effect”. Two Apple-related products, the NeXT Cube and the PowerMac G4 Cube, were both discontinued due to their high price-points and lack of necessary peripherals. Those two products also didn’t survive because consumers prefer functionality over design. And unfortunately, it looks as if the Mac Mini is already on the way to suffering the same fate if Apple doesn’t do anything about it.

How Apple can save the Mac Mini

The Mac Mini’s price-point aren’t targeted toward a big consumer audience. It’s awkwardly priced too high for low-end consumers, and it doesn’t offer some of the features high-end consumers want that can’t afford a Mac Pro and already have a display. Apple could either go two directions with the Mac Mini, lower its value and cater to the really low-end consumer; or bump up its graphics and processing capabilities and cater to a higher-level consumer audience that already have a display. Either way, the Mac Mini would finally be saved from its unfortunate fate and finally have a respectable place in Apple’s product line.

• Aperture
• Apple Pro Apps
• Front Row
• iTunes 7 (including Front Row)
• Leopard Quicklook
• iPhone and AppleTV GUI

Well, now Steve has revealed the true user interface of Leopard will be, and it comes quite close to our speculation half-a-year ago. However, Apple did not rename OS X’s interface to Illuminous, as rumored. Supposedly, Aqua remains as the OS X interface, but now its evolved into a shiny, iTunes 7-like, animated, glassy user interface that we predicted for Illuminous.

The core of the new interface seems to be centered around the Desktop and Finder, both have been revamped in Leopard. The menu bar is transparent and the dock now has a 3D “block” look. The Finder now behaves much like iTunes 7, with a sidebar and CoverFlow navigation.

Other notable user-interface details concerning Leopard:

• The Finder can now has a large thumbnail view
• The top corners of the screen are no longer rounded
• Front Row now resembles AppleTV’s user-interface
• DVD Player now sports an “iPhoto full-screen mode” interface
• Quicktime movies can now be played fullscreen via Quicklook
• Developers can now build their own effects for Photo Booth
• iCal now has a revamped interface
• iChat features new effects for video conferences and a new sidebar/tabbed navigation

We pretty much know that there is going to be an Apple Special Event will take place sometime in spring to showcase the new features of Leopard, and possibly even iLife and iWork 2007. Steve has has already made it clear that Leopard will include all of the new miscellaneous applications introduced in recent Mac products; such as Front Row, Photo Booth, and Boot Camp. In the WWDC 2006 keynote, Steve didn’t make it clear what other applications will be bundled with Leopard, “These are just three examples of how we’re going to ship the complete package of applications with Leopard.” iLife and iWork 2007 would be a significant addition to the new bundled applications in Leopard.

In Apple’s quarter one financial results conference call, an Apple financial advisor told an analyst to “stay tuned” for iLife-related announcements. iLife has never before been bundled with a retail box of Mac OS X, but the suite comes with every Mac. Bundling with Mac OS X would make the software product line much simple and definitely would be a major reason to upgrade to the new OS. One of Apple’s key strategies to switching consumers from Windows to Mac was the “Everything is in the Box” strategy, where everything you could possibly want is bundled with the Mac.

It wasn’t long ago when Macs were bundled with Apple’s own complete office suite, Appleworks, a port from its Mac OS 9 version and was far out-of-date and unstable to compete with Microsoft’s dominant Office suite. For a long time, people have thought the Mac could only be used for creative work. While that might be true, times are changing and many businesses and professionals are switching to Macs. Bundling iWork with Leopard and every Mac could alter the office landscape permanently. Logically, it would then make sense for Apple to include a spreadsheet application to complete the suite and therefore really compete with Microsoft Office.

While this may give Apple a license to raise the price of their operating system upgrade, I think many would be willing to pay the difference. From a marketing perspective, it makes too much sense for Apple to just bundle these great suites into Leopard. Apple didn’t break the yearly iLife and iWork upgrade tradition for no reason.

The floodgates of Apple’s R&D departments flew upon us today and shocked us all. The buzz and publicity the keynote has attracted has made both geeks and consumers froth with excitement and made the Intel transition sound unimportant.

Evolving into a consumer electronics company

Today Steve Jobs introduced the new corporate name for Apple Computer; “Apple”. Onstage Steve concluded that Apple is no longer just a computer company with the assortment of non-computer products that they sell.

Steve also made it clear once onstage that the keynote was not going to be centered around Macs and Mac OS X. That meant the rumors concerning iLife/iWork ‘07, additional Leopard previews, octo-core Mac Pros, Intel Core 2 Mac Minis, etc. did not come true. Alex Lindsay of MacBreak made an interesting point that

1. Apple did not have enough time to release all products expected to be released in an (already extended) two-hour keynote.
2. Apple wanted to make clear that the iPhone was the big announcement and not for it to be clouded by additional product announcements concerning Mac and Mac OS X. (Such as the ROKR and iPod Nano Keynote).

And as Apple is spreading its focus across the consumer electronics industry, it now has new competetives it never had before, such as Palm and RIM. Apple’s strong foundation with a large user-base and a strong will for innovation, they should have no problem.

More Mac-related product announcements soon?

Even though Steve said he wasn’t going to talk much about the Mac platform today, chances are the traditional announcements won’t go forgotten and they will introduced a few weeks from now after the buzz over the iPhone and AppleTV settle. However, it appeared as if the demo Mac was running a newer version of Keynote with new text effects, including spark and the ‘pass-through’ effects, and new graph gradient textures.

The iPhone is the iPod Killer

Whoever thought the iPod killer would be a product made by the company who made the iPod? Steve made it clear the Zune sure wasn’t going to be the iPod killer, as some thought when they heard of the Zune. But today’s iPhone announcement ended up embarrassing Microsoft and its Zune player and just shows how Microsoft is always a copier and never an innovator.

The Consumer Electronics Show and Macworld Conference & Expo coincided today. However, even with CES’ large popularity and publicity, most of the news from today’s CES news coverage was overshadowed with the revolutionary announcements in San Francisco today at Macworld.

I talked to people here who have seen the Apple phone and they were practically frothing with excitement. But even if it were more reasonably priced, it will be primarily attractive to early adopters and those who either have to replace their existing phone or whose cellular contract is up.

An iPhone without a phone?

The downside to the mobile phone market is becoming compliant with each independent wireless provider and saturating each wireless provider’s market share. While I wasn’t surprised at all, I was disappointed that Apple chose not to partner with Verizon and Sprint to captivate more potential buyers who are already in contracts with other wireless carriers. Even if Apple gains serious market share in Cingular’s product line, it will still not make a major impact in the overall market because of the large percentage of consumers in the United States who are customers of other wireless providers, such as Verizon and Sprint.

Besides, an iPhone without the phone would be successful by itself, with built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Multi-Touch widescreen, and OS X-based. It would be very disappointing if Apple were not to eventually develop a similar product just as an iPod. People who are loyal customers to other wireless carriers and who don’t really need a phone won’t buy an iPhone, so a large market would be left untapped.

A stronger foothold in the movie industry

With addition to each of the exciting product releases, Apple has made partnership with Paramount pictures to provide over a hundred movies available on iTunes, growing the content available on the iTunes Movie store dramatically and becoming a leader in the downloadable movie industry. Paramount pictures is the second major studio to partner with Apple to sell downloadable versions of their movies. Paramount is a big studio to partner with, and it will sure trigger many more partnerships with other major movie studios.

The AppleTV will revolutionize the way many get their movie content, instead of paying subscription-based services or renting movies at their local Blockbuster, they instead just decide what they want on the couch and buy it through the iTunes store.

Partnership with Apple Corps.?

Steve seemed to really push the Beatles today, playing ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and a few other Beatles hits during the keynote. I doubt he would be promoting music that they do not currently sell on the iTunes store during the Macworld keynote, so chances of a new Apple Corps. partnership would be very likely considering the facts.

Also, the shedding of the term ‘Computer’ from Apple’s corporate name is symbolic not only of their new strides in consumer electronic innovations, but also the end to their disputes with Apple Corps. While we may not ever understand the complete details of what went on after their last settlement, but it looks as if their bruised relationship is beginning to heal.

This pretty illuminating graphic screams that they are ready to kick some ass in 2007 and onward. Apple has not looked this good since 1984 with a solid beautiful operating system, a great product line of desktop and laptop computers, a great foothold in the consumer electronic and music industry, and an-ever brighter future.

From an analytical point of view, Apple’s obviously got some fantastic products yet to be released to call the iPod and all of its Macintoshes “just the beginning”. Personally, I am on the edge of my seat to see how Apple is going to make 2007 the beginning of a new era for Apple. 2006 was a great year for Apple to lay a solid foundation for Apple to build on with Leopard, the iTV, HD content on iTunes, and new iPods (widescreen). But as always this time of the year, we just got to wait and see because nothing is for sure until Steve announces Macworld’s infamous “One more thing…”

However more interesting, the article concludes that Apple has definitely glossed over a large portion of the interface with the black glass appearance, similar to iTunes 7 and iPhoto 6.

Apple continues to gloss over the interface, refining it even more and there is an overly presence of black gloss.

The seed has yet to be delivered to external developers and no screenshots have yet been posted online.

Its no question that Leopard will feature a new GUI, but no one really knows what it will look like. Its no doubt that Leopard will feature resolution-independent graphics support that will allow for greater resolution displays with the same and windows sizes. However, the details of the interface have not yet been revealed, but many are hoping that we will see the final announcement of Leopard features at Macworld 2007, where chances of a GUI announcement are high.

Apple Gazette has featured a new rumor from a supposed insider that has claimed that the new GUI that will replace Aqua will be nicknamed ‘Illuminous’. The report has no solid information on what the Illuminous theme will look like, but I believe I know exactly where Apple might be headed.

As I said, Apple’s latest trend in its software GUI is a darker, flatter, translucent, reflective, “illuminating” glass appearance. The GUI is also making headway beyond the sheer appearance, to window sizes, visual effects, icons, etc. Fullscreen applications will definitely be a hit in Leopard, to clear your desktop from clutter and manage your workspace more efficiently. Just like Aperture and iPhoto, imagine fullscreen browsing, video-editing, Garageband, iWork, etc. Sleek graphic effects when opening windows, files, applications, are also likely to be improved making the OS seem more alive, similar to the widget ripple effect. And with the new GUI change, I am also expecting Apple to replace their outdated icons. Ultimately, Apple is heading towards a sleeker, darker, simpler, livelier GUI.

Apple has been the leader in computer and GUI design for years, and Vista’s new Aero interface has probably provoked Apple’s design team to topping them off with a mind-blowing interface (that requires half of Aero’s hardware requirements). It would be a true disappointment if there was no sort of GUI announcement when Steve finished giving the major features in Leopard.

The dark translucent appearance Apple has developed over the last three years has seemed to have expanded to many of the operating system’s core applications. Here are a few of the many traces of the new dark glass appearance rumored to be featured in Leopard:

Aperture 1.5’s navigation window

iPhoto’s Adjust Window

Leopard’s new QuickLook feature

Front Row’s sliding dark glass

iTunes 7’s new darker appearance

Digg.com creator Kevin Rose apparently spilled some inside information on the latest Diggnation podcast about the upcoming iPhone. He wouldn’t give out too many details, but he did reveal a few specific specs, including: an official announcement at Macworld, a very small design, 4 GB and 8 GB flash memory models, a slide-out keyboard, a wide touch-screen, compatibility with all major carriers, and a revolutionary user interface. He wouldn’t discuss any more information about the iPhone on the show to protect his source, but he claims he has seen the phone (however not operating) and is positive the source is 100 percent reliable.

Other rumors include iChat video-conferencing on the phone, and tight integration with OS X 10.5 Leopard. The phone is also rumored to use an intuitive, mobile-version of Front Row for the phone’s interface interface. And according to Apple Insider, Apple has made deals with all major cellphone carriers in the United States, with the exception of T-Mobile.

Last week, Motorola released the linux-based ROKR E6 in China and is speculated to release the same phone in the United States soon and start ending their short relationship with Apple computer next month.

It was only a month ago when Motorola introduced the RAZR V3r, which dropped support for iTunes syncing and FairPlay-encoded music playing. The new ROKR E6 has replaced iTunes-only synchronizing with compatibility with basic MP3, WMA, RealPlayer audio, and etc. The release of the RAZR V3r was ultimately the beginning of the end for iTunes-integrated Motorola phones.

It wasn’t a secret that the Motorola/iTunes phones were horrible in their UI, price, and compatibility. The relationship between Apple and Motorola seems to be ending as more and more Motorola phones are dropping their support for iTunes integration and rumors of a 100 percent Apple phone are heating up. Even Apple’s investors are listening to the phone and iTV rumors as Apple’s stock has hit an all-time high.

Where would Apple be now if they had stuck with the PowerPC architecture? Would we have seen a PowerBook G5 or an sexier iBook? Would there still be a growing demand for Macs as the iPod halo starts to glow and Apple markets their products? Apple’s bold move to move over to the Intel camp was risky, but it would have been one of Apple’s biggest mistakes to have continued to produce more PowerPC machines.

I’m starting to realize the same growing trend in Macs as I’ve noticed in iPods. Macs are being used at homes, businesses, at school, on the road, and in public. Macs, especially the Macbook, are starting to get a ‘cool’ factor just like the iPod. I know many PC users expecting to buy a Mac and many parents planning to buy a Mac for their child. Even my cable guy pointed out this phenomenon when he asked me about my MacBook Pro, ‘It seems like I’ve seen more Apples the past six months than ever.’

It won’t be long until more PC users switch when they start to see more and more Macs around. It will just take some time before the majority of consumers realize you can run Microsoft Office on Macs, you can play video games on your Mac, and you can run any Windows program on your Mac.

Don’t forget MacWorld 2007 is around the corner and new products are bound to be released, including the infamous iTV (code-name, official name not released). The release of a new ultra-portable Macintosh is one of many rumors for the great event, and such a product could be the missing link between an iPod and Macs. A revolutionary product like an ultra-portable Mac could start a new progressive growth in Apple’s market share.

With prices starting at just $1,099, the new MacBook lineup includes three models: sleek white 1.83 GHz and 2.0 GHz MacBook models, and a stunning black 2.0 GHz MacBook model. With Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo processors, the new MacBook is up to 25 percent faster than the previous MacBook and up to six times faster than the iBook®, making it even easier for consumers to manage and enjoy their digital content with iLife ‘06.* Consumers will also benefit from the added power in the new 2.0 GHz models, including double the memory and greater storage capacity than the previous generation, as well as a double-layer SuperDrive™ for burning professional-quality DVDs.

But don’t forget about Apple’s refurbished products service, which was also updated earlier today to accommodate the new upgrades. A white refurbished MacBook 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo is now available for only $899 with a one-year limited warranty. A black refurbished MacBook 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo is now only $1,099. For those of you weary of refurbished products, I suggest you take a look atMacSupport’s article (including pictures) describing his experience unpacking his refurbished MacBook.

After the update the Mac Mini specifications page was accidentally updated and mistakenly revealed a non-existent page titled “intelcore2duo.html“. The Intel Core Duo logo on the left column on the page linked to the intelcore2duo page, before the link was fixed. Apple was quick to fix the mistake and now the logo links to the correct Intel Core Duo page. Several people, including myself, discovered the error on the page before it was fixed. Logically, this is a sign that a Mac Mini Core 2 update is likely in the near future, most likely within the next few weeks before the holiday season. The Mac Mini was last updated back in early September, standardizing Core Duo processors across the line. The Mac Mini is now the only Core Duo processor computer remaining in Apple’s desktop and laptop product line.