Appropriately, I’m typing this on our Mac Mini, or is it our Mini Mac? Anyway, don’t miss Steve Job’s keynote speech at MacWorld. Despite never quite being completely taken in by all things Mac, this yearly speech is nevertheless one not to miss.
The content of this year’s speech isn’t quite as outstandingly brilliant and amazing as previous years, but it is still great to see the way Apple make such effective use of style - the Apple brand is incredible. What they never seem to mention is the actual Apple market share of computing, which I’m sure I recently read is around 3%.
Anyway, last year we purchased a Mac Mini. We make extensive use of it. Actually, not in the way I thought we would. Developing online activities and websites, I purchased it to enable testing and development of our materials on a different operating system. It now holds all our music and serves as a digital music library for our SoundBridge player. We also use it for photos and scanning - so it is basically a digital resource store.
What the Mac Mini isn’t as good at - and this is obvious when you look at the specs - is Flash authoring. I thought it might be a great tool to use, but I found it simply couldn’t keep up the Flash authoring program. Thus I’m firmly in favour of using our main PC for Flash development.
Nevertheless I’m very keen to make use of Macs. I’ve been exploring the potential uses of Mac Minis at school but the prices and relative power don’t really cut it. It will be interesting to see what the potential uses and benefits are. From my own limited experience I don’t thing that Mac Minis will be powerful enough for school use.
Then again, there is the rest of the Apple Mac product line - I’m sure the more powerful machines would be amazing development tools.
Do find time to watch the keynote address. If not just for the amazing technology, then for the features that Microsoft will be implementing in their next releases 
One thing that Steve Jobs and Apple do is announce a new feature or a new product. They don’t say “coming soon” - they say “available today”. I like that.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Carl // Jan 11, 2006 at 12:49 am
Interesting post.
I also have a Mac Mini, although I don’t use it as much as I should. I mainly use it for web browsing and general office stuff.
I disagree with your comments regarding mac mini’s and macs in schools though, I know many schools who have dedicated ‘mac rooms’ the kids love them, the tech’s do and the staff! I’ve heard of the kids asking in ICT lessons if they can use the mac’s instead of the normal windows PC! I believe all children in schools should use many different operating systems, including Linux.
2 Andrew Field // Jan 11, 2006 at 1:02 am
If you read what I said carefully, I think that Mac Minis don’t work on both price and performance. We can source cheaper but more powerful PCs. In the school environment this is the bottom line - how much does it cost. Apple promote the Mac Mini as a cheap way to upgrade an existing suite.
You could justify the additional outlay if the performance was there, but my experience with higher end applications such as the Flash authoring tool is that the Mac Mini is too slow.
Thus, I reckon if a school is looking a Macs they would do better to purchase a higher end machine - as a Mac Mini is a false economy.
I do think a school can make use a Mac Minis further though - such as to power a display system, to supplement / replace PCs in a music department. It is just as high-end applications become the standard tools even for teaching KS3 ICT, you’ll need a more powerful Mac.
3 Andrew Field // Jan 11, 2006 at 1:05 am
Here is a good, objective summary of the speech:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/10/apple_itunes_market_share/