SQLDba's Profile

I know I'll be buying at least one myself. I have plenty of "horsepower" with other computers - but the more I look at the iLife applications and the older my daughter gets (now 8) the more I think a "family" computer is something that we really need. The mini isn't the most powerful or even the most current software out there - but it will run Reader Rabbit just fine, it's small enough to put in the Kitchen, will handle Quicken, iTunes and the iCal and Address Book will help us manage soccer practice and the team's phone numbers etc. and the pricepoint is such that I can buy it without a whole lot of thought or discussion. It may not be the fastest, biggest, most robust system comparatively, but in my years in IT, I got a lot of stuff done for a long time on hardware this good or worse. Intel and the computer industry has done a great job of convincing us to judge hardware on processor speed, ram and HD size and not look at the fit for the job. The reason why most of us reading this don't have riding mowers, or snow blowers with electric start is because we look at our yards and driveways, and buy what is right for the size of the job. Why don't we do the same computer wise? A dual 2.5 ghz w/ 2gb RAM is a great system - but if you are only checking email, doing a little iTunes and web surfing why do you need that? For me the mini is my push mower.....

I think you are missing the point of this very well written essay. In the Windows world - software is being developed at a breakneck pace which effectively "closes the door" on older machines and incites a "must upgrade" mentality that is driving PC sales. Every one of us could do 90% of what we do every day on a Pentium III - 700 mhz winbox. The machines that we all turn our noses up on now as being too old were state of the art and huge horsepower machines 3 years ago. What drives us to snub these machines now? New software that requires more juice. MS Office is getting beefier, Adobe apps are demanding more etc. So we abandon our old, perfectly good machines to upgrade. The problem is, the Mac is so well designed that new apps aren't making old machines obsolete. Certainly not at the pace that we see on the PC side. So what Chris is suggesting is that if you can't build software that encourages upgrades - write stuff that requires them. He may not be totally serious about his suggestion, but it does point out what we already know - that the staying power or useful life of the Mac that we love, is also a detriment. The one area where a G5 only app might best be received is in gaming. Time and time again, new games, with new graphics or processor demands drive PC upgrades. The most recent and perfect example of this is Doom 3. Read the reviews. The plot and playline of the game is nothing different from before - but its the graphics that makes the game fly off the shelf. And Doom 3 is the game that a lot of users are using to justify significant expenditures on graphics cards or complete new machines. If you ask me - what Apple needs is 1 or 2 killer Mac only games (or Mac first games) Something that is so cool, that is so amazing that people will actually consider switching or consider buying a Mac as their next computer.