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Apple’s New Move into Living Room
Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on June 28, 2010
A couple of weeks ago Apple introduced a “redesigned” MacMini computer. It’s the unit’s biggest upgrade in five years making it especially attractive as an Internet gateway and media center for televisions.
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A MacMini is a computer typically sold without a monitor. Increasingly it is often mated to an HDTV, just like a DVD player or video game console. As a result, the television becomes a gigantic computer monitor. Users often buy a wireless mouse and keyboard in order to control the MacMini from a convenient viewing distance such as the living room sofa.
The unit includes lightning fast dot-11n WiFi enabling it to connect over a home network to the Internet. Consequently, broadband ISP subscribers get high speed Internet right on their televisions. They can choose to watch conventional TV with a one-button click on their TV remote by selecting, for example, the CATV input. Alternately, they can chose Internet access on the TV with a one-button click on the same remote by selecting the socket where the MacMini is connected.
The following new features improve the MacMini as an Internet gateway.
First, unlike earlier versions the new one includes an HDMI socket. That means it can deliver to the TV high quality video and sound over a single cable. Earlier versions required adapter cables, complex harnesses, or separate wires for sound and video. HDMI is an industry standard used by many electronics appliances, such as DVD players, designed to be connected to HDTV’s.
Second, presumably with Internet video in mind, Apple provides a handy control permitting users to easily adjust the MacMini output to fill even the biggest HDTV screen. By comparison, it is often complicated to configure a Windows laptop to fill-up the entire screen when a TV is used as an external display.
Third, the new MacMini uses a cord similar to an ordinary-looking household electrical cable since the power supply is built-in. There is no external transformer, sometimes derisively labeled a “brick”.
Fourth, the graphics card is about twice as fast making it suitable for more advanced video games.
Although not a new feature many users appreciate that MacMinis are compatible with Adobe Flash. Like all conventional Macs the Minis use Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system instead of the iOS of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Some buyers may consider such compatibility an important feature since Flash remains the leading video platform on the Net, although its days appear to be numbered as iOS-based devices gain popularity.
MacMini comes in two models. One is priced at $700 and the second at $1,000, which are higher than the previous tags at $600 and $800 respectively. The lower model has a slower processor, DVD Player/Burner, half the RAM, and 65% of the Disk memory of the top model. The top model eliminates the DVD slot, relying instead on a 500 Gigabyte hard drive. Presumably, Apple wants users to download or rent videos from its iTunes store instead of using DVDs. It seems a natural evolution given the vanishing pre-recorded music CD.
The most important inference of the upgrade is that Apple is likely much more serious about the Digital Living Room than implied by management’s public comments suggesting that AppleTV – a more limited but perhaps better known product — is merely a hobby. In our analysis, most anyone using a computer as a TV Internet gateway for more than six months cannot fail to conclude that consumers will ultimately demand unlimited Web access on their televisions.
This video demonstrates just how powerfully a computer can transform a TV into a media center, even though the MacMini used in the example is about two years old.
Categories: Podcast Audio
Tags: Adobe, Apple, AppleTV, Flash, Future of TV, Future-of-Television, iTunes, MacMini, Market Research
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Phil,
Apart from the price, which seems a little high for what this thing is going to do, will the Mac Mini finally support AppleTV HD Rental/Purchase downloads? I was under the impression that this was limited to AppleTV’s only.
Thanks for your insight.
I too am disappointed with the price, but speculate that Apple is keeping it high so as to provide an umbrella under which to offer a future appliance that is even simpler to use. But if such an appliance fails to offer unlimited Internet access, or at least an abundance of Apps, then I will still prefer the MacMini.
The MacMini will play HD movies from iTunes…and anywhere else. Take a look at the video linked near the end of the post to see how powerful the MacMini can be as a media center.