Mac Mini is in dire straits. As of today it has gone without updates for 1229 days. Last time it was updated, we were still expecting our daughter. Now she’s talking and walking. When Apple executives invited bunch of pundits to reassure them of the future of the Mac, they said of the Mini “it remains a product in our lineup”. Tim Cook tried reassuring that it has a future, but he didn’t promise anything tangible either. This troubles me, and not just because I’m in a market for a new Mini. I have a connection to the Mini.
Let’s go back in time by 15 years or so. For years I had observed the Mac-community from a distance. I curiously watched the keynotes, trying to figure out what was it that made the company and its products so appealing to so many. Occasionally I trolled Apple-related discussions, berating people for buying “overpriced computers” and listing spec-sheets that proved how crappy their computers were and how they just didn’t understand. But deep down I felt that it was me who did not understand. These people had understood something that I was missing.
In Macworld 2005, Steve Jobs announced the Mac Mini. “The most affordable Mac ever. People who have thought about switching have no more excuses”. I was intrigued.
Apple wanted to release a computer that had low barrier of entry. It was inexpensive, which helped to make it easy to buy. It was small and quiet, which made it easy to own. Had they built it from normal components, in to a normal sized computer, they might have been able to make it a bit cheaper. But would it have mattered all that much if it were hundred bucks cheaper? Not really. But I bet it would have mattered a lot had it been sized like a normal computer. And not in a good way. Had the Mini been the size of a normal computer, it would not have been as appealing since owning it would have required bigger commitment. It would have meant more obvious technology in your life. Being so small, the Mini could be lost in a typical workdesk. You could own one, and lose it among your papers on your desk.
Mac Mini didn’t look or feel like a computer. It felt like a friendly appliance, an aluminum box where some computing-stuff happened. This was reinforced by the box it shipped in, with its friendly handle. You could pick one up at a retailer, just like you picked up a sixpack of beer at your corner-store. It was as easy as it was friendly.
So I bought one. Logic was that if it didn’t work out, I could sell it, and I wouldn’t lose all that much. I used OS X for the first time in my life, and noticed that gradually I used the Mini more and more. Everything just worked, everything was so easy and polished. Using my PC became a chore, as it was big, noisy and clumsy. Not to mention the software that ran on it. As time went on, I started noticing things that simply were not as refined on the PC. In theory it did everything Mac OS did, but it did it worse, with less elegance.
My PC was powerful, yes. It was custom-built computer, running Windows and optimised Gentoo Linux. I dread thinking how much time I spent compiling all my software from scratch, just so it would be optimised for my exact computer. It was the polar opposite of the Mac Mini. But mostly that power went unused. It had lots of power to do things I really liked to do on the Mac instead. So I did those things on the Mac, even if it had less power. The PC was superior in ways which did not matter, the Mac was superior in ways that did matter. When my PC broke down, I never bothered to fix it. And I never looked back.
In your typical bullet-point comparisons the benefits of the Mini were not obvious. It had less megahertz and megabytes, so surely it was a worse computer? No, it wasn’t. You can’t measure the niceness of a product, nor can you list it in a spec-sheet. And that applies as much today as it applied twelve years ago, when I bought my first Mac. And it’s still something that the detractors are missing. They boil the product down to raw numbers, and use them to determine the winner. But that’s not how we buy our cars, or homes, or choose our partners. Why should we buy our computers like that? Why should a computer be less personal choice than those other things are?
That Mini is now gone, sold on to a Mac-enthusiast. But it’s grandchild sits in my closet, serving files and media in my network. On my table is an iMac, in my pocket is an iPhone, in my man-purse is an iMacbook and next to my television is an AppleTV. But it all started from that small, humble, unassuming computer. The Mini was the One.
Lumisade 