The Lite Side

20 Reasons the Mac mini will Fail and Doom Apple

Dan Knight - 2005.01.13

Bill Palmer is right. The Mac mini is the biggest blunder in Apple history. It's going to eclipse the Apple III, Lisa, Newton, and Cube as the biggest fiasco in Apple's almost 30 year history.

Despite Apple's long list of consumer successes - the entire Apple II line, the Mac Classic, the LC, the Performas, and the CRT iMac among them - the mini just isn't going to sell, and Apple will be forced to become a consumer electronics company instead of a computer company.

If you thought Apple was beleaguered back in 1987, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Here are twenty reasons the Mac mini will fail and dooms Apple:

Nobody will buy a computer that doesn't come with a mouse and keyboard.
Nobody will pay for Apple's mouse/keyboard bundle because real people use multi-button mice with scroll wheels, so Apple will be stuck with a warehouse full of white mice and keyboards.
Nobody wants to use their old monitors with new computers, and Apple doesn't offer an appropriately priced one to complement the Mac mini.
Mac mavens won't buy it because Apple doesn't make a matching low-cost monitor. It's Apple or nothing.
Current Mac owners have been conditioned by Steve Jobs to ask, "Where's the built-in monitor?" and won't buy it.
iPod owners won't buy it once they discover that the Mac mini lacks a click-wheel.
Windows users will never get used to the menu being at the top of the screen instead of at the top of each window.
Nobody will buy a 1.25 GHz computer. It doesn't have enough Hertz, MIPS, or whatever number explains how much faster a low-end 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 is than a low-end 1.25 GHz G4.
Following another Austin Powers trip through time to trademark "mini" before the mini skirt is invented, Mike Meyers sues Apple out of business over the iPod mini and Mac mini.
Ditto for BMW, who also sues over product name confusion.
PC geeks will never recommend the Mac mini because it doesn't have enough drive bays, can't be overclocked and liquid cooled, and is stuck with the built-in video.
PC gamers will never recommend the Mac mini because the video doesn't reach a high enough frame rate. (These are the people who spend more on a video card than the price of the whole Mac mini.)
IT guys will never recommend the Mac mini because they only do Windows.
Parents will never buy the Mac mini because their children have to use the same computer daddy uses at work - er, that their school uses.
Flower Power iMac owners won't buy the Mac mini because it isn't pretty enough.
Minorities and the politically correct crowd will refuse to buy one until Apple offers the Mac mini in black, yellow, red, and brown. These people have also been avoiding the snow iMacs, ice iBooks, white iPods, and other white Apple products for years.
Windows users will turn their backs on Mac OS X because there just isn't as much of that free software that installs spyware on their computers. And there aren't enough viruses, either. Or email worms. Or spambots.
Windows geeks will also complain that there aren't enough Mac warez sites.
Conditioned by years of pundits and flacks claiming that Macs are too expensive, buyers won't believe that the Mac mini sells for less than a Dell Dimension 3000 - even if they go to both websites and do the configuration themselves.
And last, but far from least, the stupid little thing still doesn't have a floppy drive!

Well, that about sums it up. In short, Apple is going to lose its shirt on this one and either go out of business completely or just drop the Mac and become The iPod Company.

Read this article in Italian on Macity: Mac mini, sarà il più grande flop della storia di Apple (e la farà chiudere)

Join us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

Recent Lite Sides

You Might Be a Computer Geek If..., 2009.06.17. 20 signs that you just might possibly be a computer geek.
What if Apple thought like a PC company?, 2007.11.01. Apple has innovated and blazed its own trail. But what if it had followed the path taken by the PC copycats?
How Microsoft can turn Vista lemons into lemonade, 2007.10.22. How Microsoft could profit by no longer allowing manufacturers to sell new PCs with Windows XP installed.
More in the The Lite Side index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Macintosh Portable, introduced 1989.09.20. The nearly 16 lb. behemoth was innovative but not a smashing success.
February 13 in LEM history: 01: Layoffs may hurt Mac market - 02: Unix for the Mac - Rage against the Macintosh - 03: Options to move data from PCs to Macs - 04: Low cost RAM for older 'Books - 06: Apple, IBM, and Intel - 07: Picking the right cheap computer, new or used - 08: I needed to find an older Mac
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2012 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.

Custom Search

Follow Low End Mac on Twitter
Join Low End Mac on Facebook

Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler 11 is now in the Mac App Store!! -- Special Introductory Price of $59.95!! -- To Buy From The Mac App Store Click Here Now!! Or buy direct from Strider Software.

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker and Mac Casino applications in minutes.

Affiliates

Amazon.com
The Apple Store
The iTunes Store
PC Connection Express
GainSaver
Parallels Desktop for Mac
eBay