As a Mac mini owner, I’ve been left rather cold by all the hype surrounding the Apple TV.
The Apple TV is just a crippled Mac mini, without a full OS X license.
Some of the most useful apps on my Mac mini aren’t available unless you install OS X, and that usually means paying for a new OS X license.
VLC, Safari, Firefox, full iTunes, MacTF, Google Earth, YouTube. All these apps run beautifully on my Core Solo Mac mini, and are far more powerful than Front Row.
There’s also an awful lot to be said for having USB and Firewire ports, so that it’s easy to connect to external devices.
Rather than having people hack their Mac minis, Apple should reintroduce the Core Solo Mac mini, with 40Gb of disk space, and sell it for $449 (£299), exactly halfway between the price of a Core Duo Mac mini and an Apple TV. It’s not as if the hardware inside the Apple TV is going to be significantly cheaper to manufacture, so $449 should be a completely achievable price point.
Until Apple do this, I’d recommend a used Mac mini over a hacked Apple TV.
As a related aside, I’ve discovered that a trackball works much better than a mouse when you’re sitting on a sofa. No more leaning forward to move a mouse round my coffee table. However, the fact that I care about this is pretty damning…
I don’t see why Apple wouldn’t do this. It might hurt Apple TV sales a little bit but I’ve never believed their strategy was based around the kit – it’s all about making iTunes a better prospect for the TV/Film companies. Everything else Apple are doing with iTunes – e.g. the DRM-free tracks, little things like ‘complete my album’ – shows that it’s gone up in their priorities.
The only reason I can come up with, is that they want to keep their product line simple. But I do think they’re missing a trick here.