Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Last evening I had the opportunity to speak to Omar Jamil of Red Herring, who was writing this article and asked my thoughts about the rumors of a cheap Mac, allegedly to be introduced at MWSF. Mr. Jamil asked a number of hard questions, many of which I really didn’t have an answer for simply because there aren’t enough facts with which to form a solid opinion about the subject yet, if it’s even true. I was able to theorize a bit, however, and Mr. Jamil chose the perfect quote to represent my first thoughts on the issue:

Apple could not be reached for comment. Even assuming the rumors to be true, a new low-end iMac does not guarantee that Apple will successfully lure Windows users to the Apple platform. Aaron Adams, a Mac enthusiast and occasional co-host of Your Mac Life, believes a new headless Mac runs the risk of cannibalizing the sales of existing products.

ÒThe specs for this headless box very closely matched the iBook, and Apple is selling iBooks like hotcakes,Ó he said. Given that the new iMac would be cheaper than the iBook, he wonders whether this might eat into iBook sales. Additionally, he said, a new low-end iMac would replace the eMac as AppleÕs low-end machine and possibly erode sales of that product as well.

I’d like to take an opportunity to elaborate on those remarks here.

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The Mac world practically exploded today over speculation that Apple will introduce a $500 headless Mac this coming January at MWSF. Allegedly, the machine will have the following (partial) specs:

• 1.25 GHz G4 processor
• 256 MB RAM
• 40 or 80 GB HD, uncertain
• Combo drive (CD-RW / DVD)
• Unspecified number of USB 2.0 ports
• Unspecified number of FireWire 400 ports
• 10/100 Ethernet
• 56k v.92 modem
• AirPort Extreme (802.11g) support

My question to Windows users is this: If a machine were manufactured by Apple and sold for $500 with these admittedly incomplete specs, would you purchase it?

Post your response in this forum thread (no longer active). (Registration required.)

A few months ago, David Pogue told my friend Shawn King in an interview that Apple’s switch campaign was a failure. Pogue is usually a pretty sharp pundit, but in this case he’s flat out wrong. If the Switch campaign was a failure because a tidal wave of Windows users didn’t knock over the local Apple store in their rush to purchase new computers, then yes, it was. From a more realistic perspective, the Switch campaign was a success. The point of the campaign was primarily to get people talking, to plant the idea into peoples’ minds, to get a conversation started, to make the idea acceptable Ñ and it has certainly succeeded. The fact that Pogue even uses the word “switcher” while putting the campaign down is evidence of that: Very rarely, before June of 2002, did anyone use the word “switcher” in reference to changing preferences from any computer platform to another. “Switcher” is now part of the Apple lexicon, and is starting to take hold in the general computing world as well.

And now, 36 months later, the iPod halo effect takes center stage.

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This past Thanksgiving, my mother brought over a collection of old pictures that she let me keep for a few weeks. I scanned them and imported them into iPhoto, did some color correction, and had two books printed for her and my grandmother.

The fact that iPhoto provides the ability to make these very nice books is a cool feature. However, they’re a little bit of a pain to lay out. I’ve got a suggestion to make the book creating process more friendly.

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Contributed by reader BuckNut.

The battery in my two year old, first generation iPod started to lose capacity after 18 months. It held less and less of a charge until it finally would run about half an hour before failure. My choices were to send it to Apple for $99 and receive a refurbished iPod in return or try to replace the battery myself. After some quick checking I found that replacement batteries ranged from around $20 to $50. This seemed like a better option to me than sending it to Apple for a couple of reasons. First, I am cheap. The cost of the new battery would be significantly less if I did it myself. Second, I have always been into tinkering with electronics, cars or whetever else I could take apart and this seemed like a good challenge. However, the plan of replacing the iPod battery myself introduced an element of risk over sending it to Apple. Would it be worth the savings to crack it open myself? I decided to find out.

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