Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

My mom is not a geek. I would consider her a typical computer user Ñ she is able to learn to do specific tasks she wants to do and has specific uses for her machine. She uses it for things like online banking, simple word processing, e-mail, reading about certain topics on the web, and so on. She has no idea what the term “headless” means and doesn’t know the difference between a CD and a DVD. She just wants a computer that works and is simple to use. She’s a perfect candidate to own a Mac.

Until the summer of 2004, my mother used my old PC, a home-built 233 MHz Pentium MMX machine running Windows 98, that I gave her before I replaced it with a home-built 550 MHz Pentium III system in 1999. Her machine had a 15-inch CRT monitor, a 1.08 GB hard drive, 256MB RAM, a typical sound card (the specs of which I can’t remember), and a Matrox graphics card. It was a good machine for its time, and it had done what mom needed it to do. At some point, my brother used it for a week or so and it became infested with the worst porn spyware I’d ever seen, and no amount of cleaning by AdAware, Spybot S&D, or other anti-spyware software could completely clean it off. Since the machine was more than 6 years old, since the drive was running out of space, since the monitor was getting soft, almost to the point of being unreadable, since the machine had been made unbearably slow by spyware that couldn’t be removed and wouldn’t stop coming, I decided she needed a new machine.

Mom is not a person of many means, so it was up to me to purchase a machine for her as a gift. Had the Mac mini been available at the time, it certainly would have been a Mac model I would have considered. The rest of this case study is intended to be a thought experiment of sorts, going back in time and applying current products to past circumstances. To state it another way, if mom still owned that same aged PC today, how would the Mac mini stand up as a replacement option? After all, switchers with old or broken PCs are part of Apple’s stated target market for the device. Apple intends switchers to drop the Mac mini in place of the PC with the current display, keyboard, and mouse still in tact. Would that have worked for mom?

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As promised, I’m providing a link to the video of Wil Wheaton of Star Trek fame being shocked by this game. I’m playing the game on the right, and Wil is on the left. I’m not sure who the man in the middle is, and the giant bald guy is Shawn King.

Wil Wheaton gets zapped

The plural of anecdote is not data. As a Mac user, I’ve exposed a number of people to Macs who otherwise never would have bothered looking at one. Many of those people are interested in trying out a Mac if they can find the combination of price and features they like.

Many in the Mac community have heralded the concept of a headless Mac, now known as the Mac mini, as Apple’s one needed giant step toward attracting switchers. Now that the product is out there and Windows users have had a chance to digest the information, I intend to provide a series of case studies where I question potential switchers I’m acquainted with in an attempt to discover their thoughts about the Mac mini. What I present is anecdotal evidence at best, taken from a small but, I believe, valid cross-section of computer users who represent potential switchers. As I have no way to collect actual, verifiable data, anecdotes will have to do.

My first case study is Scott, a long-time Windows-using friend of mine who I spoke to first about a possible Mac mini purchase. Below I state my thesis, and then present Scott’s circumstances, options, and opinions, and leave the comparison between my thesis and Scott’s situation up to the reader.

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Prior to this year’s Macworld. I was very sure that the rumors of a headless Mac were untrue simply because the product idea made so little sense. Now that the Mac mini is a reality, I still think it’s a product that doesn’t make much sense in a number of ways. The Mac mini may be priced at $499 at the outset, but turning it into a usable computer by attaching a display, keyboard, and mouse turns out, in many situations, to add logistical complications and additional expense to these boxes right out of the gate. (Also, most users’ desire for additional RAM will make the Mac mini initially more expensive than the $499 price tag.) The idea of an inexpensive headless Mac isn’t the panacea some fantasize it to be Ñ in fact, it may be the opposite. The Mac mini will be a mediocre seller at best and could end up being Apple’s biggest mistake since the Cube.

Why do I have such a bleak outlook on the Mac mini? The answer to that question is rather involved and includes a number of elements such as Apple marketing, other Apple products, and Windows users’ expectations.

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On Thursday, Your Mac Life interviewed Wil Wheaton, best known as Wesley Crusher from Star Trek, and he pimped his new book. Wil turned out to be a nice guy and when he wasn’t looking, J and I got this picture with him.

Left to right: Me, J, and Will.

Wil also played the electroshock game with us. As soon as J has time to post the video, I’ll link to it here. And I am not a Trekkie.