Reactions to the 2005 Stevenote

Mac mini: Apple hit a home run with this one. $500 gets you a pretty good system. $650 gets you a pretty good system with enough RAM to be useable. Bluetooth opens the door to its use as a presentation server, a PVR (with a little hardware) or a new machine.

Unfortunately for all of us with older Macs, the resale price for our systems just dropped. A lot

iPod Shuffle: Perfect design. Jonathan Ive looked at what people needed in a digital music player and created it. It is teeny. It is tiny. It is perfect for runners. Unfortunately, no FM radio support.

iWork: Nice productivity suite with Apple’s typical attention to detail. And I have it on good authority they’ll be adding a spreadsheet real soon now.

All in all, I give this Keynote a 7 out of 10. A lot of really nice stuff; one earth-shattering, mind-blowing product, but with two points deducted for not streaming it live. Now to wait 9 friggin’ hours to watch it. Sheesh.

Edit: I had a comment about how I’d turn the Mac Mini into a PVR.

1. Buy the $499 Mac Mini, custom built with 1GB RAM and the 80 GB hard drive.
2. Buy one of these to plug into the USB or Firewire port.
3. Install MythTV which works on OS X.
4. Pick up a remote
5. (Optional) Find a DVI to S-Video adapter to go from the Mac to the TV.

And if I got the bluetooth module, keyboard and mouse I’d be able to use this Mac from my couch.

Tags: Computers, iPod, Mac Mini, Mac OS X, Stevenote