The Headless Mac is here

There have been a slew of announcements at the MacWorld 2005 Expo:

• Mac Mini – Get a Mac workhorse for just 499$ but you have to  BYODKM i.e. Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard and Mouse.
• IPod Shuffle – It doesn’t have a display but you still get to hear great music in a great player.
• IWork and Pages – a "word processor with incredible sense of style"
• ILife ’05 – including the amazing iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, …
• ITunes – its getting bigger and better

The MacMini seems to be a great way to get the masses on to Mac – get them hooked on iPod and then next the MacMini.

It just seems that Apple has suddenly realized that it can cater to the masses as well. I’ve always considered Apple products to be for a niche market since they are so expensive and their products don’t play well with others. If you want Apple hardware, you have to use Mac OS and no Windows. Well, of course you can use Yellow Dog Linux… but on second thought, when you have Mac OS X, would you need anything else? – most Unix applications run on the Mac because it has a FreeBSD core under the hood. I still have doubts on this – for example, Zawodny feels that OSS seem like second-class citizens on Mac.

Other than that part, you have all the awesome i-products by Apple – that’s reason by itself for wanting to use Mac. Then you have the hardware – fast and good-looking (seriously, just check out the photos, they’re really stylish).

For now, I’m sticking to good old GNU/Linux and Intel combination simply because its here and its working. When MacMini comes to Bangalore in the coming months, I’ll check it out at the Apple showroom in The Forum. I’m sure most of you are thinking the same. Somehow, the idea of running GNU/Linux on a Mac box seems so enticing….

Read more about the new Apple announcements at MacWorld.

Updates :

Engadget has a live commentary on MacWorld announcements.

Om Malik talks about how MacMini can be a ‘fixed mobile PC’ – interesting way of using it!

CNET asks Will you buy Apple’s new products? and also has comprehensive coverage.