Author: srhawk

On the stock front, while it looks like the DOW as a whole continues its tumble, as of this hour, AAPL is rising, no doubt on the expectations of new competitively priced (hopefully) products next week.  As we have seen in the past, trading prices of AAPL seem to always get a good boost in the run-up to an announcement event and during the event itself.  After the events, the stock often loses a bit of value as “analysts” kick in with their “disappointment” in whatever announcement that’s made not being as unrealistically fantastic and/or low-priced as they had wanted.

While we know there are to be notebook updates on October 14th, I myself am still holding out some hope for an update to the Mac mini, especially a graphics boost (to at least Intel X3100 or X4500) and even a price cut – can you say $499 or even $399 (the latter being serious wishful thinking)?  The mini’s current graphics engine, the Intel GMA 950, is at least two generations old and way underpowered for today’s software.  And updates to processor technology, memory capacity and hard drive size are needed.

In light of that need for substantial updating, how can Apple actually drop the price?  Well, one way to upgrade and to reduce the cost of the mini would be to, like the MacBook Air, remove the optical drive.  This would also allow a substantial reduction in size.  Without an optical drive (but able to connect the Air’s own external drive via a powered USB port) Apple could even rename the mini to be the “Mac Air.”

Why do this?  I think a $399 mini (or whatever it is named) could really drive sales volume in the current market.  Pre-loaded with OS X, iLife, and perhaps even a fully-licensed copy of iWork, a revamped mini would be a very attractive value machine at $399 right out of the box.  And with parts costs having dropped of late, it would also not be too much of a hurt on Apple’s margins.

The mini as it stands this moment is actually way overpriced for what’s in it.  At $399 a new, improved small headless Mac like the mini would once again be a tempting option for home users, potential switchers, and others with a need for a small second machine.  $499 would be good, but $399 would be the sweet spot at which it could really make a dent in sales to those otherwise looking at low-cost entry-level PCs from Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.  Such an aggressive move by Apple could really aid in growing the market share of OS X and move Apple toward further growth.  Get people hooked on OS X and they might want to move on up later to a nice iMac, MacBook, or even Mac Pro.  And such a move would help to extend the “halo effect” from all the new Apple customers brought in by the iPhone 3G.

Just a thought.