Date:13/01/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/01/13/stories/2005011302000500.htm

Back Apple unveils $499 Mac Mini

Vishwanath Kulkarni

San Francisco , Jan 13

APPLE Computer forayed into the budget PC arena on Tuesday with the Chief Executive Officer, Mr Steve Jobs, unveiling a very small computer for $499 at Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

It is the newest and the most affordable Mac ever, Mr Jobs said in his customary keynote.

Apple would be shipping out the low cost computers Mac Mini's from January 22. The $499 computer Mac Mini, which aims to make inroads in the traditional PC market, comes without a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The $499 Mac Mini model comes with 1.25 Giga Hertz G4 Processor, 256 MB RAM and has a 40 gigabyte hard drive and a combo drive, whereas the $599 variant comes with 1.42 G Hz, 256 MB and a 80 gigabyte capacity.

The Mac Mini, the newest member of the Mac family, comes pre-loaded with Mac OS X (Panther) and iLife O5, the latest software for managing digital photo and music collections, editing movies and creating music.

Mr Jobs also unveiled a sub-$100 digital music player iPod Shuffle. Priced at $99, the stripped down version iPod Shuffle is based on shuffle feature, which randomly selects songs from the users music library or playlists.

"The digital music era is coming upon us and Apple is leading the charge," he said. The $99 variant comes with a 512 MB capacity and can store up to 120 songs while the $149 variant comes with one gigabyte capacity and can store some 240 songs.

iPod shuffle is smaller and lighter than a pack of gum and costs less than $100, Mr Jobs said. With most flash-memory music players, users must use tiny displays and complicated controls to find their music; with iPod Shuffle you just relax and it serves up new combinations of your music every time you listen.

Industry observers expect Apple to boost its sales with these two latest budget offerings. Apple, which launched iPods sometime in 2001, has almost seen its sales soaring by over 500 per cent in the last quarter alone over Q4 2003, Mr Jobs said.

Till date, Apple has sold over 10 million iPods with some 8.2 million in 2004 alone. The company doubled its iPod marketshare to almost 65 per cent in January 2005 against 31 per cent in January 2004, he added.

He also announced upgrades for a slew of Apple's other applications including Mac OS X Tiger, Dashboard, iChat, iPhoto, iLife among others. Pricing and availability of these new products for the Indian market will be confirmed soon by the company.