Finally, there’s an affordable Apple computer in town, which was shown last week at the MacWorld expo in lovely San Francisco. As keen on the revelation as any other computer-loving psychopath, I headed over to Apple’s web site and checked out the system specs, which are fairly decent considering the low price tag. One thing really bugs me, however, and it’s not just my misuse of “lovely”.
The iMac Mini, splendid in size and overall possibilities, has but a mere 32MB video card. Thirty-two megabytes! My wristwatch has 32MB of video memory!
Here’s the problem: Apple’s going for the average iPod-carrying, iTunes-buying consumer, who may surf the web a bit, write a school report or two, and generally not do anything enthusiast-level with their computer. Surely, the iMac Mini will earn some sales, and draw in people who would otherwise get a PC for daily computing, but Apple is still neglecting the very industry that could take Apple to the computing forefront: gaming!
When news of the “headless” iMac first met my ears, the first thought to enter my mind was that I needn’t invest in a new video card or RAM for my aging gaming computer, and that I could, instead, purchase an iMac Mini to use as a dedicated World of Warcraft (WoW) box. Sure, I was doing a bit of crazy talk, but with a nice video card, the average consumer could get in on Apple’s small yet acceptable gaming library, which would in turn grow with the new Apple gaming population. Alas, Apple doesn’t even offer a video card upgrade for the iMac Mini, despite my willingness to drop an extra couple hundred dollars.
And then comes the utter lack of exposure that WoW has received on Apple storeshelves. I didn”t see a single copy of the game in the San Francisco Apple Store, or in the nearby CompUSA. Granted, the game has sold like hotcakes, and no new copies will hit store shelves until March, say the latest estimates (Blizzard is working on fixing server issues in the meantime). Despite how well the game has sold, even prior to a total disappearance of WoW boxes, there was practically no exposure of the game on Apple storeshelves, as though a PC gamer is more important than her Apple counterpart.
Lately, Apple is walking away from traditional computing – not to say that Microsoft and others aren’t. With the TiVo craze, for example, some are speculating that Apple wants in on the action, and quite frankly, with the right connections in industry, I think they could pull it off (TiVo isn’t as tight with DirecTV as they used to be, opening a potential target for Apple to exploit).
In the meantime, Apple’s iPod Shuffle will keep us listening to what it wants to play, rather than what we directly tell it to, while the Apple product line continues to expand. So long as Steve Jobs doesn’t die, the Apple may very well be a common sight on the typical desk yet again.
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