As Cool as the Cube Was . . .

As cool as the Cube was, the Mac mini seems to beat it at its own game and is priced just above what the Cube goes for used. I'm looking forward to seeing it in person, although it is so simple that I'm certain that the trip to the store will take longer than the look at it.

I just took a scratch sheet of copy paper, cut two and a half inches off off the long end and gave it folds at two inches on two adjoining sides. The partial box approximates the size of the Mac mini. It is about the size of my Linksys wireless router. It is significantly smaller than my cable modem. It is significantly smaller than my external hard drive. It is more powerful and flexible than either.

Of course, it does have an external power supply. You can see it in the Quicktime VR spin-around. (It is the longer box. The square box is the Cinema Display's power supply. The display also routes USB through the power supply so it has just one cable leading to the display.) The "third-party accessorie"s Quicktime VR looks like a direct shot at Dell. It is like saying "you guys built a business on being the cheapest replaceable commodities and we have replacement box that is inexpensive but not cheap."

I think that once the refurbs and what-not start showing up, I will pick one up to use as a household file and printer server. It will be a lot better than the collection of dinosaurs I have around here that I keep meaning to make into servers.