Apple Rumors and X86 first move

I find the mac mini a particularly compelling computer. It is small, noise friendly, relatively cheap. If you want to have a cheap home server (based on Linux or MacOS X), this is quite a good choice as you probably don't want to hear all the fans of bigger computers the whole day. It's also a very good candidate for a media box: you can connect a huge hard drive for mp3s, and watch your DVDs, photos on a nice LCD (and MacOS helps here).

Unfortunately it might not be the best moment to buy it now. There are rumors everywhere that the first Mac Intel will be presented in January. And I am quite confident that this Mac Intel will be the Mac Mini. Here are the reasons:

• PowerMacs and iMacs use the quite modern G5 processor. It makes sense to update the very old G4 to Intel first.
• if iBook was updated, it would be much more attractive than the Powerbook.

This leaves us with either powerbook upgrade or mac mini upgrade, but:

• XBox 360 has almost arrived. While not a direct competitor, it can be used as media center, it is cheap and powerful. Unfortunately it's not customizable enough.
• Powerbooks got a recent update. They are advertised heavily on apple websites, while the mac mini had just a silent and minor upgrade and is not advertised anymore.

Tags: apple, mac, intel, rumors