is apple obsoleting the mini?

Last week I was looking at computer configurations and it just seemed the iMacs were a little stale. It's all Rich's fault really because he got excited about StarCraft II and so I was poking around recommended specs and things like that. My MacBook is great, and I've really been laptop first ever since my iBook, but you do compromise on graphics and RAM especially with a low end laptop. Well, it turned out Apple thought the iMac line dated too, as they revamped the whole desktop Mac product line.


But the Mini revamp leaves me scratching my head. In an era where most of the 'major' leaps in PC computing power are behind us, it latches onto another selling point - its compact size. It also addresses the planned obsolescence problem: if you buy an all-in-one computer in the flat screen era, the monitor stays decent longer than the system, creating a fixed cost that lengthens the amount of time you're attached to the system (and the keyboard and mice issue affects most unattached systems, too). The Mini allows you to replace the whole system during the life of the monitor and peripherals, or even operate without a monitor. Unlike HP and Dell, Apple doesn't offer a low end tower system.

So this iteration of the iMac line seems like a really good value. The base level system with a 21.5 inch monitor is a 3 GHz Core i3 with 4GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, and Radeon 4670 graphics card for $1,200. If you like playing the instant rebate game, HP and Dell have exciting websites to navigate, although at the moment, it seems like Dell is mainly interested in pushing either the lower end Celeron and Pentium chips, or the i7. They don't seem to have much of the i3 variety yet to peruse.

At first glance, the new Mini is significantly cheaper at $700 vs $1200. But I think this vanishes astonishingly quickly when one looks at the difference. There's a lot of stuff the Mini doesn't have - a monitor, stereo speakers, webcam, microphone, wireless mouse and keyboard being the most obvious. We could approximate that at roughly $300, which is over half the gap right there. But worse, the Mini has noticeably inferior technical specs in its core system. It has a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, representing both much lower clock speed and an older generation of chips. It has a 320 GB HDD that is both smaller and slower. It has 2 GB RAM, which is both half as much as the iMac and also slower. It has an integrated video card instead of the discrete graphics in the iMac.

What's really funny is trying to configure the Mini to be more like the iMac. When you upgrade the specs to this:


you have a better system, but one that is still inferior to the iMac. Yet it costs just $12 less. Try buying a monitor from Apple for that.

I really like the concept of the Mini. But if Apple is going to create such extreme price/performance gaps, I wonder if they've decided it's not as cool a business strategy as it is a concept. I was thinking of getting a Mini as my next computer purchase. That has now been put on hold, and I'm not sure where to go next. If I were doing marketing for Apple, I'd suggest strongly that the price and product aspects be revisited - unless the purpose is to phase it out slowly, which I think this might do gracefully.

Here's what I'd like to see instead: three models, instead of two. You do the inexpensive one at $599, perhaps cutting back on the hard drive and the processor if that cuts too deeply into margins (for example, a 2 GHz C2 Duo and 160 GB HDD). Then you add a $799 model with, say, a 3 GHz core i3, 4GB RAM (1066 MHz), and discrete video card. This still lets the low end iMac be better with the faster RAM and a bigger and faster hard drive while rendering a value Mini at this price point. Then you keep the third Mini option at $999 which is the server version.

So the business gamble Apple presents is something like this. I might get a new iMac, which is a little bit more computer than I need in that I have a TV/monitor and keyboard/trackball currently. However, I might also not do anything at all this year. Essentially, Apple is jeopardizing $600 - 800 worth of sales, my future interest in the Mini line, and the likelihood of my next computer purchase being within the next three years (as I'd keep the iMac longer than the Mini), all in exchange to get me to pony up another $400 now. Or maybe it's just really expensive to cram this new stuff into the Mini, and Apple's marketing team is running into the problem that 'small form factor' and 'inexpensive consumer machine' are becoming more conflicting than complimentary.

deficit fearmongers expand deficit

(P/R) For the sake of all that is rational and sane, I feel the need to make a blanket statement that shows no mercy or compassion for concepts like nuance and shades of gray.

If you voted for the war supplemental - ie, money above and beyond the massively bloated amount of money already allocated to military excursions - you have zero credibility on fiscal responsibility. I don't want to hear you utter one word about deficits or debt. I don't want a peep about how Social Security will go bankrupt in a gazillion years or how the richest country in the history of the world can't afford healthcare for its citizens or how rich people paying the lowest taxes in the developed world pay too much in taxes.

You. Have. Zero. Credibility.*

*Of course, you've probably had slim-to-none credibility as is. But this vote helpfully renders the number a precise zero.

Stop talking about the deficit. Everybody knows it's irrelevant. Even you.

highly recommend green zone

If you like Matt Damon and action movies, definitely rent Green Zone. I think it's slightly more suspense/less close violence than the Bourne series, but it's very similar. It's creepier to the extent that there's nothing magic or special. Damon isn't a superhero; nobody is.

To the extent that 'facts' are now 'politicized' (ie, that the Bush Administration lied about WMDs in Iraq should be about as controversial as the notion that the Earth orbits the sun), the movie certainly is political, but there's very little actual politicizing in the movie. There's all of about 90 seconds of dialogue sermonizing on the bigger picture. The other 90 minutes it's an action movie with fictional characters pursuing a fictional plot. And some of the fictionalization makes The Powers That Be look better, not worse, than reality might warrant. The reporter is actually investigating deeper into the story, questioning what is going on. The CIA is impressively nimble, and the notion that there aren't WMDs is treated innocently, as if no one would have contemplated it. The civilian administrators talk a lot about democracy and building Iraq, while magically never uttering that little word we hear so much about in real life. I'll let you guess which word that might be.

But the creepiness, it's all around. This thing might just as well have been a documentary. What difference would it make? We have so successfully blended fantasy and reality that maybe there's no meaningful distinction to be made. And really, what's it matter? The movie ends and you go on about life.

You know, if you're not, like, one of the characters stuck in the story.

i can't believe i'm about to type this

but Ross Douthat just wrote a fairly insightful and stimulating piece. Douthat is the conservative picked up recently by the NY Times as clearly their other authors are just so gosh darn radical tree-hugging hippies.

I've particularly enjoyed Naked Capitalism's warning labels. For example, for the bizarre hit piece called The Agony of the Liberals, Yves Smith added the disclaimer:

The Agony of the Liberals Ross Douthat, New York Times. Read this only if you want to raise your blood pressure.

But this week, in The Roots of White Anxiety, he almost accidentally hits upon something important. You have to get past the obligatory conservative homage to a Pat Buchanan intro, and past some of the unhelpful generalizations, like the implicit barb that 'elite universities' are somehow unfriendly to conservatives or 'Red America', to see it.

But it's there. He lays out in black and white the challenge confronting our body politic. Our system of higher education represents the class divide rocking our society, morphing from institutions of equality and meritocracy to places designed to amplify and harden socioeconomic status across generations. Working class Americans of our rural and urban communities have at some points in our history worked together to achieve progress. Much of the unfolding of the past few decades has been efforts to break these two groups apart, to create as much tension and hostility as possible to prevent them from working together. That's essentially why the culture wars were fought: not just to get Republicans fired up to oppose those Godless commies, but also, to get Democrats to relate less to all the racists who live between NY and LA.

The culture wars themselves are largely irrelevant now (sorry boomers, but most young people really don't care much about petty things like skin color or abortion bans or the evils of homosexuality). But the remnants of the culture wars are all around us, in the increasingly separate worlds inhabited by various socioeconomic classes. Lack of familiarity breeds distrust and undermines cooperation. Not on purpose. But just because we're more comfortable with stuff we're around, from ideas to people. The outcome is class stratification, and looking at the demographics of admissions to top universities gives a great empirical insight into the larger trend.

sad news

From the Daily Herald (Chicago)

Rev. Billy Joe Shaw...was the beloved husband of Diep Nguyen; loving father of Tim, Dan and Ian; dear son of the late Wendell and Jennie Mae Shaw; brother of the late Bobby Lee Shaw; and uncle of Jessica Lane.

In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Pastor Bill will be appreciated for the Appalachia Service Project, collected by ORUMC. Arrangements by Ahlgrim & Sons Funeral and Cremation Services, Schaumburg. For information, 847-882-5580.

quick, who said this

"Well if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan," [x] says of the president. "Alright? Because everyone who has tried over a thousand years of history has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan without committing more troops."

[x] also described the situation around the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as "very comical."

- And no, it wasn't me! -

It wasn't someone from Code Pink or the Green Party either.

It was this guy, Chairman of the Republican Party.

I'm so confused. Nebraska has moved to the Big Ten and I don't know who to root for.

Oops, I mean, Democrats have replaced Republicans, and now I don't know whether the good guys support a military occupation or think having troops in central Asia ranks on the stupid ladder somewhere between bungie jumping without a cable and putting your hand on a hot stove to recover from frostbite.

What does it mean when the Bush/Cheney folks and the Obama/Biden folks both think that the head of the RNC is an idiot - when he happens to spout something with a hint of sensibility to it?

Help! There's been conference realignment but no one has printed the new media guides yet about what rivalries I'm supposed to care about and who's on which side.

Is Liz Cheney the new Adult in Charge? Has Bill Kristol been right about war all along?

DNC, please bring a little sanity to the episode:

It’s simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement. Michael Steele would do well to remember that we are not in Afghanistan by our own choosing, that we were attacked and that his words have consequences.

okie dokie, or do that...

hey, we won a series

It's amazing what happens when you get decent pitching and score runs at the same time.

Now only 12 games under 500...

congrats jon and grace

The wedding at the Butterfly House was great! And Bacana was fabulous of course.

takes a parasite to know a parasite

My hometown paper has an absolutely hilarious story about a farmer in Raytown. You see, apparently some guy painted the side of a tractor trailer with the phrase:

Are you a producer or parasite
Democrats - Party of Parasites

Here's the picture from the story taken by Donald Bradley:


The lefty sphere of the intertubes has had some fun with this, because the Kansas City Star did a little investigative journalism (!). It turns out anti-welfare small-town farmer David Jungerman is actually a posterboy for everything that's wrong with ag subsidies specifically and corporate welfare more generally.

Over the past 15 years, Jungerman has taken over $1 million worth of federal farm subsidies.

Hi-larious.

Now, generally speaking, I think there's a lot more common ground for average Democrats and Republicans to work together on issues - I argue strongly that most Americans see the world pretty similarly and that Democrats in particular would benefit from a little less mockery of Republicans and a little more cooperation.

However, I think it's also important for my more conservative friends to understand that this is the kind of stuff that gets associated with the GOP; this is what people hear about at places like Think Progress and Daily Kos. This is an act of idiocy, showing the worst of entitlement mentality combined with an incendiary lack of taste. Nevermind the policy debate about the real world benefits of social insurance programs like TANF/welfare, SNAP/food stamps, unemployment insurance, health insurance, old age insurance, disability insurance, and so forth, and nevermind the actual political leanings of Jungerman (in response to the publicity the stories have created for him, he has said that

he's not even a die-hard Republican. He voted for Claire McCaskill when she won a U.S. Senate seat in 2006.)

the image of a million-dollar welfare queen lobbing personal insults at people who

Always have their hand out for whatever the government will give them

is just farcical.

And it raises the tricky question for Republicans: does Jungerman represent the economic views of your party? There are all too many people in both parties that are more interested in the gamesmanship of hurling insults back and forth than actually crafting policy options to solve problems and make us more peaceful and prosperous. If we ended all government welfare tomorrow, it would devastate poor people with no other cushion. But in absolute terms, the amount of money lost by richer folks would be much, much, much greater, from war profiteers to financial crooks to big farmers. If we can't be intellectually honest about current federal spending, then we can't move forward on deciding how we want to change spending in the future.

strategy and sports

Athletic games themselves involve lots of strategy. But a different kind of case study in decision-making has unfolded for us over the past week or so as we've moved past speculation to action. I think I'm just not a big enough Colorado or Nebraska fan to get why they would see the grass as greener to the west and east. Whatever their ultimate calculus, what's done is done.

So now the most interesting question is viewed from the perspective of the remaining Big 12. What to do?

The safe answer, the likely answer, the easy answer, is to stand pat. Execute on a strategy of making a ten team league successful. That's what I'd recommend as a consultant. I'm about 95% confidant that's what will happen.

But that other one chance in twenty nags at me. I'm a big believer that the flip side of challenge almost always is opportunity. Over the weekend, the Big 12 was in its weakest position as a conference in the history of its existence. Today, however, it's at its strongest point in years, perhaps ever. The Big 12 faced the most direct threats possible to its future from a variety of sources and for whatever mixture of reasons you care to elaborate, ten schools decided to stick together. Furthermore, as the Pac-10 and Big Ten in particular went after Big 12 schools, that gives the Big 12 a window of opportunity to strike in 'self-defense', as a reaction to having lost two universities to the aggressiveness of other conferences. Finally, as the Big 12 lost two teams, but to different conferences, there is a unique opportunity to offer entrance to a pair of schools.

The following options, again, are neither likely nor something the Big 12 can necessarily implement. Rather, they're options that recognize an important part of strategic decision-making: if you never think about the moon, you'll never get there. And you only have a few windows suitable for launch. This is one such window.

I would be quite interested to be able to have a quiet conversation with these schools just to see what they would think.

Scenario 1:

Take the game to the Pac-10. The more I've been thinking about this one, the more it's been nibbling at me. Do you think Arizona and Arizona State might fit better in the big 12? One thing that's always bugged me is how the Big 12 doesn't have its own BCS bowl. The Big Ten and Pac-10 have their 'granddaddy of 'em all' in LA. The SEC has the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. The Orange Bowl is in Florida. But Big 12 conference champs get sent out to Arizona. It's not that the Fiesta Bowl is a terrible one. It's just that it's nowhere near the (current) Big 12. We can fix that, creating regular conference trips to Arizona in the process. Arizona adds a growing population demographic and a chance to make 'southwest' and 'central' divisions, returning OU and OSU to competing with MU/KU/ISU/KSU. Separately from football, it also allows UA to compete in a stronger basketball conference. Imagine an annual KU/UA conference basketball game. It's also worth noting, for UA/ASU, that the Big 12 has received more national attention and more revenue than the Pac-10. BCS bowl games would get to be played in Arizona.

Scenario 2:

Invite Utah and BYU. The Pac-10 can't do this because they have an odd number. I think we could make the case that coming as a pair to the Big 12 is better than being left in different conferences. And with the loss of Colorado, Utah and BYU maintain a Big 12 presence in the Rockies/interior West. These schools could be added to the Big 12 North and leave the South as is. In addition, don't overlook the Morman connection. BYU gives Baylor a fellow private religious school generally, while specifically a lot of Mormons stuck around Missouri instead of migrating farther west to Utah.

Scenario 3:

Return the favor to the Big Ten. I can't help looking at a map and wondering if it's possible to split the Big Ten in two. Of course it's not really that realistic, but you never know until you ask Illinois and Indiana. A week ago I would have said it would have been impossible for Nebraska to leave the Big 12. But this wouldn't just be to vengefully carve out the mid-section of the conference just below Chicago. Indiana is a basketball program in a football conference. Trading IU basketball would almost make up for NU football on the tradition front. Meanwhile, the most natural rival for Illinois is Missouri. Both IU and IL are essentially the same distance from St. Louis as they are from Chicago. This directly deals with one of the challenges - that some MU fans actually want to move to the Big Ten - by making St. Louis a central city in the Big 12 rather than a border city. The schools would also fit in very nicely with the rest of the Big 12 North, even down to the I-70 corridor running from Topeka to Indianapolis. I would point out ever so subtlely that the state of Indiana owes us a big favor, too, and this is a great time to collect. Do this move and we'll move past your theft of the NCAA headquarters from the city that invested so heavily in making collegiate athletics what we know today.

Scenario 4:

Now I'm getting quite unrealistic. There's an intriguing geographical quirk to the south and east of the Big 12. Northwest Arkansas is actually closely associated with the states of Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Fayetteville is so remote from the rest of the SEC that Arkansas plays some games in Little Rock. Arkansas has history with the Southwest conference where it was a founding member with schools like OU and UT. Meanwhile, Memphis is down the Mississippi River from St. Louis, on the border with Arkansas, and is not currently in a major conference. Memphis doesn't really have much of a football program at the moment, but by pushing the Big 12 through Arkansas and into Tennessee, I don't think it would be that big of an issue - the point would be to bring recruiting space and geographic range, not replace the tradition lost with Nebraska. It would also allow ISU and Baylor to have a comrade near the bottom of the pecking order. In basketball, Memphis would add a high-win school, which helps as RPI is important in basketball (unlike football). An annual KU/Memphis basketball game would be another great conference schedule addition.

Scenario 5:

Feeling out Kentucky and Louisville is my last 'what if' for the night. They fit nicely in the existing Big 12 North/South division, putting basketball state Kentucky with basketball state Kansas. In fact, you already see these teams together from time to time when St. Louis hosts an NCAA tourney round and fans come in from both directions. This would also get Louisville (Big East) and Kentucky (SEC) into the same conference, and what a basketball conference that would be. Unlike Memphis, Louisville and Kentucky do have competitive football programs they would bring, but not good enough they would threaten OU and UT. Plus, I like the town of Louisville, so I'm sure some arrangements can be made for my sake.

Unlikely, sure.

But somebody had to start the conversation that made Boulder look to the Pacific and Nebraska abandon KC. For a brief moment in time, the Big 12 is both strongly unified and able to make bold moves without being the aggressor. There's certainly a lot to be said for the ten team arrangement for both of the major revenue sports, football and basketball. In football, it allows a round robin format and eliminates a conference championship whose primary consequence recently seems to be giving good teams losses. In basketball, it allows annual home and home series while improving the RPI by shedding the two worst programs in the conference.

Still, the Big 12 as ten teams now has no margin of error. There's a part of me that wants to throw a long pass and see what happens. Otherwise, unless there's some breakdown in another major conference, this is the peak of the Big 12. We get more vulnerable over time to a raid from any direction, and the next one will be fatal.