See Linked List item that John Gruber has unexpectedly praised the industrial design of a new Dell product to compete against the Mac mini: the Dell Studio Hybrid.
See that Gruber quotes this information as coming from Jon Hicks (among other things designer of the Firefox icon/logo).
Note that Jon Hicks wrote a piece praising the Dell Studio Hybrid.
Visit dell.com.
Note prominent and primary emphasis on luscious product porn of new Dell Studio Hybrid… along with that horrible rotating billboards concept everyone’s driven mad by these days.
Note $130 bamboo sleeve tax.
Visit apple.com.
Note that no picture of said Mac mini appears on front page of apple.com.
Search for “Mac mini” in text of front page of apple.com.
Note that “Mac mini” is not found.
Begin to suspect that even Apple is not very proud of this device.
Search for “Mac mini” in site-wide search box.
Sit back and recall the format of the last article John Gruber dedicated to a Dell product.
Dell is Other People
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As much as I love a good bit of pointless finger waving, you’re compaing visiting apple.com looking for a product that wasn’t launched, well, today, which is what Gruber was doing.
Also, by your basis of “Search for {$blah} on homepage” is… well, flawed, considering “imac” and “mac pro” aren’t found either. If Apple had released this product today, or this week even, you’d see it on the homepage.
This is not to say that the Mac mini is the winner in terms of industrial design or any such metric, though I’m still rather fond of it’s minimalist design.
By Patrick Quinn-Graham · 2008.07.29 21:21
Well, duh.
Had the Dell Ditty been launched a month later, iPod nano would have been off the Apple site as well. I think the original intent of Gruber’s piece was that Apple rarely launches something they don’t want to flash on the front page. (Recall how Mighty Mouse was the top item for a few months.) And I’m just spoofing Gruber’s piece.
For now, I think that the Hybrid gives the Mac mini a run for its money in terms of looks and bang-per-buck (if you avoid software). This means two things: that we’re all amazed that Dell can create something that doesn’t look like ass, and that the Mac mini as it stands now is misconceived, long in the tooth, overpriced or all of the above. (It didn’t help when they raised the price by $100 and for all intents and purposes removed the graphics card since it now no longer outperforms a replica made of cardboard.)
By Jesper · 2008.07.29 22:24
Sit back and recall, with tremendously smug satisfaction, a hilarious anti-Gruber article, served by Jesper.
By Scott Johnson · 2008.07.30 18:16
I’m not sure what it was, but I wouldn’t call it “anti-Gruber”. The Dell Ditty did suck, the Hybrid does look good, and the Intel-era $599 Mac mini is a crappy deal (even with Core 2 Duos instead of Core Solos in the entry model, there’s still an “internal” GPU and 802.11g instead of n); and now it arguably isn’t even the best looking product in its class. I’m in complete agreement with Gruber on these points (except maybe the last).
Anyway, it wasn’t aimed to be “anti-anything”. If anything, it shows that Dell’s making progress. It’s not just the Hybrid — I was downloading drivers from their web site in May and it looked like the usual pile of links and 16-color CGA palette dark blue beveled subsections. Something happened to their site in the meantime and aside from making the support link less prominent (it used to be bigger than the Support tab on Apple’s site; now it’s hidden in the top right or available as a footer menu “below the fold”), it’s better in every aspect. And like the Hybrid, it’s not just “I guess it’s good for a Dell…”, it’s good, period.
By Jesper · 2008.07.30 23:13