RSSTiger, Mini to Drive Mac Sales Higher
By Ed Oswald | Published May 2, 2005, 2:19 PM
Merrill Lynch on Monday called Apple's PC outlook "rosier" and said it expects the company to achieve a 4 percent market share during the year. Leading the way is Apple's Mac Mini, which the research firm believes will appeal to first time Mac buyers as an attractive entry point to Apple's platform.
"We expect new Mac users will decide on lower cost desktops than notebooks as Apple attempts to convert Windows users," Merrill Lynch said in a note to clients. "The new desktop weapon is the Mac mini, which provides a new low price point for the Mac line. The Mac mini takes the line to a new price point, which should be attractive to switchers and education."
Apple's efforts to make the Mini more available in retail locations other than company channels will give it more visibility and spur growth in its PC division, the research firm wrote.
Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger," Apple's newest operating system, is also expected help to drive sales. Merill Lynch cited the "halo effect" surrounding the iPod plus features within Tiger as reasons a Macintosh may become more desirable to consumers.
While not mentioned by Merill Lynch, several analysts have said that continued delays in Microsoft's next-generation operating system, code-named Longhorn, could also help Apple's bottom line as computer users look for more advanced features, some of which are already present in Mac OS X.
Tiger also appears to be a hit among current Mac users. Sales of the new operating system are expected to be nearly 50 percent higher than that of Mac OS X 10.3, coming at about $84 to $100 million. "There was a line of 100 Apple addicts at the store we visited," Merill Lynch said.
As of this moment, Mac Mini's are now shipping with Tiger! Just hit the Apple store homepage, go to the Mac Mini and look under the "What's Included" section, 10.4 Tiger!
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The real question is when will the Mini ship with Tiger preinstalled! :) The mini page at apple still shows it with Panther installed, while the new PowerMacs are listed with Tiger installed.
Who wants to have to pay the $10-$20 for the "free" tiger upgrade discs!
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I don't think the mini will include tiger any time soon. Some of the features require the G5 chip and the mini has a G4. I'm still gonna buy one though.
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I heard a few things required a better graphics chip, like the "water ripple" effects or something like that, but I'd be more interested in the 'meat' of Tiger, no pun intended exactly :) The more stable kernel, spotlight, and a lot of other cool things under the hood described beautifully over at arstechnica.
Reguardless though, i'll probably be buying one :)
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