winterbear's Profile

In 1997 and 1998 Apple laid off almost all of its scientists (called ATG or Advanced Technology Group) and brought in about 100 engineers from NeXT. The NeXT people had a snearing contempt for the MacOS and many of them were in possitions of power when it came to making UI design decisions. One of the big reasons many people see inconsistancies in the MacOSX interface is cultural. MacOSX originates from NeXT's OpenStep with a bit of MacOS on top. If you look at Rhapsody its full of Next crap. Then the preview releases and then 10.1 thru 10.3 you see that Apple has been beating the NeXT out of the os with varying degrees of success, but some residue still remains. Its been a long 5 year stuggle, but with each version, the os has gotten better from a UI perspective. I am really hopeful that Tiger sees more NeXT residue falling out of the OS. The other problem Apple has is that it fired most of its human interface scientists during the dark ages of the late 1990's. The HUT (human interface team) in R&D one was about a hundred people that were almost insanely passionate about good design. They would argue for hours about the most mundane things (like a single pixel change in the close box of a window). This passionate attention to detail lead to a computer-human interface that may never be matched again, ever. Today, Apple just doesn't have the same human factors engineers in positions of power that it had in the MacOS days. To me, this explains a lot... Silly things like the dock, the brushed metal interface and various attempts at window dressing would never have seen the light of day because they would never have gotten past the world class group of UI engineers Apple had assembled. Today things are better than right after the merger, but many historical inconsistencies remain from the time when the UI engineers were thrown out and the Next people came in.

the problem is that the mac mini is not for you. Its for people that have a single old pc and are tired of the problems associated with running the xp operating system. People curious about ilife programs and who just want a web surfing and personal productivity machine that works really well. And there are millions of those people. Anyone that has multiple windows boxes and a lot of technical expertise will want a larger mac. I dont understand why you think this machine should have wireless built in... most people are going to hook it up to some kind of broadband via the ethernet. For the few who do not, wireless is a cheap option. This is not a machine for the gaming crowd. It will run 90% of the games on the market just fine, and that additional 10% wont matter. And pressing dvd's is a pretty high end option... most people attracted to this machine are not going to care about the superdrive. The real apeal of this machine is for people that made the mistake of buying a pc when they really wanted a mac... but could not afford it. Now they can and they can use the monitor and keyboard from the pc on a cheap machine. I think its a brilliant move and it will be wildly succesful with its intended audiance. which is not you.