Work(ing Title)

As with any new hardware announcement from Apple, I find myself contemplating a change in the hardware sitting on my desk.

The current workhorse is a Mac Pro with a pair of dual-core chips and something like five gigabytes of RAM, two internal HDDs, and a 30″ display. This Fuck Box (as I so lovingly refer to her) supports the edge use cases quite well: ripping DVDs quickly, doing color correction on 15 megabyte RAW photos, and as a companion for doing work on the machines of friends. Aside from those tasks, most of what she does is browsing and media playback.

What I know I do not need is a laptop; my Lenovo netbook has me completely covered on the portable computing front for the time being. Also, I have a Home Server that handles all the large storage requirements (and can grow as my requirements do). So with portability and storage out of the way, I’m left wondering if I can reclaim some bedroom real estate by replacing the big tower with something smaller.

The iMac is an obvious choice, as it has been known for some time to be quite powerful and the faultless Jack of All Trades. The 24″ display could very well be enough to live with, and the simplicity of wiring could simplify my layout somewhat. The last advantage is that iMacs I believe keep their resale value better than most of Apple’s desktops.

The less-obvious choice though, and therefore the one that interests me, is the Mac Mini. It addresses the real estate concern without a doubt, and with Nvidia’s new graphics chip, could keep me in 30 inches and excessive pixels. The new Mini also supports four gigabytes of RAM, and I don’t see any problem with shoehorning a 7200 RPM HDD into that little case. The tertiary advantage to a Mini is also the cost savings; presuming I sell the Mac Pro, buying a Mini with the proceeds would keep a good chunk more money in my pocket than an iMac.

Would such a teeny computer strain (over time) to drive such a large display? Would it just look comical?

Here with my partners-in-crime for the last show. Wish us luck and follow along at gdgt live.

The new MacBook Air is very slim and very pretty. Check out the photos of Steve’s keynote I shot for Engadget. Now it’s time to finally wrap up my grand CES story.

Joshua Allen recently dug into the rumor that IdentityMine, one of Microsoft’s most valuable partners, uses Macs for their cross-platform interactive design work.

You can imagine my consternation when I visited the offices of such a great partner, and discovered a bunch of their developers and designers using Macintoshes! In this interview, I try to get to the bottom of things and find out why the heck they are using Macs.

Nathan Dunlap demos how he does his day-to-day work using Vista and Expression Blend on the Mac, talks about his favorite software packages, provides some tips and tricks, and more. Be sure to watch all the way through for a humorous anecdote about his Macintosh overheating and melting (I’m not kidding).

(Joshua Allen)

The loudest CEO around is hosting an employee town hall right now, and he’s addressing a handful of areas where Microsoft can make progress. When talking about search he highlighted an interesting principle, “The market leader has no incentive to disrupt.” While Google will obviously continue to throw maximum resources at improving their search abilities and their model of giving away developed software is hard to answer, they truely don’t want to see the game change.

There’s also a difficult lesson to take from the operating system business that can be applied here: Windows being the strong leader has been a good thing, but Mac OS X has been able to grow significantly through being the underdog and changing the game. It’s not hard to imagine Microsoft being in the same position relative to Google, which gives us huge incentive and opportunity to grow.