... no remote included in the price.

This morning the entry level Mac Mini would have cost £391. The Refurb Store had one for £320.

Now they are £499 except they don't come with a remote anymore, so add £15 to that price.

I'll be waiting on the Refurb Store to buy one, either a previous generation and pay a little extra for iLife 09 or get a current gen one. I won't be buying a new one at those prices.

I was hoping for a Snow Leopard announcement. :( I am sad.

Paris because she makes me sad too.

I am truly and utterly overwelmed with what my Seussian psychoanalyst would probably call ~Apfel-Weltschmerz~.

Can't the overpriced-fruitgum-company come up with something truly *interesting* and *useful* to the world - like a properly conformant Outlook/Exchange-compatible client?

The products updates were kinda Meh. I understand not making any giant leaps right now for the reasons Rik pointed out. However at the end of the day it was all kinda lackluster and yes I to would have liked some idea on the progress of Snow Leopard.

Oh well, hopefully once things start picking up for everyone we'll see some nice alterations.

"isn't that industrial design getting a wee bit dated?"

No seriously, how would you change it? The mini is a box. It's about as boxy as it gets while still being nice to look at. What do you expect on the lowest end? Some fancy shell like on the Alu Macbook that is so much more expensive than the white model? Apple had a state of the art design mini, it was called the Cube, and very few people were not annoyed by the price.

No mention of the stonking price increases across the board? Entry level products have all jumped by over £100..

macmini £391 > £499 = £108 increase

imac £782 > £949 = £167 increase

mac pro £1712 > £1899 = £187 increase

unhappy mac ... cos i am...

...for the Basic Mac Mini.

But 200 extra euro for a bigger hard drive and 1 Gig of RAM? Nonsense.

Oh, well at least they finally emptied the wharehouse from the f$%££!ing COMBO drives...

I'm not sure Apple wants its product integrated into the workplace. They have built their success around being different, not "another option." If you really want integration, you could install gnome or kde and use evolution or kmail, but not everyone's definition of "useful" is "works as an MS client."

Even desktop linux with its superior gui, command-line and numerous compatibility options is struggling to become the MS client of choice. Even if corporates thought they were worthwhile, Apple probably doesn't want its objects of desire becoming a symbol of bondage to The Man.

Apple works well where Apple's software caters for everything needed. Their focus is on creative media and the home. Trying to compete with MS in the workplace would be a losing strategy. If you factor in iLife (and iWork) prices, Macs start looking a lot more competitive despite the high-priced hardware. Most businesses however, don't have a use for this software.

Given the evidence, Apple's current customers, accountants and shareholders would probably suggest Apple *is* doing something very useful for the world. It just isn't concerned with anything MS might be doing.

Having said that, I would like to have seen at least a laser-mouse with proper button-sensors become standard and a macbook-style trackpad for desktop systems.

Icon: I'm not in creative media, so Tux is still king!

Last year Apple's desktop sales were down 38% - it's only going to get a whole lot worse.

One of the reasons why you won't get "outlook" is MAPI and it's (exchanges') reliance on RPC

Funny how Outlook for MAC and Mapi support died with the introduction of unix based OSX and Linux can't do it either...

Shame really..

You do have to wonder why MS haven't sorted this out with Entourage ( i mean most people who have it probably run it at work on an exchange server)

However you can't blame the OS for not supporting exchange, Windows doesn't out of the box. You've got to pay for that. At least Apple have said they are building support in to the OS.

Can't compain really can you..

"Can't the overpriced-fruitgum-company come up with something truly *interesting* and *useful* to the world"

Like an OS+hardware combo that's not a piece of shit and doesn't make me swear out loud every 5 minutes like Windows and Linux does? Oh sorry, they already did that. Wake me up when the rest of the world catches up to Apple's "boring" product line.

£650 for a useable version of the Mac mini?

Somebody pass today's Financial Times to Apple.

Leaving aside your enthusiastic Apple bashing and the retarded "comments" of some tragic web mongs (Microsoft employees?) on here, I have one simple request. Could you stop saying "fanbois"? Say "fanboys" if you must, but the thing is you see, "fanbois" isn't a word. It's stupid and annoying and using it makes you look like total fuckhandles.

And that is why I won't be buying the Mac Mini now... I was waiting for the update to buy one, hilariously thinking improved specs for same price... now I'm going for a popcorn hour box instead... Apple just lost out on £400+...

and you're all winging because Santa didn't bring you the toys you asked for on your xmas list even though you knew full well there was no way your folks were going to pony up the cash for such ridiculous items

you can't moan at Apple for not delivering the items that you read about on the rumour websites because, duh, they're just rumours thought up by overly optimistic Mac-fans and journalists with limited originality and nothing better to write about

i, for one, shall be buying a lottery ticket this weekend and if i win i'm spending 13k on a fully tricked out Mac Pro with all the toppings

Well our boss has a "mac only" policy, and that being the case I had to but 5 mac book pro's 17", which will go to waste on data entry mainly.. erm.. yeah.. and the keyboards.. no delete key, no keypad.. wtf..

Its not like no one with a mac ever used excel is it?

"Due to the recent Meltdown-induced rise of the US dollar, folks purchasing their iMacs in pounds or euros won't benefit." You can blame the bankers for that one...

Look at the prices in the US – they didn't change. The only thing that's changed is that we brits aren't working hard enough, and the GBP is worth fuck all.

Re the mehness of these updates. I don't think anyone thought these would be spectacular. It was well known that the graphics options across the board on desktops were... shit, now they're not, and to boot we even got Nehalem CPUs on the MacPro... Sounds like a good batch to me, just not spectacular.

I was actually looking forward to the new Mini. It showed up on the local Apple store, and I configured one to my liking. It was over 1.000 Euros. That's what ? 1300 USD ?

It's geting silly. 1300 USD for a 2.26 Core 2 wit 4 Gig of ram and a paltry 320 GB HD ? I

Next time someone does one of these 'Macs aren't more expensive than PC's' articles...I hope Cupertino is paying you enough !

Apple's desktop sales were down 38% last year - that gap is about to get a whole lot bigger. Instead or churning out the same crap Apple should actually try asking what people want.

Devil Jobs - there is no icon for Jobs W@nker.

If your car starts when you want it to, works in all weathers, goes wherever and whenever you want and it's a Chrysler, I totally agree with you.

It's a miracle.

Owners of Japanese cars get this behaviour from their vehicles without being forced to suspect the personal intervention of unseen deities.

So the fanbois, who generally have completely unrealistic expectations and then cry and moan when their fantasies turn out to be just that, have been disappointed again. <sarcasm> What a shame. </sarcasm>

I'm a Mac Support Tech. We still use PowerMac G5s because when a business buys a computer, it has to last 4-5 years before it's replaced. We can't afford to suddenly replace all our Macs just because something new comes along. The "rumoured" Atom-based Mac Mini would have been a disaster for us, we use them a lot for DTP (yes, you heard, DTP, it *IS* powerful enough)

So thank you, Apple, for not rocking the boat. We can happily wait until 10.6 comes out before we upgrade from 10.4 (with a scattering of 10.5) without worrying about "revolutionary" changes messing up our business strategy in the middle of a recession. And don't worry about the price rises, *everything* is 20-25% more expensive now.

Now, if only the fanbois could wipe the rabid foam from their mouths and stop clogging up the Apple news channels with 85th-hand rumours about things that'll never *ever* happen...

"What gave them the idea that a 28% price hike was what they needed to tempt customers to bin their PC in these recession hit times?"

Apple's price hikes are pretty much in line with everyone elses. If Dell and HP are having to increase the cost of their machines, why do you think Apple can somehow be immune to the same market forces? The recession is forcing the prices rises, dumbass.

Oh, wait, why am I arguing with an anonymous coward when there's coffee brewing over there?

*buggers off to watch the dripping from the filter instead*

Of course the fact that sterling has been devalued by over 25% against the almighty US$ has to be Apple's fault in the minds (and I use the word VERY loosely) of the trolls of the anti-Mac brigade. But I suppose that complex issues like international finance and reality are really a little too much for them.

If they can swallow Microsoft's guff re Windows, then I suppose that they're dumb enough to believe that Brown is fiscally prudent, Darling is totally independent and it all started in America, anyway.

Alien - to symbolise the fact that rational thought (rather than inarticulate prejudice) is a concept which is alien to most of 'em...

Cue vitriolic (and probably ungrammatical) diatribe....

Hackintosh...

It might not be a pretty.. but it's a fraction of the cost = WIN!

I like that title.

I hear what some posters are saying about price rises across the board and all that, but at the end of the day, I can pick up a new Dell Inpiron laptop with 2GHZ dual core, 2GB etc for £370. I would like a Mac, but even the cheapo white macbook is £719, then add parallels/fusion and XP in a VM, and the price is getting silly. I'd like to say I'll opt for a Mini, but I could really use the portability.

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary

I'm seeing some silly, silly, silly, uninformed comments here. Macs work and they work well. Period. There's not a more reliable or stable personal computer available, beause they are not built from the cheapest, shit commodity parts available this week. Mac users don't have to worry about theO/S malfunctioning at every turn (Windows) or trying to backout and clean up rom a balky patch written last night ,after a marathon, porn-induced masturbation session, by some programmer wannabe (Linux). No, mac users actuallu spend most of their time using their computers and not worrying about them. But if they so desire, they can get up to speed on BSD UNIX and climb under the hood. Linux users can too. Microsoft users? Not so much.

“Apple's desktop sales were down 38% last year - that gap is about to get a whole lot bigger.”

Apple’s desktop sales would have been affected by the amount of refreshed products, or rather the lack of them. This isn’t to say that there are other factors at play here, but this is a rather important one.

Before yesterday, the following desktop products were last refreshed:

Mac Pro – Jan08

iMac – Apr08

Mac mini - Aug07

Previously, all of the above lines were refreshed at a considerably faster rate and for more than a few months, the advice to those considering the above was ‘only get if you need it definitely now, there’ll be an update any time soon.’

If the price point last year of Apple’s desktop machines was the sole reason for the drop in sales, then your statement would be right. But it’s not and so it’s not.

"Bring in the clowns... " - finally a sane voice. Thank you.