It may sound weird that the PC-market’s equivalent to the Mac mini would be positive to Apple’s moving into their territory, but the taiwanese companies have big hopes that the Mac mini will draw more attention to the mini-computer market, and thus also the PC-based SFF-barebones.
SFF-barebones are in no way as slimmed as the Mac mini, but offers comparable performance to the larger relatives instead.
“However, the SFF vendors do think that the Mac mini will have an influence on the PC market, as Apple will grab a fair portion of mind-share among mainstream users. Users will be attracted by the idea of an affordable PC that is small and stylish, and this in turn will make more mainstream users consider purchasing SFF PCs, the vendors argued.”
In other words the companies hope that the conumers will like the minimalistic design of the Apple Mac mini, but go for a more “PC-like” alternative instead.
Considering Apple’s successes lately we might very well be looking at a new genre on the computer market aiming for extreme minimalism, shrinking the size to the extreme by sacrificing compatibility and performance.
Source: DigiTimes
