| Tuesday, February 1, 2005 |
14:06 - A million household uses
http://news.com.com/Putting+the+Mac+Mini+in+your+dashboard/2100-1042_3-5539831.html?
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Via JMH: an idea whose time has, er, well, hmm...
Sloatsburg, N.Y.-based Classic Restorations has laid out plans to install the Mac Mini in car dashboards.
The company was already working on a way to install a Mac laptop when Apple Computer introduced the Mac Mini last week. Melvin Benzaquen, president of Classic Restorations, noticed that the dimensions of the diminutive desktop were just about perfect to fit into the space automakers allot for car stereos.
What exactly anyone would do with a Mac in the car is not totally clear, but Benzaquen said there are lots of possibilities, from logging in to one's home network to playing music or movies. Equip the car with Wi-Fi, and it might be able to get Internet access from the parking lot of a Starbucks or McDonald's, he said. GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation and voice-activated programs are other options.
"There are so many things you could do," Benzaquen said.
Uh huh. When someone says "There are so many things you could do", it usually means "We have no idea, but we sure hope someone out there is creative enough to make us profitable".
I mean, more power to 'em and all. (After all, the inevitable PC conversions of the Mac mini only result in defeatured, slower computers than the original, rather than the uglier but much faster results that past tower conversions have become.) The Mac mini's press has been so overwhelmingly positive lately that it stands to reason that people would be coming up will all kinds of possible aftermarket applications for a full desktop-class computer that fits almost into a jacket pocket.
But in a car? To leech wi-fi from an adjacent coffee shop? To watch movies on an LCD screen whose image becomes invisible in sun glare? That's reaching, if you ask me.
It's not clear how big the market is for such a product, but Benzaquen said he has had plenty of interest. His Web site has gone from 1,500 hits a day to more than 36,000 hits in the first full day after announcing the Mac plans.
Then again... if you build it, they will come, and in droves. For whatever reason.
(We're Mac users. We don't need a reason.)
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Brian Tiemann
