The Apple Mac Mini was announced today.

Let's see: I want a Mac so I can kick around with Mac OS X, but the G5 is more than I'd like to pay, since I don't plan to use it for real work, at least not yet. I'd like a PowerBook, but they're pretty expensive too, especially for a machine with a G4. I don't want to buy a used Mac, either. I like to play games on my Windows machine, so I'm not concerned about gaming performance. I already have a pretty nice 21" monitor, and a USB mouse.

So I get a USB keyboard (already on my list anyway), a USB KVM, and a Mac Mini. I end up with a good-enough system that is 6.5" x 6.5" x 2", super quiet, consumes 85 watts max, comes with Mac OS X 10.3 and iLife, doesn't use crappy shared video memory, and costs $499 (plus a RAM upgrade, since 256 MB doesn't do it for me.) If I like the experience, I'll probably go ahead and buy a more powerful machine within a year.

I think they'll sell tons of these to people like me.