The new Mac is a great machine, but a $ 499 model could serve a larger audience

While the 2018 Mac mini is remarkably powerful and remarkably good value for what it does, you can not call it inexpensive. Now that it's been launched, however, there is an argument for it to be more likely to make it seem as if it's going to be switcher market.

No question, the new Mac mini is a tremendous machine and if we'd like it to be cheaper, well, that's the case with nearly everything Apple has ever done. This time, though, is a way that it is not serving well at present.

Those markets do include Switchers. The original Mac has been so much a part of Windows users that it was so expensive. Apple is a major market player with a significant machine.

Today the Switcher market may not be easy, but Apple still needs new users and Mac mini is still the cheapest road in. The cheapest MacBook you can buy is an old MacBook Air for $ 999 but that's hardly enough to get people hooked on the range.

That means you spend $ 1,199 at least for a MacBook and then you're heading towards the $ 1,400 or so that you'd need for an iMac.

Compared to them, the Mac mini is a steal event at $ 799. Except new users will be comparing it to the iMac and the MacBooks, they will still be able to compare them to Windows machines. On paper, Windows wins but they have a long way to go.

Apple's already lost the education market to Chromebooks for this reason.

Which is a shame because Apple used to have a strong grip on education -and that's the other market we think it should be $ 499 Mac mini at.

Education, education, education

Apple has reduced costs for education.

Steve Jobs told the Smithsonian Institute in 1995 that "one of the things that built Apple II was schools buying [them]. "

He talked about the impact of a single computer terminal. "We wanted to donate to every school in America," he said. "It turns out to be a hundred thousand schools we could not afford that as a company."

However, Apple found that there was an existing law that said that you donate to a computer to a university then get a deduction.

"That basically means you do not lose too much," said Jobs. "You lose about ten percent." "We could give a hundred thousand dollars, one to each school and it would cost us ten million dollars."

He agreed that this was a lot of money for Apple at the time and that it was less than a hundred million dollars.

It did not work nationally. However, it was in California -Jobs says that the state passed a bill giving this tax break and so Apple ended up giving away 10,000 computers to schools.

That's still impressive, but compare it to the original plan. Apple in the early 1980s was willing to spend 10 million dollars to help education. Now, there's no doubt that you're going to be in the business of making money, but it's not going to change.

If Apple can get its machines into people's hands, they tend to like them and they tend to stay as buyers.

So here's one option: take the new 2018 Mac mini, cut down some of the premium components, and cut $ 300 off it. They could sell over 33,000 Mac minis at a loss and not beyond what was the company.

With inflation, $ 10 million in about 1981 is worth around $ 27 million today Apple could actually subsidize 90,000 Mac minis and be ahead of the game.

It will not

Scenario one is not going to happen the way that Jobs spelled it out, and if it did, then you would be much less demanding for these cheaper educational Mac minis than 90,000.

However, this' 80s education plan was not one-off idea of ​​Apple's, it was the beginning of the company continued with the eMac in 2002.

Gold then there's the way Apple presented a cheaper version of the Apple Pencil for education. It was not an Apple product, it was the Logitech Pencil, but it was front-and-center in an Apple presentation just this March and it was exclusively for education.

In this same presentation, Apple gave education users an iCloud storage boost. Instead of the 5GB we got as many owners of Apple devices, students and teachers were to get 200GB free.

Whiskey bottle economics

Or say Apple does not take a hit for selling low cost Mac mini with the same specs into education. Say it produces a price tag for $ 499 without discounts. As much as we have the processors options, the RAM and the storage in the new Mac mini, Apple could reduce each of them. If it did not matter, you could bet that a cheaper Mac mini would go the same way as eMac and the eMate and the Logitech Pencil -it would start as an education-only product and soon become available to all.

This is where the cost of manufacturing is an issue, though, and that's one point we can not realistically begin to guess about. That does not stop anybody from trying, though, and especially when they are key areas that we know are potential cost savings.

Such as Thunderbolt 3. There might be some schools that would like Thunderbolt 3, but there is no doubt that it would be worth it. Similarly, PCI-e NVMe storage could still be replaced by slower options-like the iPads.

There is no need for a machine, because networking and user spaces are prevalent, and easy to access. But they can use Google services, if need be.

The problem is that it can be reduced by 50 percent. Nonetheless, the reverse is true:

So there is surely a sweet spot somewhere between options for expandability and essentials for running. We may be underselling what schools we want to be able to say that we need to say that Apple is not providing it now.

Again and probably forever, we have this Mac mini and it's great that Apple has made it.

There is just more scope for a more specific version of the law.

If not now

We're not going to say that if we fail to produce a cheaper Mac mini now that it's going to cede control of more than the education market. We'd like to see you bring it back to life, but there is something else that waiting for Apple.

It could bring the end of Intel. More than that, it's looking more likely that Intel will exit stage left the same way that the PowerPC did before it. So many signs point to Apple replacing Intel processors with those of its own design that it seems as close to certain as ever is with this company.

If Apple swaps to its own ARM-based processors, it would give the company. There's an economic one too -leaving Intel In theory, that could lead to lower prices for consumers.

Apple will not cut its profit on it. However, if a move away from Intel significantly reduces the cost of manufacture, it could keep the same price.

It was impossible to estimate how much Apple TV. That's an ARM-based Apple computer with 32GB of storage and it costs $ 169.

Could, would, should

In the future, Apple will probably have this opportunity to reduce costs by dropping Intel. It could not have been reduced to less than a few months, and it could not be reduced to a small audience. It seems to have mostly been abandoned with the new Mac mini.

The market looks to be there for a $ 499 Mac mini, so the only two questions left is that Apple wants to enter that price-point again, or is capable of manufacturing a machine for that price. Mac mini with this new design. $ 499 Mac mini with this new design.

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube, Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.