Mac Users Sound Off On $500 Mac. “Oh, The Humanity.”

Jack Miller, our resident “former” Windows user says he doesn’t want a $500 Mac, headless or otherwise.

To clarify, “headless” simply means without a monitor or display. The “box” would still be a Mac, although probably without both monitor and G5 chip like the iMac and PowerMac.

Poor Jack. As a former Windows user he’s skeptical of everything these days. Worse, he’s now hooked on a dual 2.5 ghz PowerMac that’s loaded to his gills, so “stepping down” to a lowly $500 Mac must seem like an insult.

Click Here to read Jack’s sad story.

What were the reader responses to a $500 Mac? Get real. Everyone wants one. I want one. Tera wants two (and she’s got half a dozen Macs already).

More importantly, at $500, Windows users who’ve come to love their iPods because “they just work” will go for a full-fledged Mac in droves. Or grosses of droves. Well, they’ll sell a bunch of them.

Think about it. Windows users have been snapping up and loving their iPods to the tune of about 6-million or so in the past couple of years. The average price must be close to $300, and perhaps another $100 on top of that for cool accessories. On average.

So, what’s another $500 for a Mac box that’ll run Mac OS X? Even Windows users already have a monitor (the one piece of hardware that Windows doesn’t screw up—too much). Assume a $500 Mac comes with a keyboard, and probably a nifty new two-button mouse.

Windows users will love it.

Here’s one of the letters we received from a converted Mac user:

“This is the ideal switcher desktop.  The eMac and iMac may be excellent values and cool (well the iMac anyway), but switchers face more than a decision to use a different platform, they have to buy most of their stuff again. 

Software must be rebought (switchers NEED real Microsoft Office) and by only selling models with built-in-monitors on the lower end, you turn away many would be buyers.  I switched (well switched back) last year, and when it was time to replace my family desktop with a Mac, I did not want to part with the very nice LCD flatpanel monitor I had purchased the year before. 

Rather than a lampshade iMac or an eMac (or ponying the big bucks for a G5 tower) I bought an older G4 PowerMac.  I paid $400 for that old Sawtooth (400MHz), and would definitely have prefered to pay $500 for a new headless eMac.”

Other than Mac readers who blasted Jack Miller for his sometimes senseless meanderings (the Windows trauma hasn’t worn completely off), most echo the above.

But wait! There’s more!

Windows users need a two button mouse so expect one in any $500 Mac that Apple is rumored to announce next week at Macworld Expo.

Hmmm. Come to think of it, Windows users probably have a stack of productivity software they’d need to replace if they bought a Mac, right? Microsoft Office would cost nearly as much as that new Mac.

What if Apple were to bundle a nifty, new “office-like” application and bundle it with that $500 Mac? In fact, our friends (well, we don’t know them but we read their site regularly) over at Think Secret think Apple will introduce a new Mac application called “iWork.”

Imagine that. A $500 Mac. iLife ‘05 built in. Mac OS X built in. iWork (word processing, spreadsheet, database et al) built in. Security built in. No viruses, no pop up ads, no spy ware.

Oh, and Mac OS X “Tiger”, too. Yes, that’s right. I expect that if Steve Jobs introduces a new $500 Mac with all the above, it’ll be shipping sometime around spring. Isn’t that when we’d expect to see Tiger (the next Mac OS X) to be released?

Hey Apple, how about dropping the price on those lovely aluminum Cinema Displays to go along with a $500 Mac? Come to think of it, since the 20” model is now only $999, a 17” model at $499 would be a great fit for a $500 Mac.

How many $500 Macs will you buy? And why? Share your comments with other readers and click the Comments link below. Does Apple love you, or what? Of course, if they don’t introduce a $500 Mac next week as expected… “Whoa, the humanity**.”

** remember the Hindenburg?