Insanely Cheap

If you've been under a rock all morning, then you may not know that Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled at Macworld today a $499 Mac and a $99 iPod. Both these products sport tiny form factors as diminutive as their prices.

The 40-gigabyte Mini Mac doesn't come with a monitor or input devices, so you'll still have to spring for those.

The new iPod Shuffle isn't a small version of the iPod we know and love. The Shuffle has just 512 megabytes of memory and no display.

What these products do have is the golden "Mac" and "iPod" branding. They should help Apple chip away at the perception that Apple hardware is overpriced.

Die-hard Apple fans may be disappointed that the big announcements today were nothing more than small, low-priced versions of what's already out there. They may have been expecting bold new directions or radical new technology. But I think it's brilliant.

No, Apple isn't thinking different. But the company is thinking small and thinking low for a change, and have come up with some hardware, you know, for the rest of us.