CNET News editor and the Mac MiniMe

Here's a high-profile switcher story: Jeff Peline, editor of CNET News,
bought a Mac Mini on a whim: "I'm definitely not one to shop till you drop, but I snapped up a Mac Mini on Saturday morning—at a mall, no less." This impulse buy factor definitely lends credence to the Mac Mini as switcher machine theory: "for $499 I got a computer,
DVD player and quickly built a home media center with our existing HDTV."

Peline likes the Mini – its convenience, its size, its price. He still pulls the 'cheap Dell' card, though: "You can buy a fully equipped Dell desktop PC, with a flat-panel monitor, for the same price." Yeah, yeah. We'll never hear the end of it until Apple releases a dual-processor 2Ghz G5 for $200. I'm sure they'll still complain.

Still, Peline notes the smarts behind the Apple business strategy: "But the lesson from Apple should be taken seriously.... Steve is smart enough to know that if you build good products and market them, people will come—they'll even line up in front of your store on weekends." Even with
broken appendages.