October 29 marked the day when Apple gave members of the Press a briefing of their new product line-up in preparation for the holiday shopping season. It was surprising for Apple to have the briefing a week after its official announcement in the US - normally takes a little longer than that - but I am not complaining. Heck, if they can do it the next day after the US launch, then better, right?

The line-up included the new Mac Mini, the new iMac and the new Magic Mouse. No mention of the new Airport Extreme Base Station and Time Capsules but I guess the small hardware bump for these wifi devices are not enough to be included in the main event.

The new Mac Mini specs were updated. As with every Apple hardware update, the Mac Mini got a speed bump, better graphic card and more RAM. It continues to be the most affordable Mac in Apple’s computer line-up. However, what is new is the addition of a Mac Mini running Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server. Yes, you read that correctly - a server OS running on that tiny little critter.

The new Mac Mini “server edition” comes with two 500GB 5400rpm HDDs, instead of one HDD and an optical drive, and a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo processor. All other specs are the same as its siblings - NVidia GeForce 9400M graphics, 5 USB ports, 1 Firewire 800 port, 1 Gigabit Ethernet, mini-DVI port and mini DisplayPort. Final price, PhP56,000. Not bad considering its power and features, huh?

The Mac Mini comes with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server with unlimited number of clients! Now, compare this to a Windows 2008 Server license, then you’d know that the Mac Mini deal is already a bargain.

What do you get from Mac OS X Server?

The Mac OS X server-grade OS comes with iCal Server, Addressbook Server, Mail Server and Mobile Access Server. These services allow you to seamlessly integrate clients from Mac desktops and portables to iPhones and iPod Touch - even Windows PCs!

In addition, you also get Podcast Producer, Wiki Server, File Server, Web Server, Spotlight Server and VPN Server software, along with other standard Unix services. All of these are running on Snow Leopard’s 64-bit kernel!

What does this mean for the rest of us?

Well, I have a small server at home - an Asus Eee Box running Linux. It was originally intended as a desktop but I decided to install some basic server software, too. Configuring it took awhile - definitely not as easy as what Snow Leopard Server claims to do - but it worked without issues. Total cost, for an unlimited number of clients is basically the cost of the Eee Box, which is around 20-24K pesos, if I remember correctly. However, this does not seamlessly integrate with all the Macs in our household - a 15” Macbook Pro, a 13” Macbook Pro and an iMac with three iPhones and 2 iPod Touch devices. I never considered running Windows 2008 Server but for 10 clients, you pay US$900, or approximately PhP42,000, and that is with 26% discount from Amazon.com. You can get it lower somewhere else but it is more expensive if you factor in the hardware,too.

What does this mean for small businesses?