Written by Bender Jan 19, 2005

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know that Apple last week unveiled two stunning new products: the Mac Mini and the iPod Shuffle.

Stunning not simply because they are, in typical Apple fashion, beautiful, but stunning because they are cheap.  Apple has done what I thought Apple under Steve Jobs would never do: they’ve entered the low-end computer and electronics market.

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber says:

The one-two punch of the Mac Mini and iPod Shuffle comprise the most aggressive, boldest venture in the Jobs 2.0 era at Apple.

And it’s hard not to agree with him. But while the success of the iPod can’t be understated, it remains to be seen whether Apple will make a dent in the PC market share that Microsoft dominates. Right now, the Mac market share hovers somewhere around the Linux market share, which is to say it’s puny.

Will there be a Mac in every home now that Apple is selling a cheap computer? Or is it too little too late?