On this day in 2005, Apple introduced three key products at MacWorld San Francisco. One of them was the Mac mini, which was Apple’s answer to offering a “stripped down Mac that was more affordable.” Starting at $499, it was the most affordable Mac that Apple ever offered. The Mac mini’s purpose was an entry-level gateway for users switching from their existing PC setup as Apple coined the phrase “BYODKM,” which is an acronym for “Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse,” and that solution effectively worked well as it made the Mac mini more versatile than ever before. Over the next two decades, it has evolved to take advantage of the latest I/O technologies such as HDMI and Thunderbolt / USB-C connectivity, and the advancements of Apple Silicon allowed Apple to miniaturize the Mac mini’s design even further in a 5-inch square when its design debuted a few months ago, which impressed so many people with its ultra-small form factor, yet packs a heftier punch. With that, it’s still the best-value Mac that anyone can buy today.
Image: Nick Soong
The second product was the iPod shuffle, which became Apple’s answer to flash-based MP3 players, which were harder to use than Apple’s philosophy on simplicity. The iPod shuffle was an entirely new product in the iPod lineup, which was based entirely on the concept of shuffling your songs in a random order. With no display, users can easily use the iPod shuffle with the built-in switch to switch between playing songs in order or shuffle them randomly. It was the first Apple product to use flash storage, which eventually made its way to the rest of Apple’s products today. The iPod shuffle initially started at $99, which was the most affordable iPod in the lineup ever. The iPod shuffle went through four designs before its ultimate discontinuation in July 2017.
Finally, Apple built “the successor to AppleWorks (Apple’s productivity app designed for the classic Mac OS)” with iWork, which was completely designed from the ground up to take full advantage of the much more modern capabilities of Mac OS X (aka macOS). iWork initially featured two applications – Keynote (for presentations) and Pages (for word processing). Numbers (for spreadsheets) were later added in 2007, and it completed the iWork suite. Apple continues to provide regular updates to all of its apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Those three product announcements made MacWorld 2005 one of Apple’s most important keynotes in Apple’s history.
