Seems like we’ll be seeing Mac mini clones aplenty this Christmas. I suppose given all the buzz that came about after Apple’s launch of the Mac mini it was simply a matter of time before clones were being mass produced.

The question though, is what took PC manufacturers so long to come up with something with this form factor? It took a few years after Apple first released the ill-fated Power Macintosh G4 Cube for PC makers to start refining the SFF designs pioneered by Shuttle. But it was only after Apple released the Mac mini – 5 years after the Cube – that PC makers started scrambling to produce a PC as small.

One interesting thing to note is that at the same price point, the Intel-based Mac mini clones aren’t significantly cheaper than the Mac mini. Which really confirms that Apple isn’t over-pricing the Mac mini after all.

Personally I’m hoping to get one real cheap in the near future and set it up as very nice Linux-based file server for backups.