Totally sweet.

So Apple, in all its glory, announced some pretty exciting stuff today. Steve "The Ego" Jobs stood up at Macworld today and showed off his amazing new products. What it must be like to work in Cupertino...Apple is the innovation of cool right now.

The following 3 announcements will be landmark for the next several months in technology.

Mac Mini
Apple's first attempt at really attacking Dell's stranglehold on the entry-level home user market. The iMac G5 was great, but this really is slick and the pricing makes it really compelling. To get a Mac for only $500 is pretty amazing. Most people already have monitors, keyboards, etc. and this gets them the cool factor without smacking their wallet with a rubber hose.

ipod shuffle
Mac's entry into the flash-memory-based music player market is, like the ipod, better than anything else out there right now. Small and sexy, this player also is super-competitive in price, enabling you to get a 1GB player for only $150. With an additional version at 512MB, this player will go a long way. Expect to see it soon at a Bally Total Fitness near you.

iWork
Apple finally updates its long-outdated Appleworks suite with something tangible. Featuring Keynote 2 and a new program, Pages, Apple allows you to have the most used functionality of Microsoft Office, while allowing you to only spend $80 on it instead of $400. With the same design team working on Pages as worked on Keynote, you can expect that it will be just as strong of a product.

Notice a common theme?

Price.

Apple finally has heeded the call of its critics and started to lower its prices because isn't that really all that consumers care about anymore? These 3 products enable Joe Schmo to become a savvy home Mac user because Apple has designed programs that they think people will use and are functional and simple, yet powerful enough for all levels of users.

That is a good thing.