Apple Changes Course With Low-Priced Mac

　　Apple Computer introduced its first low-priced Macintosh on Tuesday, signaling its bet that most consumers now see computers as simply another appliance in the modern house.

　　While computers have long been sold as machines that can turn a home into an office, most Americans now use them in their bedrooms and kitchens as e-mail terminals; as hubs for playing music, storing and editing photos; and as stations for navigating the Web.

　　The new Mac Mini, priced as low as $499 without a keyboard, monitor or mouse, is aimed squarely at the needs of this new digital household. The new Apple strategy, which moves the company deeply into the consumer electronics market, positions the new Macintosh as an entertainment and communication device. It also promises to intensify Apple's battle with Microsoft in the personal computer market dominated by machines using Windows software.

　　The move is in part propelled by Apple's success with its iPod digital music players; with 10 million sold in the last three years, the iPod has pulled Apple into the mass market. The popularity of iPod, analysts say, may persuade consumers who have not been Apple computer users to consider the Mac Mini.

　　Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive said at a conference on Tuesday, "We want to price this Mac so that people who are thinking of switching will have no excuse."

　　More important, Microsoft is also moving to turn PC's into entertainment centers with its Windows Media Center Edition software, which lets a computer double as a television and video recorder.

　　Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, said that Apple's consumers were probably not going to give up their Windows PC's but might buy a Macintosh as an additional computer for entertainment.