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Steve Jobs and Apple Computers did the big message thing today, and rolled out some wow-wow stuff. Among the new announcements are the confirmation of the rumored $500 Mac and an even-smaller, simpler and less-expensive iPod Shuffle MP3 player.

The Mac mini is nifty, very mini, and the base model is $499. By the time you outfit it with more RAM, and if you want to be able to burn DVDs or have wireless or Bluetooth capability, you’ll pay more – and it adds up pretty quickly.

A $599 base model includes 40GB more hard drive and a faster G4 processor than the $499 model.

You have to add the keyboard, monitor and mouse on your own. If you already have those items ready to use, that might be a good deal. I’ve done the math, and once you add on what I’d probably want, it leaves me wondering if I should just go with the 17” iMac. This is a lot smaller case, but hey the iMac is basically a monitor with everything built in, and a more powerful processor (the iMac has a 1.6GHz G5 in the base model) so…

The 17” iMac G5 looks like this and sells for $1299 with everything you need (monitor, keyboard, mouse):

17-inch widescreen LCD
1.6GHz PowerPC G5
512K L2 cache
533MHz frontside bus
256MB DDR400 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
80GB Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load Combo Drive

The better-equipped Mac mini looks like this for $599 base, but it’ll end up costing about $1000–$1100 by the time you equip it the same way, but it’s important to keep in mind you’ll get a slower frontside bus, slower RAM, and a less-powerful G4 proc:

1.42GHz PowerPC G4
256MB DDR333 SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB DDR video memory
80GB Ultra ATA hard drive
Combo drive
DVI or VGA video output
AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth optional

And $499–$599 doesn’t give you what you need to fire it up and make it work. Add the needed keyboard and mouse (decent ones, assuming you don’t already have what you’d need) and you’re up another $50–$100. An off-brand widescreen 17–inch LCD display will run you $390 or more. An Apple-branded display costs significantly more than that.

If it was a G5 machine, I’d be all over the mini right now, just for size reasons. As it stands, I think I will wait for performance reports from the field. Sure, $500 is a much less expensive entry price, but when you stack the two above models next to each other, well… $500 is still $500, ya know? It’s still important to spend smart.

I’m going to buy a Mac – some kind of Mac. Will it be a mini? Time will tell. But I’ll let someone else do the early-adoption on this one.