While most people find little or no sense in beating a dead horse, more find it full-out insane in taking a living, breathing thoroughbred behind the sheds and putting it out of its misery with no actual justification whatsoever. It just doesn't work that way. But it seems Apple has other ideas, with the ill-fated workhorse in question being the small, petite Mac Mini.

Retailing between US$ 599 and US$ 799, they offered customers on a budget an affordable, easy-to-use alternative to the ever-so-popular PC when they were released to the market two years ago.

Figure in the pros of being small, light, and pretty much making life less complicated without the forest of wires PC users often deal with, the Mac Mini could have catered easily to the needs of a space-conscious, non-gaming demographic, or those who just needed a personal computer without the hassle.

By all rights, the Mac Mini should have sold big. But it didn't, and all signs are now pointing to its inevitable demise - but it's not as if we didn't see it coming.

Even before the Mac Mini was released, the market it was made specifically for was practically one that didn't exist, as far as some Apple executives are concerned. Like the kid in the middle that fades into the background, neglected and ignored, the Mac Mini also received a grand total of four updates from Apple - including one that the company didn't even bother to write a press release about. Add to this the fact that the Mac Mini's processors had always been more than a step behind from its bigger, shinier cousins (the iMacs and MacBooks). It's a recipe for disaster, and Apple itself was the one to whip it up.

To be fair, Apple tried to give the Mac Mini a shot in the arm, with plans of a built-in iPod dock - but that too was canned even before it left the drawing board, replaced instead with Apple TV. People see this as the final act of letting go, or the trigger-pulling, so to speak. The little Mini was left to continue on its downward spiral towards obscurity.

It's great that Apple regularly puts out great new products that everyone falls in love with (at least after a significant price drop anyway), but they have to love their products back, most of all. It's like Apple is the computer world's Nintendo - but without the continuous support and love for its older children.

Atleast that's what AppleInsider thinks. Do you think the Mac Mini is dead? Let us know what you think.

Over at CNET, their Top 20 Most Wanted Products for the week ending April 22 just got published. Much to say, the top four seem to echo who really are on the spotlight of the gaming and gadget world. Of course, charts and figures will always show different things, depending on the people who answer the polls or whatnot. Here's the lowdown on CNET's own list though.

The PlayStation 3 is finally on the top spot. Compared to last week's spot on the fifth, that's a big bump up, so much so that it brought the Nintendo Wii down the ladder by one rung. Yeah, the Wii was king of the hill last week (and reigned king uninterruptedly ever since March 25), but the PS3 somehow managed to catch up and finally take the throne. The Xbox Elite, on the other hand, is slowly and steadily on the rise, from last week's Top 4 to this week's Top 3. Just four weeks in the charts, and the Elite has already achieved the third spot. Quite a feat in itself.

On to gadgets though, we're not surprised to find the Apple iPhone snuck up there. While it had second place last week, guess the march of the consoles brought it down to the fourth spot. The notable thing about this item on the list is that, while it continuously jumps up and down a few spots every week, it's pretty much consistent and never left the Top 5 ever since it debuted on the list (debuted on the Top, no less) on January 14!

You can click the Read link below to check out the full Top 20, which contains other miscellaneous gadgets like laptops, cameras, mobile phones, and mp3 players.

Barron's Online has released their third list for "The World's Best CEOs", and look who made his debut in the list for 2007. It's none other than Nintendo's Satoru Iwata.

Iwata got in the exclusive top 30 list, thanks to the innovative Wii. He is but one of the ten overseas CEOs in the list, sharing the spotlight with three new other foreign newbies. It is actually not surprising to find Iwata recognized for his stint as Nintendo's CEO. The company did see, after all, a vast increase in its stocks, and the success of its next-gen console undoubtedly contributed a lot to that spike in revenues.

Steven Jobs also is in the list, apparently as a "Returnee". Barron's describes Jobs as "the ultimate CEO who matters", and deemed that his company, Apple, runs ahead Microsoft by miles in terms of innovations.

Shiny Media (based in the United Kingdom), Xataka (Spain), Daily Gadget (Germany), Journal du Geek (France), and GamesBlog (Italy) asked their readers to vote for Europe's "gadget of the year".

Here's the list of winners. We're throwing in some of the Wii's other awards just to further drive the point home:

Nintendo Wii: Except for Italy, over one half of the voters from each country voted for the Wii.

• The Wii won the Game Critics Award for Best of Show and Game Critics Award for Best Hardware at E3 2006.
• Popular Science made it the Grand Award Winner in Home Entertainment on December 2006.
• Electronic Design magazine gave it the Consumer Design of the Year award in their Best Electronic Design issue.
  
• It got the Spike TV Video Games Award for breakthrough technology.
• It is one of PC World magazine's 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year.
• Gamespot gave it the Best Hardware award at their Best and Worst 2006 awards show.

Apple iPod nano: Italy voted for the iPod nano.

• All we can say is Apple's popular digital audio player has won too many other awards to mention. (It doesn't need to - the iPod is the current undisputed market leader when it comes to portable audio and video.)
  

Nokia N Series phones: These got lots of votes from Spain.

• The "N Series" or "Nseries" is popular for its variety of multimedia features. Most notable are the high-resolution screens, FM radio, 3D graphic support for games (something we very much admire), variety of music codecs, and high-resolution camera. Just look at the Nokia N73.