Mac Mini: First Impressions
The grand total of time I have spent in front of a Mac in my illustrious career with computers would probably total about fifteen minutes. I’ve never liked the damn things, as I am a child of the old-school PC-Mac wars of yonder. I never liked Apple’s products because I thought they were too much eye-candy and not enough horsepower (both hardware and software). Add to that the fact that I always thought Microsoft allowed you more control over your computer (like I said, old school), and I was firmly entrenched in the PC camp for years.
Nowadays, though, Microsoft’s operating systems just aren’t cutting it for me. Now, I don’t think you can actually compare Windows XP and OS X “Tiger” — I think it’s apples to oranges. Windows XP is almost five years old and was built in and for a different era of computers. On a slightly different, slightly related note, comparing Vista to Tiger will be fair game.
But let me get to the point.
When I first took this Mac Mini out of the box, I couldn’t believe the size of this thing. It’s 6.5 inches long and 6.5 inches deep. In fact, at first glance I thought this was the power supply. (Granted, the power supply is almost a third the size of the Mac Mini itself, but I’m not complaining.) Nonetheless, it certainly does look cute next to my case-is-off-expansion-cards-not-screwed-in PC. Yeah, you geeks know what I’m talking about.
So, then comes the first boot. Apple certainly holds your hand through the initial setup phase, and there weren’t any major hiccups to speak of. The worst thing about the setup would be one of my biggest complaints (if you can call it that) so far — the little things that come from transitioning from a PC-way of thinking. Take for example the “Home” key. I expect that to bring my cursor to the beginning of the line, not the beginning of a document.
I absolutely love the search feature in Tiger. It’s called “Spotlight” and I can find anything — from an individual file to an application to a system utility — in a matter of seconds. All you have to do is type in what you’re looking for (this tool is similar to the “locate” and “slocate” tools that are found on Red Hat based systems). My first search was for “terminal” because I wanted to get dirty in BASH as soon as possible. I only got “term” out before it was listing Terminal as my top hit. Try doing that on Windows Search.
But speaking of a terminal, I adore the fact that we get a BASH shell. From the thirty minutes I played around with Tiger, about ten were in BASH setting up cron jobs, ssh server, a backup script for my network, and a few other things related to housekeeping. After those ten minutes went by, I realized I was in my comfort zone in BASH so I went back out to dig around.
I was able to connect to my wireless network, my ethernet network, download Firefox, change my computer name, change my “workgroup,” share a folder, open a share, listen to my iTunes music, play with Dashboard, take a screenshot and resize, and feel my way around Tiger in the rest of that half hour. Not bad for a first-timer. (Of course, I’m not a n00b with computers.)
There were only a couple of other first impressions that really impressed me. One was the eye candy. Mac OS X v10.4 just looks good. I mean really good. It’s hard not to think of how bad the Windows XP interface looks after playing around in Tiger, but then again, apples to oranges. Vista’s Aero Glass may very well make this Mac’s interface look like crap. (Of course, for what it’s worth, I run KDE. Some of you know why I told you that, and I know you are smiling. As for the others, well, just move along.)
Another good first impression was Dashboard, a widget interface somewhat like Konfabulator. Basically, Dashboard lets you add tiny programs, called Widgets, such as a clock, a weather program, news, little games, etc. Normally, things like this just clutter up your desktop, but Apple has a smart way of doing it. When you have Dashboard open, one mouseclick anywhere on screen will get rid of it. (On a side note, one of the widgets is a dictionary. I added that widget to Dashboard, and while typing this entry, I brought it up and searched for “carburetor” very quickly. Tres cool! I double-checked my spelling in about five seconds.)
How about some first negative impressions? One I’ve already mentioned. I know it’s not Apple’s fault that keyboard shortcuts, etc., are different from Windows, but it’s irritating to me. When I hit F6 in Safari, for example, I want the address bar highlighted. I must have hit F6 a dozen times out of habit.
Another negative is with the machine’s power. It seems to run a little sluggish if I’m doing more than one thing at once. Even the initial opening of a (major) application feels like a carburetor that’s running rich. You pull the throttle and there’s just a little stutter. Of course, I did get the lowest-end version of the Mac Mini, and I’m sure the full-on systems run better. Still, if this device is designed to steal some of the market share from Microsoft, a little power boost might have been in order.
All in all, my first impression was quite impressed. Apple’s little machine and new operating system get a thumbs up from me, but I don’t see it becoming my operating system of choice. I haven’t spent a great deal of time with Tiger, but I am a Linux geek, through and through. The fact that I get a BASH shell with OS X is the biggest plus in my opinion, but it’s really for computer geeks like me. Hopefully after some significant time with this machine I’ll have a lot more positives and a few more negatives to share.
As an aside, can it replace those Windows boxes? Well, yes and no. What I see so far is it boils down to this: either you get a crappy operating system with a near-limitless number third-party applications, or you get a pretty smooth operating system (so far, anyway) with limited third-party applications. I don’t really want to delve into that age-old argument tonight anyway. I’m impressed enough with Tiger to keep it on the Mac Mini a little while longer (if I didn’t like it, Linux was going on it), so I’ll revisit this topic when I’ve refined my opinion.
