The Mac mini has been here for a week now. What have I learned from it? And what have I done with it?

Well, I haven't done too much, but I have certainly learned quite a bit. This Ars Technica article gave me some pretty good starter's information.

My impressions follow:

• My plan was not to do development work on this machine. But Bob Lee pointed out that the JDK is bundled with the machine. Upon further inspection, I found out that Xcode 1.5 is also bundled, with an Interface Builder and a whole lot of tools. So much for not doing development.
• Eric Burke wanted to know how slow the Mac mini is. And of course the most objective way of measuring that is to run the SETI@Home program. So I downloaded the Mac OS X version and started it overnight. Aside from the fact that the program won't keep the machine from falling into sleep, things are straightforward. I have completed 4 work units, with an average CPU time per work unit at 6 hr 31 min 24.9 sec.
• Everything looks and feels like iTunes. I thought the iTunes user interface was good when I used the Windows version. Over here every application has that quantity. I've used Safari, Mail, iPhoto, iMovie and a few other things.
• I bought the basic Mac keyboard and mouse. And of course I'm suffering from the my-right-click-is-really-a-left-click symdrome. The problem is most pronounced while I'm browsing web sites. I have a habit of copying the URL of unfamiliar or suspicious links and open them in a different browser, just to be sure of the actual site I visit. (I once clicked on an innocent looking link that triggered a flood of pop-up windows faster than I can close them.)
• Comparing the Mac keyboard and the PC keyboard I noticed that the Print Scrn/SysRe, Scroll Lock, Pause/Break and Num Lock keys are missing. My first question was "How am I going to do screen shots?" Googling for that question brought up a confusing array of hits. I found the answer in the afore mentioned article, which I printed out a few weeks ago, when I told Kevin Heifner I wanted to buy a Mac mini.
• On the other hand, do you ever use your Scroll Lock key? What does it do anyway? It doesn't lock my scrolls!
• The Home and End keys does not do the expected things. Instead, it brings you to the Home (the beginning) or the End of the buffer. Just like in Emacs (at least until a couple of years ago, when they remapped the keys). Recognizing that they are doing what Emacs used to do turns out to be a good observation, for the analogy carries over deeper than you think: Guess what these key combinations do: Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-F, Ctrl-B, Ctrl-K? :)
• I stumbled upon the F9, F10, F11 keys while blindly hitting on keys. Pretty cool. I discovered these before I has a chance to form the complaint about not being able to find obscured windows.
• I had a little trouble with my HP LaserJet 1100 hanging off of a Linux box, not because it's on a LPR/LPD queue, but because there is no Mac OS X driver for the printer. I picked the HP Laser Jet 1200 driver out of frustration. (What else could a reasonable person do?) So far, it's been printing stuff out OK. My HP Photosmart 7350 came with OS X support.
• My HP Photosmart 730 digital camera just worked with iPhoto the first time I plugged it in.
• Yes Brad, I've found the Terminal. (And I have visited every directory there is in the entire system.) And there are lots of GNU tools. Doesn't the *BSDs pride themselves for being a true UNIX and therefore need no GNU's Not Unix tools? Where is the real vi, the one written by Bill Joy for BSD? Oh, I also found out how to do split screens in Terminal. One thing I miss from GNOME Terminal is the ability to open any URL typed or displayed in the terminal from the context menu.
• Garage Band 2 is cool and fun. I did manage to lock up the system with it, to the point where Command-Option-Escape won't work. I have to press the power switch.
• I tried to find a GUI way to add all of my other machine's names into the /etc/hosts file. I couldn't. So I cheated and edited the file with vi. I haven't enabled the root user yet, but apparently my regular user is in the sudo list.
• PDFs are used everywhere. Somehow PDF on the Mac feels lighter weight than on Windows. Double click on them and they open up. No stupid slash screens that hang around for minutes informing me all eight thousand patents that Adobe own.

So far, I'm a satisfied Mac mini user. (No, not a switcher yet, because on the other side of the KVM pedel is my FC3.) I'll still try to be a user on this box. But with a fully functional IDE with a good GUI builder bundled in, you can't blame me for trying out a few lines of Cocoa!

Responses[9]

Posted by Weiqi Gao on February 26, 2005 3:51:08 PM CST #