[igglue]

I'm in the midst of compiling apache 2.0 in the terminal as I write this on my new mac mini. I am still trying to get used to the interfaces, and some weird logic of where things go in the macs, but that aside, I have few opinions. I read the previous post by I wanted to write why I left mac, and what I will do in the future.

My experience of macs date from the first version of mac. Yes, I've seen elisa, but I never used it. I grew up into the quadras, help people setup and consult with centurions, and being a desktop publisher using page maker and quark through the early 90's to make money to live off in NYC. Back then I was considered a mac expert, and I left. The reason was mac'ism as I call it. People in the mac world are engineers. They don't question authority but accept words of evangelicals as absolute. Eventually, I got fed up and went to OS/2. Then I worked with Windows NT 3.1 betas and eventually mac just became useless as I worked day and night on pc's. (I also used to assemble pc's in the late 80's and early 90's to my fellow students for couple of good dinners.) So I never came back to Mac because mac was too restrictive and had "just swallow the pill because WE KNOW IT'S GOOD FOR YOU". Well the time has changed and it's running on BSD, which I've worked on many hours in the dot com craze so I jumped on mac mini. Why not? But here are my open minded evaluation.

The 'apple store' experience.
1. It's a beautiful place. It's white, just like a mental institution, and they treat you like such as well. I went to a store in Chestnut Hill Mall in Newton, MA. Maybe the guys there are snobs because of the town they are in. They weren't friendly and I learned that after one question. Yes, many pc stores are like that, but I think compusa guys are more helpful. They may be cluelss, but they try to get you an answer by asking their peers rather then acting like they know it all. So, I never got an answer about the upgrade coupons in the box, which my co-workers said is valid for some unknown time. I'm going to just b!tch to apple store that some punk told me that coupons will get me a tiger and I'll just be a pain. (I learned that in NYC.) There weren't much excitement about the mini. I was shocked as space is premium in Boston.
2. Mac mini. It's a decent box for $599. It's sleek, and built OK. I already ripped the case open to upgrade the memory to 512megs, which it really needed. Overall, a good system. So what are the pros and cons?
Pros:
- Nice looks
- Pretty quiet, when the fan is off. When it comes on, it's a bit louder then my Dell Dimension 4500. That's the quietest pc I've ever owned.
- Office comparison. I am trying out the 2004 office and it feels pretty much identical
- Mouse is OK. It did go flaky on me once but ever since it's decent.
- Directory structure. It's about the same.
- My Ipod 5gig (g1) looks at home now. (I was the first in my company to get an ipod!)
- Nice interface.
- Good community support. (Thanks to all the faithful mac people. I really appreciate it!)

Cons: (Here it comes)
- Same ol' mac philosophy of 'if it isn't there, don't do it'. Good for consumer dummy users, but power users like me hate it! (Good thing mac has techie faithfulls).
- Good old mac likes you to limit stuff but because it's BSD based, you can get around it by activating the root permissions. Though this is really dangerous and I recommend people staying away from it.
- The logic of where things go is rather inconsistent. Firewall should be near/on/around networking. It's in some weird page. Obviously, they don't want people to go there.
- It's virus prone. Yes, it has firewall and chances are it won't have as many viruses. But the guys at apple store pushed me on .mac and anti virus software. I work for Computer Associates and I can get my own antivirus sofftware. (No thanks.)
- WIndows file sharing is super slow. I don't know what's wrong with it, but it's not the HD as I get throughputs from download that's much faster then through windows file share. It may be lack of caching? I would avoid windows file share and go through ftp.
- Keyboard mapping. I was completely lost, but now I'm somewhat lost. Did you know that apple-2 is mute? apple-3 and apple-4 is volume low/loud respectively? Good think I was a hacker 20 years ago. Instead of pushing their own kb, they should just publish the dang keyboard mapping! (I hope someone will fix this comment and point me to a cheat sheet.)
- Sluggish key feel. It's not my keyboard as I've used it for over a year. It's the way that OS behaves.
- Fuzzy screen. I have an LCD which I've used tinkertool and disabled font smoothing and stuff but Windows is just sharper for some reason. Yes, I should just try it because Apple knows what's better for me then I do.

Overall, not so bad. It's a great test system and day to day web surfing box.

So the big question is "Will it replace my PC?".
The answer is "NO". Simply because I need to access my work, and I like to play games. I put together my Dell P4 2.8 ghz system with 1 gig of ram, and Nvidia Geforce 6800 for just over $700. Granted I have Microsoft partnership program so I have all the Microsoft applications (costs me $199 a year to keep it up), and I work for one of the biggest software company, I have a system that's probably 2x faster then this thing. BUT...
I think I will be reducing my usage of my pc down. Mac mini is nice and I think it'll work nicely as a main web browser/ipod syncer/address book holder (to sync with my Sony T610.)/web mail/office tool. So I would say 60% of my computing needs have moved to mac for now.

If you are someone who's not into playing games and really don't care about getting the latest software, then mac will probably work just fine. In fact it has some neat features like Sherlock, ical, and so forth.

Recommendations:
1. I would recommend purchasing a USB 2.0 hub ASAP. Being a geek, I have bunch of them lying around and I already have 2 ports full. I have at one time 4 usb devices attached (usb key, and memory card reader).
2. Bluetooth isn't all that. But if you have a bluetooth phone that syncs, then consider buying a cheap bluetooth adapter and giving it a shot. I used TrendNet which cost me $25.
3. Yeah, IPOD. Shouldn't everyone have one? Well, mine was collecting dust as my german car has a radio that shows titles and stuff, but my IPOD is alive and kicking again.
4. Office applications are nice, but I think you can live without it. Consider open office. Thought is X11 based so the UI will probably look inconsistent. Sorry, I haven't tried it out yet, nor I am not sure if I'd bother with it.
5. tinkertool is a must geeks.
6. xcode 1.5 is a must as it'll give you gcc to compile apache and other nifty tools of your desire.
7. Upgrade your memory as soon as you can to 512megs.

Upgrading memory:
There's a reason why my buddy calls me an 'Early Adopter God'. (I got OGO on the 2nd day, and I returned it because I couldn't get a decent signal at my house. But it was nice.). So here are some real suggestions.
1. Get a 4" metalhead stainless steel joint knife from home depot. It's essentially a thinner putty knife. It's right by the drywall with the hawk and fibretape. It's perfect as it's thin, durable, and also will pull out all prongs at once!
2. I used a painter's blue masking tape to cover the case to protect from stupid dings. I recommend it highly
3. First one is really tough. You will scrape off some plastic, but that's OK. Once you pull one side out, use the 4" knife to pull one side out as much as possible. Then pull a little bit and you'll get a nice gap to shove your knife into. It'll pop right out.
4. When assembling look at those metal pieces right above the input/outputs. Make sure they go right between the case and cushon.

Summary:
I think going with BSD was the smartest idea that Apple did for the mac. It actually attracts geeks, and provides stable base for the consumer interface. The design is fabulous, and it's perfect as a web surfing machine. I highly recommend a mac mini, but I wouldn't go with the i-cube as for people who need more power should just go with a solid Pentium 4 pc with hyper-threading, lots of memory, and raided drives. (Hard disk is the slowest piece in almost all systems.). I know people love mac, but I think a working geek can not live without a pc. But you can do most things with a mac and that's what I intend to do from now on.

Well, I think I'm going to put my mini to sleep. The blizzard was perfectly scheduled, and Pats are going to the superbowl again. I hope my review will help others!

[Link]

Those who need more power buy a real computer, not a toy with a dell label on it. Then again, why should I be listening to someone who makes more typos than a kid out of 6th grade?

[discotronic]

Originally posted by igglue:

- It's virus prone. Yes, it has firewall and chances are it won't have as many viruses. But the guys at apple store pushed me on .mac and anti virus software. I work for Computer Associates and I can get my own antivirus sofftware. (No thanks.)

I can't say that I agree with the virus comment. To date there are zero viruses in the wild for OSX. Where did you get that OSX is virus prone?

[spectre]

Originally posted by igglue:
- It's virus prone. Yes, it has firewall and chances are it won't have as many viruses. But the guys at apple store pushed me on .mac and anti virus software. I work for Computer Associates and I can get my own antivirus sofftware. (No thanks.)

That's pretty bad that they tried to push you on antivirus software. One of the selling points of a mac is well, there aren't any (that I'm aware of), viruses. I personally wouldn't worry about anti-virus software...

[igglue]

I'm mostly concerned about script level exploits such as e-mail exploits and so forth. But you bring up a good point as I recall virus was one of mac's selling points, was it not? So what's going on with the guys at the Apple store? Do you think anti-virus on mac is really not needed?

I just installed IE to see if I can get Exchange 2003's web features that are available on the PC and IT IS NOT. That said, the only benefit is that control key is mapped like the PC so it's a lot easier to type on it. I still have hard time with a little bit of sluggish feel. and keyboard mappings.

I guess they should've had a keyboard mapping for Windows migrators like me.

Though when I went back to PC, I did notice that unpolished feel of Windows that I used to notice when I worked with Macs and PC's at the same time...

Iggy

[osxisfun]

> My Ipod 5gig (g1) looks at home now. (I was the first in my company to get an ipod!)


AHA!

so Mr. Jobs Musical Switching tour works....

Welcome aboard...

[Footy]

Originally posted by igglue:
I'm mostly concerned about script level exploits such as e-mail exploits and so forth. But you bring up a good point as I recall virus was one of mac's selling points, was it not? So what's going on with the guys at the Apple store? Do you think anti-virus on mac is really not needed?


Iggy

13 years virus free here! Don't waist your money on virus software. I do have a PC as well loaded to the hilt with virus software but only check my email on the Mac for fear of email related garbage.

Buying a Mac Mini for my wife in a couple weeks as and early B-Day present and can't wait to get my Power Mac back to my desk as it should be!

Welcome back! Damn that Steve is smart!

[mattsgotredhair]

no comments on the stability of the os?

[Paco Loco]

"- Fuzzy screen. I have an LCD which I've used tinkertool and disabled font smoothing and stuff but Windows is just sharper for some reason. Yes, I should just try it because Apple knows what's better for me then I do."

I know what you mean about this. I am a web designer and work on both mac and PC (I have both on my desk) and i have noticed this but everyone I have talked to about it seems to think I am imagining it! I always thought macs were a must-have for graphics and design work, so what's up with the soft focus??

[meelk]

Originally posted by Link:
Those who need more power buy a real computer, not a toy with a dell label on it. Then again, why should I be listening to someone who makes more typos than a kid out of 6th grade?

A bit bitter because he stated his real opinions than simply preaching the mini as "the best thing ever"? You should seriously take stock of your life if you post so angrily over something on a net forum.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally posted by Paco Loco:
"- Fuzzy screen. I have an LCD which I've used tinkertool and disabled font smoothing and stuff but Windows is just sharper for some reason. Yes, I should just try it because Apple knows what's better for me then I do."

I know what you mean about this. I am a web designer and work on both mac and PC (I have both on my desk) and i have noticed this but everyone I have talked to about it seems to think I am imagining it! I always thought macs were a must-have for graphics and design work, so what's up with the soft focus??

When you have some free time, go thru the color calibration process (System Prefs -> Displays -> Color -> Calibrate) and set it to expert mode. Take the time to get it as precise as possible. It will make a huge difference in font clarity, especially if you're using font smoothing on an LCD. It did wonders for me on a 22" Cinema Display and 15" HP LCD at home, 15" Powerbook, and 17" Dell LCD at work.

[typoon]

Good assesment of your impressions of the Mac.

[igglue]

If I were to put a number to it, here are the breakdowns of why I turned back to mac.

10% ipod
30% BSD based. (Apache and Tomcat server)
30% Form factor/looks
30% Curiosity

As for the anti-virus, I'm not going to be in a hurry. (Thanks for all the comments.) I'm going to send few e-mails and get one from work.
Fuzzy screen. I did calibrate the monitor, but I'm going to give it a shot again. (Thanks!)

So far, I really like the box. I just need to get used to the mac<->Windows dissimilarities and I'd be all set.

iggy

[tooki]

Originally posted by igglue:
I'm mostly concerned about script level exploits such as e-mail exploits and so forth. But you bring up a good point as I recall virus was one of mac's selling points, was it not? So what's going on with the guys at the Apple store? Do you think anti-virus on mac is really not needed?

Are such exploits possible? I suppose. Are they practical, and worth the crackers' time? Nope.

It being BSD, permissions pose one substantial hurdle. But much more importantly, the Mac doesn't launch scripts willy-nilly.

Email worms/scripts: There are zero email programs on the Mac that launch executable files and scripts automatically, and they're also good about not obscuring the filetype. There's never been any clue of the potential for a Mac email virus.

Spyware: since most spyware is installed with the user's consent (if you call a sentence hidden in a 25-page EULA "consent"), it's certainly possible for spyware to exist on the Mac. In fact, LimeWire once made one. But there was swift backlash against it, and LimeWire removed it. There is currently no known spyware for Mac. It is not possible for spyware to be installed automatically by visiting a website, as long as you have run Software Update and have all the latest security updates. (This, also, was only done as a proof-of-concept, never in the wild.)

Real viruses/worms: possible? Absolutely. But with great difficulty on account of the permissions and non-automatic script execution. So far, no virus writer has wasted his time on Mac OS X, with Windows being such a lucrative target. Note that there used to be far more Mac viruses in the System 6 and 7 days, but by the time Mac OS 9 rolled around, most of them had either been entirely eradicated, or had actually become incompatible with changes in the OS and rendered sterile, so to speak. Nonetheless, it is possible, if extremely unlikely, for the copy of Mac OS 9 running inside the Classic environment to become infected. Mac minis do not ship with Classic installed by default.

Trojan horses: absolutely possible, and are in the wild. The only Mac OS X trojan I know of is the one floating around LimeWire and other file sharing systems, which is a <200KB file pretending to be the MS Office 2004 installer. In fact, it's just a script that empties the user's home directory. Furthermore, one developer created a "proof of concept" trojan which hid executable code in an mp3 file. It did work, but no such trojan exists in the wild.

Rootkits: exist for Mac OS X. But contrary to several news reports on it, the rootkit cannot get installed without administrator privileges, and it is not self-replicating. It must be manually installed on an already-compromised machine.

PC viruses: a Mac could transmit such a file and infect a PC, but the Mac itself is immune to them.

MS Office Macro viruses: vulnerable, but the effects are contained within Office. Office 2004 does warn when files contain macros, and offers to not run them.



So what's the upshot of all this? Mac virus software will catch old Mac viruses that could infect Classic, PC viruses that the Mac is immune to but could pass to an unwitting PC, and Office macro viruses. They also "catch" the harmless proof-of-concept MP3 trojan.

I don't think any of those are risks that warrant the cost and hassle of an antivirus program. (Virex, by the way, is awful on Mac OS X. It's one of the very worst-designed utilities I've seen.)

tooki

[Sparkletron]

Originally posted by Paco Loco:
I always thought macs were a must-have for graphics and design work, so what's up with the soft focus??

If you already know this then skip it...

LCDs have a native resolution. Any resolution you try to display that isn't an even multiple of the LCD's native resolution will create the sort of "soft focus" you're describing. What you want to do is match the native resolution exactly or use only a portion of the LCD (a.k.a., letterboxing; the unused portions will get black bars). This will avoid interpolation and a fuzzy screen.

None of this has anything to do with the Mac per se; a PC will also give you a fuzzy LCD screen if you don't match the native resolution, use an even multiple, or letterbox.

-S

[osxisfun]

igglue, i have not tried this app yet but will be soon. its looks interesting if you want to control a pc from the mac using the same mouse and keyboard..

http://www.derman.com/KMremoteContro...-Overview.html

[tooki]

Sounds like a Timbuktu or VNC clone.

For remote PC control, I'd suggest using MS's Remote Desktop Connection client for Mac OS X in conjunction with Windows XP Pro on the PC. That gives just about the best remote GUI service you can get, and it's free if you already have XP Pro.

tooki

[osxisfun]

although, i love RDC this seems to be more of a software KM switch. its for people that want to leave a pc monitor "up" but control the mouse and keyboard with the mac mouse and keyboard.

the other benefit would be that it would be faster than RDC as you are not pumping and entire video stream over ethernet.

VNC, tb2, RDC pump tons of info over the ethernet. this only pushes the mouse and keyboard movements.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally posted by tooki:
For remote PC control, I'd suggest using MS's Remote Desktop Connection client for Mac OS X

I second that. I VPN into work and control my XP desktop nearly every day. Works very well.

[lookmark]

Interesting first impressions, thanks for sharing.

A couple of notes:

- You can adjust the screen anti-aliasing to four different levels in System Pref > General. Log in and out for it to take effect. I don't recommend turning it off via Tinkertool, as the kerning goes to hell and it looks awful -- but it's a subjective matter and if it really bugs you, I guess do what you gotta do.

- You know, I'm sure, that there are currently zero -- zip, nada, nothing -- viruses for OS X? Unless there's a sea change sometime soon (which is certainly possible), you're pretty safe. If you want to be extra careful, you can hone OS X's firewall with the free SunShield, or use Little Snitch.

- Keyboard mapping probably seems odd 'cause (I assume) you're not using an Apple KB, which has dedicated keys for brightness and volume controls. Note, you can remap many key commands to whatever you'd like in Sys Pref > Keyboard & Mouse. (For total remapping control, check out the free DoubleCommand.)

- If you're a hardcore PC gamer, there's just no way a Mac is going to satisfy you. The Mac game / porting market has actually probably never been stronger, but there's still far too many omissions. That's just how it is.

One of the pleasures of using a Mac is the community, both people and extraordinary little software programs -- far disproportionate to its market share. Quicksilver is one just off the top of my head, but there's many more. Consider sticking around, and see what you think.

[fraeone]

For such a mouse-centric environment, I was really surprised to learn how many keyboard shortcuts there are in OS X. For a (mostly) complete listing of all the keyboard shortcuts, download a program called KeyCue. It has its own shortcut key, that then brings up a window of all the shortcuts in the currently running application.

Also, if you like doing stuff with your keyboard, I would definitely recommend Launchbar, it's a way to type little abbreviations to start programs/documents/web pages.. basically anything that it indexes.

fraeone

[andreas_g4]

Dude, way too much text (and partially hard to read�)

[Commodus]

- The logic of where things go is rather inconsistent. Firewall should be near/on/around networking. It's in some weird page. Obviously, they don't want people to go there.

I believe this is going to be fixed in Tiger. Apple had initially thought that since a firewall was the antithesis of (but related to) sharing, it should go there.

Sluggish key feel. It's not my keyboard as I've used it for over a year. It's the way that OS behaves.

Have you been to the Keyboard & Mouse preferences section? You may be able to adjust the rates to get them to your liking, if you haven't tried already.

[dfiler]

I highly recommend spending around 20 minutes making a good color profile for your LCD.

The best tool i've found is SuperCal. It walks you through a very lengthy calibration. The profile that it creates is available from the normal system prefs just as if it was created by the apple tool.

Font rendering in OS X attempts to space letters more precisely than clear type does in windows. Specifically, OS X will space letters with more precision than provided by pixels on the screen. This gives more accurate overall word shape but results in vertical lines being split between two pixels. Without extremely good calibration, this can annoy the hell out of certain users. With good calibration, most users (but not all) find it clear AND more truly rendered.
SuperCal is the answer to many 'blurry text' complaints.

[igglue]

Length of evaluation:
It's long, but I figured it's as much deail as anyone who's interested in converting would be interested in. It's more for pottential 'pc switchers'.

Keyboard issues:
I'm starting to remember the benfit of the apple keyboard! I remember that alt is more then just a windows tab selector. Now, I'm starting to use alt to select entire word, instead of Ctrl. I'm remembering my old mac experience and getting used to the 'mac feel' again. BTW: I used to do all my documentation on macs and I remembered exactly why. Yes, Mac's keyboard layout is superior then Windows.

Monitor:
Thanks for the few suggestions. The information by dfiler was most technically helpful. I have recalibrated the monitor with advanced and it's gotten better. But I just downloaded supercal and will go through the process to see if I can improve my monitor even more.

3rd day comment:
My co-worker/buddy asked me if he should buy it. My comment was "Well, I'm going to use it for most of my day-to-day computing needs at home.". I will still power one the beast and play games, but my mac is here to stay.

I think Mac Mini was a brillient idea.



Iggy

[Paco Loco]

Thanks for the feedback to my fuzzy text comments...

I am currently using an eMac so the comments about flat panel native resolutions were not relevant to my current setup (although hopefully they will prove useful in the future...!).

I took the time to run through the colour calibrator in expert mode and created my own display profile, which helped a bit.
However what really helped me was the font smothing style selector in Sys Prefs > General. I can't believe i never saw that before!
I now have font smothing set to light and smoothing turned off for fonts of size ten and smaller and I am much happier. Thanks alot for the advice!

[PurpleGiant]

Originally posted by igglue:
- Keyboard mapping. I was completely lost, but now I'm somewhat lost. Did you know that apple-2 is mute? apple-3 and apple-4 is volume low/loud respectively? Good think I was a hacker 20 years ago. Instead of pushing their own kb, they should just publish the dang keyboard mapping!

Interesting. I've never used a Mac with a non-Mac keyboard (apple or third party), so I never considered how to do these things.