Mac mini
Saturday, May 28, 2005 at 6:28 am | 
Comments off
Yep, that's right... Today after work, I ran to the Apple store in the Mall of America and picked up a Mac mini. It's the first Mac I've ever owned and really the first Mac I've ever used (discounting playing around with them in the Apple store), believe it or not.
When the Mac mini came out, I honestly didn't pay much attention to it. I had no clue it worked with PC peripherals until today. No. Freaking. Clue. Guess I need to pay more attention to these things, eh? So, the second I found out, I was ready to order, as I had an extra monitor, keyboard, and mouse that I could use! Thankfully, I thought to compair prices with the local Apple store, and since it wasn't any cheaper to order online, I simply went to the store and picked it up.
Here are some quick specs:
- 1.42 GHz
- 80 GB hard drive
- 512 MB RAM
- AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth
- OS X 10.4 Tiger
Better yet, the company I work with was willing to buy it for me, so I could test websites I make for them on the Mac browsers (mostly IE/Mac, as things seem to work farily well in Safari, anyway). Can't beat that.
So anyway, obviously I'm psyched. Please leave any Mac tips you've got for me in the comments, as I know absolutely nothing about the OS. Looking forward to learning; and man, I love Safari!
Comments
*jealous*
My good ol' P4 1.7GHz seemed to still chug happily along, though. Especially with a second hard drive running Gentoo.
So yeah, my next computer purchase is a Powerbook, if I can afford the entry-level model in a few years.
I think that buying a Mac Mini just for testing is worth it. I would say that Apple has probably sold thousands of these cool little boxes for that reason alone :)
My Mac tip? Use all of the built in applications and get to know the Mac UI. It will effect your UI design decisions in the future :)
Oh, and folks will think you're a Mac zealot if you talk about how cool the UI is. Just explain to them that you don't think everyone should switch to the Mac, but that all users of computers should expect such a brilliant experience. Tell them to take it to MSFT :)
Congratulations, Ryan! I'm not a Mac user (yet anyway), so I don't have any tips, but... Free? That's awesome, man. Maybe this will inspire you to do a redesign or blog more often. Wouldn't that be nice?
Most important: add more memory. 1gig is a minimum IMHO.
For tips, http://macosxhints.com is excellent.
Have a great time !
Well... my first tip would be to try Exposé: press F9 or F10 ;)
Second one: you're in trouble, as from what I know, Tiger doesn't come with Internet Explorer anymore :\ But I guess you can still download and install it from somewhere...
"Oh, and folks will think you're a Mac zealot if you talk about how cool the UI is."
I'm already trying to decide where I want to stick the cool Apple logo stickers that came with it... Maybe on my PC. ;)
"Maybe this will inspire you to do a redesign or blog more often."
A redesign is already in the making. I've got a lot of work left to do on it, but I'm pretty happy with the design comps I've come up with.
"...you're in trouble, as from what I know, Tiger doesn't come with Internet Explorer anymore"
I've already installed it. ;)
Well lucky you, I always loved macs, and Safari is almost as good as Firefox, Mac OSX 10.3 was awesome, so how is 10.4 :D?
w0ow! Lucky you!
So are you using the mini with a VGA monitor? I've been reading about problems people have been having with the mini and their old PC monitors. I would probably get one if I knew it would work with my monitor.
I like that your company is paying for it, free stuff is the best stuff.
I hate that you have a mac. So many designers think they NEED a mac and you don't.
It has been a consideration of mine to buy a mac for Design Testing, but the price of buying another computer for only one use is just out of the question at the moment.
I had no idea that there was a Safari|IE/Mac emulator, but it doesnt help that it is currently unavailable.
If anyone has anymore info about the Mac Emulator, i would greatly appreciate it.
Well, first off I would like to welcome you to the Mac World. I must warn you, however, than almost anything that you say that is in anyway possitive from now on about msoft will be heavily criticized in our world. As you can guess why.
Now to the cooler points of OS X. If you haven't already tried out Expose, you have to. F9 toggles all open windows, F10 toggles all windows from the current application, and F11 moves all windows out of the way so you can see your desktop. If you have friends nearby, tell them to look at the screen while you press a combination of shift and and of the above expose commands, which will do the same thing, only slower so the effect is better, this also works with minimizing a window and bringing it back up.
Also, in case you haven't been informed, there are NO VIRUSES FOR THE MAC, and getting any kind of anti-virus/whatever program is nonsense and a waste of money. As far as browsers go, Firefox (http://mozilla.org/firefox), Safari (comes installed), and Camino (http://caminobrowser.org) are your best bet for security, standards compliance, and pretty much anything else.
"'...you're in trouble, as from what I know, Tiger doesn't come with Internet Explorer anymore'
I've already installed it. ;)"
Just a question, why would you install ie? It doesn't make sense to me, there can't be anything in it that isn't available in any of the browsers I mentioned earlier.
Alternative bugs in Mac IE would be the main reason. My tip is don't use it to place your sandwiches in...
"Mac OSX 10.3 was awesome, so how is 10.4" - Patrick
It'd probably be better to ask someone who's used a Mac for more than 4 days. ;)
"So are you using the mini with a VGA monitor?" - Trey
Yes, I'm using it with a 3-4 year old Samsung 150s VGA monitor. Seems to be working just fine, so far.
"I hate that you have a mac. So many designers think they NEED a mac and you don't." - Chris
Before I got the Mac, I used BrowserCam to test in browsers that I don't have. This approach works, but is much more time consuming than running the browsers locally. Calum, you might want to check it out...
"Just a question, why would you install ie? It doesn't make sense to me..." - Ryan
Browser testing is the one and only reason. :)
Congrats! Check out Quicksilver. If you have time it's worth it to read some of the tutorials about it's usage. It'll change the way you use your Mac. If you're using Safari make sure to enable the Debug menu.
Ryan, you treat her good ok? ;-)
Hey Ryan, you finally got it! I hope you're having as much as I am. I've just posted about my early experiences with the Mac in case you're interested.
Enjoy the Mac, it's a great little machine. :-)
Hey Ryan, this has nothing to do with the entry (I haven't even read it) but I though it was funny, so I shall post it.
edit: Link fixed.
Excuse me, that link was to http://sites.gizoogle.com/showpage.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ryanbrill.com%2F
Your comment editing is b0rked.
Nice going!
I'm planning on buying a powerbook in august. I've got a desktop pc, need a macintosh (for testing) and a laptop (for clients) --> well, hello Mr. Powerbook :-)
Ryan, so are you too enthused about this mac that you aren't posting?!
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May 28th, 2005
6:29 AM | #
Oh yeah, forgot to say:
This was my first post from a Mac. ;)