Apple Mac mini (M9686LL/A) Desktop

Background

OK, so I'm not your typical Mac user. In fact, up until a short time ago, I'd spent less than an hour using a "modern" Macintosh. The extent of my exposure to the Mac platform came in 1985 when, after being discharged from the Marine Corps, I moved in with an old buddy from high school who had an original, 128K Macintosh. I distinctly remember being decidedly under whelmed by the lack of color capability and the outrageous price compared to the other "toy" computers out there from Atari and Commodore. Obviously, I didn't think of it as a business system. Heck, I was fresh out of the Fleet Marine Force… if it couldn't play any games, I just didn't see the point at that stage of my life.

My attitudes toward computers in general changed radically over the next few years as I started tinkering around with some of those "toy" computers I mentioned and got into the world of BBS's with my first 300-baud modem. Eventually, my hobby got serious. I learned programming in Basic, Cobol and RPG, and got a job working the sales floor at an IBM dealership. One thing led to another. I transferred from sales to technical support since I was soon spending more time supporting and advising our corporate sales reps than I was selling anything on the retail floor.

I immersed myself in the world of DOS, Netware and OS/2 (version 1.0 at the time… it didn't even sport a GUI than).

After 4 years at the dealership and another year working tech support for a small software company, I moved into a support/network administration role for one of the Big 5 (when there were still 5) accounting firms. Four years there, six more at a large services company, and two years of consulting made me the Windows networking geek I am today.

What I mostly found myself to be was bored. Bored with Windows, bored with PC's, bored with Netware, bored with Active Directory. Just plain bored.

I started toying with Linux. Linux is powerful. Linux is cool. Linux is ugly and not pleasant to use. I just plain didn't like it. Getting it installed and running smoothly was more of a pain than it was worth. This distro doesn't like my sound card. That distro doesn't like my network adapter. Pretty much none of them liked my printer or my scanner. Linux wasn't saving me from boredom, it was just frustrating me.

Frustration

The office I've been working in for the last year and a half has a small graphics department using Macs. For the most part, I've ignored them, mainly because our IT group does not officially support the Macs.

Some significant changes to our network infrastructure were made, which had a serious negative impact on the graphics department. They had apparently been using the AppleTalk protocol amongst themselves, and our new architecture wasn't routing anything but TCP/IP. The result was that some of the Macs ended up on different VLANs and could no longer talk to each other. To make matters worse, someone had configured static IP addresses on a number of pieces of equipment (print servers, etc) that were not "legal". i.e. IT didn't issue them, they just found something that wasn't in use at the time and "took it".

Though we didn't officially support the Macs, someone higher up in the food chain decided that it was our network changes that broke things, so we had to fix it. This translates to "I had to fix it".

Short version, I did eventually get everything working, but only after much frustration and frantic searching of the Internet for answers.

What's this?
Coincidental with the frustrations I was experiencing at the office, Apple announced a new Macintosh. I never would have cared or probably even noticed this had I not been actively scouring the Web for information on how to solve the problems I was encountering at the time. That new Macintosh was the Mac Mini, the first sub $500 Macintosh. This immediately grabbed my attention. It would make the perfect learning machine. For less than $500 I could have my own Mac running the latest version of Mac OS X. As a bonus, the size would mean I wouldn't lose any desk space. At 6.5" x 6.5" x 2", it could just sit on top of my existing Windows Tower.

The announcement of the Mac Mini, combined with the annual urge to get a new tech toy and the convenient inflow of cash thanks to my Federal Tax Return combined to form a perfect storm.

The day my tax refund hit my bank account, I found myself in the local computer store snapping up one of the last 2 Mac Minis in stock in Northeast Ohio.

Bring it on
The drive home Friday evening after work was painfully slow. It didn't actually take any longer than usual, but with my new toy in the trunk of the car, it seemed to take about twice as long as it normally does.

I had prepped my desk in anticipation of bringing home a new system. I had a Linksys KVM switch and had purchased a PS/2 to USB adapter along with my Mac Mini so that I could just plug it in, turn it on and go. And that's exactly what I did… for about 5 minutes.

Once I was presented with the registration screen, I made the awful discovery that this setup simply wasn't going to work. My keyboard was being completely uncooperative. I tried disconnecting it from the KVM switch and plugging the keyboard and mouse (which was working fine, by the way) into the adapter and directly into the Mac. No joy… I tried a different keyboard. Still no joy.

My frustration was building and I didn't want to waste any more time. With the registration screen still displayed, I left the house to purchase a USB Keyboard and USB KVM switch. Unfortunately, the closest computer shop that would have these at a reasonable price was over a half hour away. For better or worse, there is a Staples right down the street from my house. I paid about half again what I think I should have (if you don't take into consideration the fact that I think the first setup should have worked out of the box and I shouldn't have had to buy anything else at all!), but at least it was up and running.

I believe this has the potential to be a much bigger problem than Apple is counting on. Most PC's come with PS/2 keyboards, even today. Even though some keyboards and adapters may work fine, Joe Six-Pack isn't going to be happy with his "switch" if he brings home $500 to $600 worth of hardware only to find that "Bring your own keyboard" means "buy a new keyboard".

Once past this bump in the road, things went smoothly. The Mac Mini got an IP address from my Linksys router and notified me that there were updates available for my system. Being diligent, I told it to download and install all of them.

I browsed around the system and played with some of the pre-installed apps for about 45 minutes trying to get a feel for things. My first impression was that this is radically different from what I'm used to. My second thought was that the system felt sluggish. Of course, I'd read quite a bit prior to making my purchase and I was aware that Mac OS X loves RAM. The 256 MB in the stock Mac Mini is probably sufficient for those who just want something to do some light word processing or spreadsheets, maybe track their budget and of course, surf the Web and e-mail. It was not, however, enough to satisfy me.

Don't Try This At Home
Apple recommends that an authorized technician perform all upgrades. If you're not extremely comfortable with opening up PC's, preferably laptops, and upgrading components, I advise you to take Apple at their word and just take it in to the store where you bought it or an authorized service center if you want to add or replace anything internal. This is one of the best engineered desktop systems I've ever encountered, without exception. Things are extremely tight inside, and to make matters more difficult, opening the case without breaking something is made more challenging as there are no screws or latches that are accessible. Opening the case requires some finesse with a putty knife. Yes, a putty knife.

I did manage to get the case open without breaking anything, and swapped the 256 MB module installed in the Mac Mini for a 512 MB module I had set aside for that purpose. After putting things back together and firing it up, it was immediately apparent that it made a huge difference in performance. I can't speak for any increase above 512 MB (the next and only other option is to replace whatever memory is in the system with a 1 GB module… there is only one memory socket), but I think it's fair to say that unless you're doing a fair amount of video editing or heavy photo editing, 512 MB will probably be more than acceptable.

The Experience
I've been deliberately sitting on this article for two weeks now. I felt I needed the time in order to draw a fair conclusion. So… how has it been?

First let me say that if you are a died in the wool Windows user, Mac OS X takes some getting used to. I thought for sure that my biggest problem would be getting used to the single menu bar at the top of the screen, as opposed to menus in every window and the Windows Start menu at the bottom. Surprisingly (to me anyway) I've made this adjustment rather easily. In fact, it's actually turned out to be a big help. One of the reasons for that is I find I tend to have many more windows open at any given time on the Mac than I normally do on Windows machine. I'm not sure precisely why, but I do. The fact that many Mac apps have things like disconnected palettes instead of docked toolbars probably contributes to this.

The dock at the bottom of the screen is phenomenal. It almost (but not quite) makes up for the lack of an applications or Start menu. This has been my biggest problem. I've settled on dragging the applications folder to the right side of the dock (where right clicking on it causes it to open a cascading menu of its contents. This is as close as I've come to a quick and easy way to start a program that's not in the dock. Now I just wish there were a way to do it from the keyboard. You Maccies out there reading this… if there is a shareware or (preferably) freeware app that will do this, please let me know.

The Mac GUI holds two huge advantages over Windows for me. Most importantly, it feels very responsive. Even with a lot of windows and apps open, when the system is obviously starting to bog down, it feels more responsive. Where Windows will "stutter" for lack of a better word, the Mac GUI (even when it may be slow because of system overload) is smooth. In a head to head comparison, I'm pretty sure that Windows would win on raw speed, but I'm coming to understand what Mac people mean when they talk about it being about the user experience rather than the numbers.

Other than the lack of a start menu, the most challenging adjustment for me has been the placement and behavior of the window close, minimize and maximize buttons on each window. For the most part, clicking on the close button on a window does not close the application, only the window you clicked close on. I'm starting to get used to it, and find I tend to use the keyboard to close applications most of the time now when I'm done with them.

The most aggravating thing I've come across is that, even with full keyboard access turned on in the control panel, navigating dialog boxes with the keyboard is a maddening experience. It seems that changing fields or buttons using the tab key either just doesn't work with many dialogs or that the button/field hi-light is very difficult for me to follow. I find myself reaching for the mouse more than I would like to.

Expose is simply wonderful, and one of the reasons I don't have a problem dealing with many more open windows on the Mac than I do on a Windows PC. There is plenty of information out there that describes it and how it works, so I won't go into detail. I will say that if Microsoft doesn't "appropriate" this feature for the next version of Windows, then they're morons.

I was at first, extremely paranoid about security. I made sure that the OS X firewall was enabled, which I still believe was prudent, but coming from the Windows world, complete with spyware, malware and viruses galore, I was in a constant state of low-grade panic about not having antivirus software installed. The more I read however, the more I came to the conclusion that all antivirus software would buy me would be protection against sending a word macro virus or the like off to a Windows machine. Frankly, as I've never been careless enough to get a virus on any of the pc's I've owned over the last fifteen years, I don't think that's likely. Besides, all of my Windows machines run up to date antivirus software as do those of any friends or relatives I might be likely to exchange files with. I'm slowly getting over my paranoia, though I'll never let my guard down.

The Applications
Though this isn't a review per-se, I wanted to touch briefly on applications. Both those bundled with the Mac Mini and the 3rd party apps I've purchased and/or downloaded.
Bundled Applications
AppleWorks: Functional word processor, spreadsheet, database, draw/paint and presentation program. Think of it as Microsoft Works with some extras. If you're looking to purchase a machine for web surfing, e-mail and the occasional letter to grandma or budget spreadsheet, then this will be fine. Complex documents and bringing home any kind of real office type work will require something more robust.

Quicken 2005: I'm trying, really I am… but I have to say that I really don't like Quicken. I never really used it on the PC. My choice has always been Microsoft Money. (side note: this can probably be attributed to the fact that one of my PCs long ago came with Microsoft Money. I started using it, got used to it, and just kept upgrading) I'm going to give Quicken another go when my next bank statement arrives. I hate the idea of having to maintain two separate programs (indeed, two separate systems) for managing my accounts, but until and unless I'm able to make this transitions, I'll have to.

iLife 05: Beautiful! All I've really done so far is work a little bit with iPhoto and iTunes and play a bit with iDVD and iMovie. My daughter has dome some heavy playing around with Garage Band (she's a musician) and has fallen in love with it.

Miscellaneous: I've checked out iCal. I even set up my Palm to sync to it and Address Book. I quickly reverted back to the Palm Desktop software (which is butt ugly on the Mac, but gets the job done) primarily because it seems iCal can't import categories from the Palm. Most entry gets done on the Palm and I need something that will serve as a functional backup for it. It's nice to see something there for those who aren't in my position, but I have no use for it right now.

Mail: A functional, fairly simple e-mail program. Should be fine for a lot of folks out there. I opted for Mozilla Thunderbird (see below).

Safari: Apple's home-grown browser. Very nice, very fast, very few problems rendering pages. I use this as my "backup browser", the primary being Mozilla Firefox.

Microsoft Internet Explorer: (Yes, it's bundled with the system, at least it's bundled with the Mac Mini). Simply put, if you use and like IE on the PC, you will hate it. It's a pig. Slow and awful. It can't even render pages designed for IE properly (just try using it to go to any of the MSN sites).

Sherlock: Wow. Who woulda thunk it? Common internet searches including yellow and white pages, movie listings, horoscopes, flight info, stock listings and more rolled into a simple application with a consistent user interface. I wouldn't have thought I'd use it as much as I do.
3rd Party Applications

Microsoft Office: Yes, I know, I could download and install OpenOffice.Org, but I work heavily with Microsoft Office on the PC and take some comfort in having the "real thing". That said, it's been pretty much what one would expect from Microsoft Office. There are some differences from the PC version, but not enough to get bent out of shape about.

Browsers: I've downloaded just about every (free) browser available for OS X. For now at least, my primary choice is Mozilla's Firefox. For the most part, it behaves as it does on a Windows PC. I have some odd problems with it not rendering some pages properly that the PC version handles just fine, but beyond that, it's fast and what I'm used to. I've downloaded the latest technology preview of Camino, the native Mac browser from Mozilla, but I'm not willing to commit to it yet.

e-Mail/Newsreaders: Predictably, based on my choice of browsers, I've selected Mozilla's Thunderbird for e-mail and newsgroup use. It's familiar, since I use it on the PC, and handles my needs quite nicely.

Other: I of course have the usual collection of time wasting freeware games. Solitaire, backgammon and the like. I'm not going to go into these beyond to say that yes, if you look, you can find plenty of games and gizmos to waste time with when you're being bored stiff by your relatives on the phone.

Conclusions
Have I switched? Well, yes and no. The vast majority of what I do at home, I now do on my Mac instead of the PC. There are still a few things (like Microsoft Money) that I run exclusively on my PC, but I find more and more that I'm just using Microsoft's free Remote Desktop Client to access what was my main machine to get in, get it done and get out again. My main Windows machine, with a 160 GB hard drive, does make a nice file server though with only a 40 GB drive in my Mac Mini. Also, it has to be remembered that I'm an IT professional. I work with Windows on a daily basis and need to have a Windows machine on hand. That being said, I can't see (financially) going out and replacing my stable of two Windows desktops and a Windows laptop right now. They still do their jobs.

For my own personal "stuff", I have effectively "switched" to the Mac. At this stage, I can't see moving back. Unless something unforeseen happens, the Mac will be my platform of choice for the foreseeable future.