The Birthing of an Mac Lover
The only problem I have with it, which is more to do with perception than anything is that it might be too small for working with, however today I able to explore the system more, and in a way which more matched my normal habits - enter the AirPort...
So far I've never really explored the joy that is wireless internet (at least other than my Woosh connection, which is attached to a fix location desktop), the laptops at Harvey Norman had no internet connectivity active but I'd seen a saleperson surf so knew there was a trick - turns out it's not so much a trick, rather than click the AirPort icon in the menubar and select "Activate AirPort", the menu expands to show 3 wireless networks and one active! Woohoo - fireing up a Safari window and voila, theres a webpage - off I go to my blog, then on to bloglines to read some sites and compare my user experiance. I'm not exactly sure I was surprised that everything as clearer and just as readable as my office windows laptop, in fact I'm sure it was even more readable.
Opening a terminal I was impressed to find not only java, perl. tcl, and python installed, but also ruby (no cvs but I understand thats on an additional dev-tools CD with X-Code).
Colour me impressed!
If only they were cheaper.
What color is impressed? ;)
I just got my 933Mhz G4 (free.. part of a gig I am working on) and I love it! I hate the single button mouse, and the keyboard is way too small for me, but I have a 4port USB based KVM on order that should remedy that!
I have been wanting one for quite some time now. The 12" is just way too small for me. In fact, what I dislike the most about the laptops is the huge area below the keyboard that while it provides wrist resting area, makes me wish they had made the keyboard a bit larger in width. Yeah, I know.. the width is wide enough on the 17", but I am not at all caring about the weight. 20lb, big deal, I dont carry it all over. ;)
Anyway, the new iMac mini is very nice! With all the software it comes with, I am impressed. People are saying you can get a better config on a cheap Dell or something... this is true. I have seen AMD XP 3200+ systems with 512MB ram, CD-RW, 40GB HD and so forth for as little as $300 after rebates. Still, the iMac design, as usual for Apple, is very appealing. The size of a small laptop, just sits there, quietly with good performance.
I have to agree with the critics though... I wish it were a G5. The thought of a $500 mac with a 64-bit cpu and all the software they give... wow! That would be something. That, and the G5 laptop needs to arrive already! It's taking way too long. AMD has had 64-bit laptops out for some time now, pretty impressive on speed too. They smoke my XP2200+ desktop big time, and a refurbished unit can be had for like $700.
Anyway, happy hunting. Mac is a great way to go. Once OSX 10.4 with JDK 1.5 comes out, they'll finally be up to speed. Shame so many people complain about not having Java 1.5. I mean, I understand a little, and I think if you join up with the developer stuff for Mac you can get an alpha/beta of 10.4 with JDK 1.5 in it now. Still, it will be years before 1.5 has such adoption that all you code can be done in 1.5. And it is still buggy, so I'd wait for 1.5.1.
Kevin
get it! i dont think you will regret it.
i think the keyboard is very
good for its size althought it takes a bit of getting used to.
i had a similar feeling when i got mine, that it reminded me of getting my amiga in 1987... i never felt that way with the pcs ive had.
morten wilken