Mac Mini and Tiger Review

The Mac mini has impossible to upgrade RAM -- horrible design from Apple. Went more for the "cool" look and got "useless" as a feature. It took me two evenings of putzing around with the case to get it opened. They said "use thin putty knives", but they must have meant "use large razor blades -- to cut your veins open in order to pay us to install the RAM for you at a premium price." :: sighs :: whatever. So after feeling like a criminal for breaking into my own damn box, I finally got my new RAM installed. Yay, now the Mac is speedy enough to be worth working on. It only took 1 GB of RAM (keep in mind, I have to use it with heavy apps -- when Code Warrior compiles the framework and stuff, it's generally eating over 500 MB by itself).

I managed to screw up 10.3 in the first 10 minutes of using it (and 10.3 was what came pre-installed on the machine, not 10.4). Got the keyboard and mouse totally hosed so that it was impossible to use the machine. I did this by reinstalling all my preferences from my work machine. Silly me, I thought that preferences were things that could be restored, but I guess not. Oh well, that's my own damn fault. What bothers me is that even after removing all my preferences, the problem still wouldn't go away. I managed to hose some internal state that's stored elsewhere I guess. :: sighs ::

So I reformatted and installed 10.4 -- magically, the keyboard and mouse started working again, which is wonderful! I see Apple has taken an already skeezy UI and made it more worthless by adding new, pointless window frame types. Joy! I'm sorry, but Apple used to be innovative in the way they designed wonderful UIs for Classic. The OS X UI actually makes my eyes hurt after a while.

One thing I noticed is that OS X does not like my CRT very much. I have a 21" CRT, and while it discovers it and displays on it alright, no amount of tweaking the refresh rate seems to make the screen easier to look at. It's strange, and impossible to describe. But basically, on Windows and Linux, the screen looks crisp. On the Mac, it looks slightly out of focus -- and it's damn annoying.

Speaking of annoying, this is an aside (and has nothing to do with Apple). I use a KVM switch, which is a wonderful tool. However, my PC (105-key, standard) keyboard sucks when working on the Mac because half the keys aren't behaving as expected. The Cmd key is the PC key (so it's in the wrong physical position from a Mac keyboard), Home and End don't actually DO anything (but Page Up/Down do), etc. It's going to take some getting used to for me to be able to work with the keyboard via KVM.

10.4 doesn't come with StuffIt installed, so building Mac apps from Windows in RB is a PITA (since Apple doesn't seem to support their own damn Mac Binary file format!). I'm sorry, but that's gotta be a bug. How can they not support Mac Binary? It must be an oversight. So I went to download StuffIt Expander (the free version). Man do you have to jump thru hoops to get that! I was wondering if they were going to make me sign away my first born just to be able to do something that the OS should handle natively.

Dashboard is worthless and was one of the first things I uninstalled. Since I use Desktop Manager to have multiple desktops, the utility of dashboard just isn't there. If I want an app running all the time, I just go to the desktop that it's running on and use it. And then I get a full application, not worthless little toys like the "calculator" they have there, or the clock (which is already in my menu bar, I might add).

Spotlight (after indexing) is a neat thing in theory, but I've yet to find a practical use for it. You see -- I tend to know where I keep stuff. I have an organizational scheme that I follow on my machine, so I know where stuff lives. And I don't need it to go searching everywhere for it. Even the RB spotlight thinger isn't something I'd ever use. I know what projects I have, what they do, and what classes live where. And I think I have more RB projects than most (probably over 150 now)... So we'll see. That's one feature that I think I'll enjoy once I find a reason to use it. But it's pretty sad that the two major features of the OS are these two -- one I uninstalled because it's worthless and the other I have to search (no pun intended) for reasons to use it. The speed increase is welcome, but the new-fangled UI abominations aren't. Why can't Apple just leave the damn UI alone for a release? It's frustrating from both a development and user point of view. When everything's changing, you can't trust anything. :-/

So here's my overall thoughts on the Mac Mini:
1) It's pretty
2) It's a horrible case design if you need to try to get into it
3) I'm amazed it doesn't melt
4) I'm glad for the small form-factor because it's easy to hide
5) The tech specs on it aren't anything to write home about (even with the GB of aftermarket RAM). But they're not something to scoff at either. It's an alright middle-of-the-road machine, but I won't be suggesting it to any of my friends because of lack of upgradability and the fact that they all enjoy video games.

And on Tiger:
1) The UI changed yet again which annoys the piss out of me. I like to get comfortable with an OS, and every upgrade in OS X has shaken that comfort. After sitting in one OS for a few months, I go back to being alright with it, but I'm damn sick and tired of this.
2) Dashboard is pointless for anyone coming from a Linux background. Apple needs to buckle in and make virtual desktops a part of the OS instead of making me rely on a 3rd party for something already built into the window manager.
3) Spotlight seems really neat, and it's good at what it does. But I don't have a use for it because of my organizational habits.
4) The OS has the same amount of snap (or lack of snap) as the previous one. My RAM upgrade certainly helps the system feel more responsive, but Apple's shiny UI gloss tends to slow me down.
5) For all my bitching about OS X, it's still better in terms of stability than Classic could ever be. I think Apple's going in the right direction when it comes to under the hood technology. I just think they should stop trying to make everything uncustomizably lickable.
6) Bonjour is one of the stupidest names for a technology humanly possible. Stop trying to be cute. It's zeroconf, so just call it that. I wasn't too enamoured with Rendezvous (especially because it's a PITA to spell!), but Bonjour is just plain silly.