loving the new mac mini, with one slight quandary remaining.
i’d forgotten how easy it all was. i had kvetched with the salespeople at tekserve, bombarding them with a million “what if” questions.
what if my cable modem won’t connect? how will i then get drivers for my peripherals? how do i configure my mail and internet access? will my printer print? will my scanner scan? will my mouse mouse?
and so on.
i’m such a fool.
it was probably the best out-of-box experience for a consumer electronics product i’ve ever had.
including toasters and clock radios.
the details are all attended to flawlessly. ever struggle getting a heavy electronics gadget out of a cardboard box because there’s no way to get your hands around the styrofoam inserts? the mac mini inside the styrofoam inserts is in a box with a handle. just lift the handle and the item comes out, styrofoam and all.
or go nuts tearing off shrink wrap? not with this mac. the computer is shrink-wrapped, but the ends are loose and neatly folded over the item, so instead of tearing off plastic and out hair, you just unfold the flaps and off comes the shrink wrap.
and the computer still comes with apple stickers, except that they are solid white. always liked the rainbow-y apples, but oh well.
and on, and on. such an unparalleled attention to detail. but it gets better.
everything plugged in neatly. the vga to dvi adapter has recessed knurled knobs–even it was beautifully designed.
i turned the mini on. that lovely, oh so familiar mac chime. i’ve missed you so fucking much. what’s this? you’ve already found the internet? and, after i type in kirk’s itunes password, you’ve set up everything automatically? and you know already know, without me telling you or installing any software, that my canon i960 printer is a canon i960 printer and my hp scanjet 3970 is a hp scanjet 3970?
get the picture? calling it seamless doesn’t pay it justice, especially after a week of bashing my head against a dell pc. it was a joy, and was absolutely perfect. i spent more time worrying about the installation than actually performing it.
it wasn’t without some frame-of-reference adjustments, more so for kirk than for me. but it’s so intuitive. and love love love the whooshy whooshy dashboard. a queerspace css-tracking widget for the mac dashboard is right around the corner.
we’re getting our new monitor tomorrow, and then we’ll turn on the pc one last time to transfer files using move to mac software, and then the goddamn thing will be toast. we were talking about keeping it around to run photoshop, since photoshop is so expensive to replace and adobe is so uncooperative about being cool with the cross-platform upgrade, but after last night, hell no. we’ll bite the bullet and just buy the whole $599 shooting match.
i ain’t going back, no matter what. at least at home. still gotta bang away on a pc at work, but there it’s not my problem to maintain.
except for quicken. the mac version is garbage, from what i read, which is of course intuit’s fault and not apple’s. but i’m not mucking up my computer with the virtual pc emulation program, especially after reading on the microsoft site that using it exposes you to all the viruses and spyware and keyboard loggers and such. hell hell no. not dealing with that anymore.
so i either have to deal with featureless buggy crappy quicken for mac (at least that’s the opinion of everyone on the quicken forums) or install quicken for windows on my computer at work, which they may not let me do and which opens a whole different can of insecure worms.
but if i can’t fully feed my quicken obsession, that’s probably not the end of the world. and a very very small price to pay.
are you still on a pc? you are a fool. stop wasting your time.
unless, of course, you enjoy computer configuration and maintenance as a hobby. then you are right at home with a pc.
