Mac Mini

[francis]

Hi Phil

I'm salivating. Is this worth going for (http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore?family=Macmini)?

[Phil]

well, i've already ordered a 1Gb iPod shuffle for £99.
this had got a great feature where you can designate, say, 128Mb of it for files and use it as a memory stick, then leave the rest for music which a new feature in iTunes will autofill up for you. 2 weeks wait though :(

as for the MacMini, i'm excited by it and I think I'll get one, though I might wait til I know I can get a free upgrade to Tiger (OS 10.4) with it.

It's definitely aimed at switchers - if someone's got an old Win98 machine - doubtless riddled with spyware - here's a £350 way for them to semi-upgrade. (I have never had any spyware / viruses on my Mac - i don't even run antivirus software on it). If you buy iWork as well then it's going to do pretty much everything a "normal" home user needs.

The base 256Mb ram is a bit stingy, though it can be upgraded (to 512mb for about £50 - ok, and to 1Gb for £300 - eek!) but the graphics card at an unupgradeable 32Mb is a bit of a disappointment. You won't be playing Doom3 on that. The G4 1.25/1.42 is a pretty capable cpu I'd say.

It looks terrific, and makes no noise! Might be something I could have under the TV (you can plug it into a regular TV with an adapter). There was a rumour that it was going to come with a little slot on top that you can sit and sync your iPod in. Maybe in version 2.

I really don't think it will turn round Apples (computer) fortunes though. You can get a Dell with monitor for around the same price. Also there is the perception by lots of people that "learning" to use a Mac is a big deal; that it's really different to a PC. It's not all about price; Wal-Mart are selling dirt cheap machines in the US with Linux on them, but they don't seem to have taken off. Again, I suspect this is because of the percieved unfamiliarness of a non-Windows box.

Should Francis get one? well one could say that as a professional web builder one *must* have access to all popular platforms for purposes of testing one's own web projects.
Hows that for an excuse?

[francis]

Kerching! I'm an Apple owner! Went for the 80gig version and upped the RAM to 512, upped the harddrive. What basic software do I need? iWork seems a bargain at £49 - is it good or the equivalent of MS Works - a whole lotta not much?

[Phil]

Nice!

welcome to the brotherhood :D

iWorks - the new version of AppleWorks - has dropped the spreadsheet so it's just word processing and presentation (keynote). Its pretty good though. keynote even lets you save your presentation as flash if you like that sort of thing.

well done that man!

[francis]

Originally posted by Phil@Jan 12 2005, 1:30 pm
You can get a Dell with monitor for around the same price.
I had a look at Apple's monitors and, unless I'm missing something, they're extortionately expensive. I figure I'll either get a switcher or something from Dell. Dell are doing TFTs for about the £200 which seems to be about 1/3 the price of Apple's entry level screen!

What's irking me at the moment is that upgrade paths to major software doesn't seem to allow moving a licence from one OS to another. AppleWorks6 is included in the bundle, so I guess I won't be needing iWork. iLife is in there as well - looks like there's some good stuff in that lot.

Delicious Library (http://www.delicious-monster.com/) looks like it could be very helpful in organising my clutter.

What would be the best way to network the two machines? In fact, I've got a really old, knackered Win ME machine that I could use as a server. Or something.

[David]

Originally posted by Phil@Jan 12 2005, 1:30 pm
well, i've already ordered a 1Gb iPod shuffle for £99.
this had got a great feature where you can designate, say, 128Mb of it for files and use it as a memory stick, then leave the rest for music which a new feature in iTunes will autofill up for you. 2 weeks wait though :(
Hey Phil, that iPod Shuffle looks great. Where did you order yours from?

Later...

OK, I found it at the UK Apple Store. 2 Weeks for the unit and 4-6 weeks for the accesories :( Still it's definately a "must have".

[francis]

More stuff (er, maybe) announced from Apple (http://www.davidmccandless.com/funny/applestore.htm)!

[James]

Why are Macs so good then? What am I missing? What have they got that the PC hasn't? Apart from spyware vulnerability?

[Phil]

Francis, you'll have no problem (famous last words?) getting your Mac and PC to network together. Just plug them both into your router, enable Windows sharing from the Mac System Preferences and you're done. You can browse your PC's network neighbourhood to see your Mac, and see your PC from the Mac finder.

Of course if you're currently just using an ADSL modem then it'll be a bit more involved, see

this thread (http://www.websitearchitecture.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=275&hl=router) with james from a while back

You're right about their flat screens being well expensive (and they actually all had a price drop a couple of weeks ago). Still they do look nice don't they? Incidentally I got a 19" Iiyama TFT from Scan's deal of the day (http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/) for about £290 which i thought was a really good price.

Don't forget that you can get about a 10% discount on Apple stuff - plus free delivery - if you order from the
Apple Store for Education (http://store.apple.com/Catalog/uk/Images/routingpage.html)

"why are macs so good then"
hmm, now there's a question that's been raging all over bulletin boards forever. At £350 for the miniMac you've got no excuse not to find out for yourself
:lol:

[francis]

Cheers Phil. Yep, I'm using an ADSL modem: let the pain begin! If I follow James' set up for 2 PCs, is it going to be roughly the same?

I did order it through the Apple Store For Education - saved myself £40/£50 or so. Definately going to get iSight to use with Delicious Library, it's the only way I'm going to easily catalogue 1,600 or so CDs.

[Phil]

basically, everything falls into place once you've got tcp/ip done properly, the easiest way for this to happen is if your router doles out ip address to machines connected to it, and each machine is set up to automatically get its ip address from the router.

All the network services you need will be on top of tcp, so the first thing to do is to plug everything in and see if your machines can ping each other. If they can then it's time to start messing with permissions and passwords and stuff (you might want to disable all firewalls while you're at this early point).

It's all good fun getting this going, and i bet once you've got them going you *will* reincarnate that win98 box to add it to the growing network. then it'll be a wireless links...

don't forget that osx has apache built in - though not switched on - straight out of the box, as well as perl, a java compiler, python, etc. so you can simulate your unix webserving within your lan (need to add php / mysql yourself).

[francis]

Originally posted by Phil@Jan 13 2005, 12:07 pm
don't forget that osx has apache built in - though not switched on - straight out of the box, as well as perl, a java compiler, python, etc. so you can simulate your unix webserving within your lan (need to add php / mysql yourself).
Really? Blimey! I was wondering how I was going to manage that - I was hoping that I wasn't going to have to use my XP machine's Apache install.

I've installed PHP, MyAdmin on Windows - hopefully it won't be too disimilar. Any idea what Safari is like with XML/XSLT? Does it have in inbuilt XSLT processor?

Just picked up MacUser: I never knew the iPod had so much functionality. Where's the calender and address book been hiding on mine?!

[Phil]

Any idea what Safari is like with XML/XSLT? Does it have in inbuilt XSLT processor?


no inbuilt XSLT i'm afraid. though i think

this guy (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/index.html) is working on Safari for Apple, implies it's in development.

Bundled with OSX is an app called iSync (http://www.apple.com/isync/) which will take all your calendar events and contact entries (iCal and Address Book respectively) then sync them with your iPod (or bluetooth mobile phone). I use it via my bluetooth phone to sync my work and home Macs.

[Phil]

Haven't tried it myself but this looks like an easy way at getting LAMP on a Mac;

MAMP (http://www.mamp.info/en/home/)

[James]

Originally posted by Phil@Jan 13 2005, 10:50 am
"why are macs so good then"
hmm, now there's a question that's been raging all over bulletin boards forever. At £350 for the miniMac you've got no excuse not to find out for yourself
:lol:
Oh. Well that's not a good selling job Phil. £350 is £350 and I prefer to ask questions before parting with my money.

:rolleyes: Big up to Microsoft!
:lol: IE rules!

:( Boo to Apple!

[David]

Originally posted by francis@Jan 13 2005, 7:24 am
More stuff (er, maybe) announced from Apple (http://www.davidmccandless.com/funny/applestore.htm)!
Francis, that is very funny :lol: I particularly like the Apple Mysteron:

"Inexplicable brushed titanium box with a single, tiny green flashing light. Does nothing but looks great. Perfect talking piece for the living room or to put in the corner of an architect's reception area."

The sad fact is that if Apple did develop such a product, it would sell like hot cakes!

I am also very taken with the concept of iRule - wouldn't that just be great? :D

James, something tells me that resorting to jibes probably means that you've lost the argument. You would probably be better saying something like "Macs are a triumph of style over substance". We are, however, such shallow individuals that we fall for it every time.

[James]

I'm not looking for an argument - I just want someone to tell me why they're better than PCs. <_<

You never know, I might be interested, but built in Apache, XTC, or XSMLHTMLHP does nothing for me! ;)

[Tom]

My only grudge against Apple is that they stand as a bastion against world standards. Its like us driving on the left and almost everyone else doing the right thing. The company was making one of its periodic visits to the cliff edge when a British designer did the iMac for them.

The iPhone (with Motorola) sounds like a serious idea. As they say 'no one wants to carry two gadgets if they can manage with one'. As a conscientious objector to mobile phones, the product which attracts me more is the Olympus m:robe 500
(http://www.time.com/time/gadget/20050105/).

[francis]

Phil, have you seen this (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/safari.html)? Safari on Tiger will have RSS support. Opera's version 8 (coming soon) will have RSS feeds as well. That just leaves Moz (at least on my 1.8 beta release) and IE not having that functionality. I wonder which will be last to adopt? (cough). Safari's implemtation of RSS feeds looks superb. Since the idea debuted in FF, people have been developing all kinds of RSS things. FF's basic RSS functionality (live booksmarks) are good, but this is taking it to the next level. Any idea when Tiger is due for release?

Tom: an interesting quote about Apple being "a bastion against world standards". What exactly do you mean by this? It was Apple that first introduced a GUI to the personal computer - surely the standard. Are you defining standards by "that's what everyone else uses, so it must be the standard"? In that case, the are the world standard portable digital music manufacturer. There may have been bitching about how it uses a proprietary file format, but this is nothing that isn't being done by other companies (eg Sony's digital music format for their effort in getting into the same market). Smaller companies can redefine what a standard is - look at Dyson and how the larger companies are now mass producing bagless vacuum cleaners. The noun Dyson is on its way to being as ubiquitous as Hoover still (just) is.

[Phil]

"first half of 2005" is the best prediction for a Tiger release date. Call me shallow but I'm pretty excited by Dashboard (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html). Loads of funky looking mini tools floating round on the desktop, pretty much ripping off Konfabulator (http://www.konfabulator.com/) but ramping it up.

I'm trying not to bang on about Macs vs PC as it is niave to say one's better than the other and I use both pretty much equally. I would say, though, that as an example I have a 6 year old Mac on my desk and a 2 year old PC; I just found myself leaning over to the Mac much more often then the PC - it seemed that I just managed to achieve things much quicker - though it's a far slower machine. Mac OS9 frustrated me as there was no DOS like command shell you could drop to. Now, of course OSX allows you to drop to a Unix shell - the power of which kicks DOS into a cocked hat (not that you *need* to mess around with this). I convinced my girlfriend to get a Mac about 3 years ago and she's been more than happy - she said that in those 3 years it has crashed 4 times in total (her PC owning mum, dad and sister cannot believe this)

That said I feel I should list my personal Mac frustrations (and yes there are some):
- More expensive than PCs
- OSX still has poor CD writing support - it doesn't natively allow multisession writing
- If you burn a data DVD (not movie DVD) from a Mac you can't read it on a PC
- No AutoCAD / 3d Studio / Doom3
- A student complaint: Pirated software is harder to get hold of for Mac
- the mouse buttons 4 and 5 (browse back / forwards a page) never work

I am most interested in hearing Francis' experiences with his new one. You never know, he might end up On the switcher site (http://www.apple.com/switch/stories/)

[Tom]

Instead of 'world standards', I should have said 'open standards'. Sony also annoy me with their proprietry standards - and with their prices for spare parts. I lost the shoe for my £80 Sony tripod recently. Its about the size of a 50p piece but they wanted £25+VAT for it. I bought a (better) Velbon tripod and lost the arm (or rather had it pinched). Velbon GAVE me a new one. When I gasped 'Don't you want me to pay for it?', the man said 'Oh, what's the point - its Christmas'.

We don't expect to buy a proprietry soap powder for our washing machines and there should be open standards for as many computer products as possible - to benefit consumers. In the bad old days, British Leyland used to make a loss on Minis and make their profits on the spare parts. Are Apple attempting this kind of scam? My son's objection to Apple is that his friends' computers are always breaking down and they want him to fix them.

Re the GUI, it was invented by Xerox and filched by Apple!

[francis]

Phil, some advice if you'd be so kind!

I assume a monitor bought from Dell is going to work fine on a Mac - just need to make sure before it's too late
What firewall do you use or is the built in one actually good?
What FTP do you use?
Have you ever used Bare Bones Edit - it seems to be the editor of choice for the Mac?
Any killer apps worth looking at, and why? (people keep going on about Toast with Jam)
I need to start learning more about how to use the OS - are the Mac mags worth reading, and if so which one/s? If not, any good sites, books etc?

Was talking to a friend today who's had a Mac for about one month. He says that he barely touches his PC now.

[Phil]

I assume a monitor bought from Dell is going to work fine on a Mac

yep. there's DVI and VGA out on the macMini


What firewall do you use or is the built in one actually good?

I used to use Brickhouse which was good but I switched back to the built in firewall, just cos it integrates easily with the OS. Never had any incursions yet - AFAIK

What FTP do you use?


RBrowser Lite (http://www.rbrowser.com/RBrowserLite/RBrowserLite.html) or utilise the ftp bit of Dreamweaver


Have you ever used Bare Bones Edit - it seems to be the editor of choice for the Mac?


No, I have to admit I'm pretty much Dreamweaver only when I'm on the Mac


Any killer apps worth looking at
I do love the iApps; iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD - mixing and authoring movies and dvds has never been so easy. iSync keeps my phone up to date much better than any PC app i've seen so far.
Also, much fun to be had driving round with a copy of Kismac (http://binaervarianz.de/projekte/programmieren/kismac/) on the iBook

If you're into Linux style package managers then FinkCommander (http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/) and Fink open up the open source world (and make it a lot easier to install).

As for Mags, you can't go wrong with Mac User which is always a thumping good read. Someone gave me a copy of iCreate the other day, and this was also very good - but pricey though; £6.00

The best book i've read on the Mac is without a doubt the Mac OSX Unleashed series. Sample chapter title "User Management and Machine Clustering" - knock yourself out!

[francis]

Thanks Phil. I picked up a copy if iCreate on Saturday, not noticing the price before I got to the checkout. Nice mag, but £6?!

Ooh, absolutely last question for a while. I qualify for MS Office 2004 student/teacher edition. Do you know If I get that, will I be able to get a non-student/teacher upgrade to that when the time comes or will I start all over again with a hugely expensive one?

Here's hoping I get a bonus in March!

[David]

Student software editions cannot be upgraded - I wish... :rolleyes:

[francis]

A little further research on MS' site shows this for Office 2003 (http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/students/doyouqualify.mspx):

"You are still eligible to use this product after you or a member of your household no longer qualifies as an educational user"

Now, does that mean that it can be used as an upgrade path or is it just some iffy wording saying that you mustn't uninstall it as soon as you've left education?

[David]

It just means that you can continue to use it for as long as you want but you will not be able to upgrade it. Although it doesn't specifically say that, that's what it means.

[Phil]

This page (http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/students/faq.mspx) implies it's ok to continue to use it


btw francis, it's a USB keyboard you'll need with the MacMini - not a ps2 one.

[francis]

When you order a Mac Mini you get the option of adding a keyboard and mouse, so I did. I assume that Apple list suitable ones! I've heard good things about O'Reilly's OSX The Missing Manual (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596006152/qid=1106156881/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-2021252-8675042), so I've plumped for that. Amongst other things, it's got a chapter on networking PCs and Macs.

[Phil]

I do wish Apple would give in and give up the one button mouse. One "rocker" looks nice instead of multi-buttons but I can't live without being able to surf one handed (stop sniggering at the back).


BTW - this pro mac cartoon page is always good for a laugh

Joy of Tech (http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/)

[francis]

I contacted Adobe about upgrading from an education edition to a non-education edition, and this is what they said:

You can continue using your Education products and if you wish to upgrade
them when you are not entitled to the Education program anymore, you can
simply purchase normal upgrades. You do not need to buy the whole full
product again.

So, for Adobe at least, there is an upgrade path from the Education edition. Now to see if I can sideways upgrade from PC to Mac!

PS - got an email from Apple today. Apparently they've announced a price reduction on the Mac Mini and all current orders will be refunded the difference.

[Phil]

Apparently they've announced a price reduction on the Mac Mini and all current orders will be refunded the difference.


that's a result. I guess this the MacMini Memory Pricing error (http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/01/26/apple.store.uk.glitch/). either way, it's a nice surprise.

i got my iPod shuffle yesterday. Tiny thing - about the same size as a lighter. At £99 for 1Gb this compares fairly favourably to similar capacity memory sticks. The default way to transfer music is to let iTunes fill up the available space with random choices from your library. Works well although i keep getting surprised by dodgy stuff from my library that i'd forgotten was on there. You know Marillion bootlegs, dodgy heavy metal b-sides, etc. Think it needs a "cred-selector" option on it, too.

[Tom]

I offered to BUY (yes, that's me parting with my money) a Shuffle for Henry - and he nearly bit my head off. Has Dave (http://davesipaq.com/articles/iPOD_Shuffle_Sandisk_MP3/3.html) got it wrong too?

[Phil]

Dave's got it wrong.

The Sandisk MP3 doesn't have an integrated USB connector on it - you plug a lead into it which then goes into the computer. Shuffle has it built in. If, like me, you're probably going to use it for music and storage equally this is more convenient as i don't have to carry a lead round with me as well. Also, despite the issues with rechargables, i don't want to have to change batteries every couple of days. Shuffle charges itself up when you plug it into the computer to download your music. (and it doesn't use battery power when its a memory stick)

Sandisk is shorter, but it's wider and more than twice as thick. Wouldn't fit snuggly in my jeans "secret" pocket.

Sandisk doesn't integrate with iTunes

Sandisk is ugly (and doesn't have an apple logo on it)

Buy a shuffle for Henry anyway

[Tom]

Thanks - I'll tell him.

Well I did and here are Henry's comments on Phil's comments:

"The Sandisk MP3 doesn't have an integrated USB connector on it - you
plug a lead into it which then goes into the computer. Shuffle has it
built in."

Most manufactures gave up having a plastic cap on top of a usb
connector. The cap breaks/gets lost. They all did it 3 years ago and
now none of them do.

"Also, despite the issues with rechargables, i
don't want to have to change batteries every couple of days. Shuffle
charges itself up when you plug it into the computer to download your
music."

But what if I dont take take my computer with me on holiday? Its a
four hour charge time, and with no way of plugging in an external
adaptor thats a long time in an internet cafe... I'm kind of with him
on this for only 15 hours battery life. But, the sony gets 70hours
battery life out of one AAA. Just a little maths.... If you do a half
hour commute everyday the shuffle will need recharging every 12 days.
With the sony you will need to change the battery 5.2 times a year. (
did you know you can buy last years batteries off ebay for £0.01?...
and you can buy them anywhere in the world )

I'll give him design... apart from the cap... and there are many
others that are a lot smaller than the shuffle.

I think hes also forgetting about the horrible smugness that infects
most people when they buy an apple product. I believe it to be a nasty
symptom of denial. I hope the apple symbol doesnt wear off in his
secret pocket... He'd have to send it back for repair!!! (for which
apple is slow and extortionate.)

"Buy a shuffle for Henry anyway"... Please dont!!

[Phil]

Most manufactures gave up having a plastic cap on top of a usb
connector. The cap breaks/gets lost. They all did it 3 years ago and
now none of them do.


if he means memory sticks no longer having caps i disagree - i just looked at Scan.co.uk's selection of memory sticks and 80% of them have caps. My old memory stick had a cap, i had it for a year and never lost it or broke it. I lost the whole thing in the end, but whoever's picked it up will still have the cap as well.


But what if I dont take take my computer with me on holiday? Its a
four hour charge time, and with no way of plugging in an external
adaptor thats a long time in an internet cafe..

you can buy a shuffle ac adapter that lets you plug it into the mains for (cough) £25. To be honest this never occured to me as a problem - i'm such a spod that i don't ever envisage being away from a PC for that long!


I think hes also forgetting about the horrible smugness that infects
most people when they buy an apple product

:huh:

i don't think that's true just of apple; i've hear "techier than thou" arguments about what the best Linux distro / 3d package / recovery utility / etc all the time.

I think the Apple "smugness" is the same as obsessive music types who hate it when their fave bands become succesful - they want their band to be their little secret and not share it with the world. Human nature, dude.


"Buy a shuffle for Henry anyway"... Please dont!!


buy it for me then, i'll have it as a spare for when apple logo wears off this one

[Phil]

There's a nice Mini Guide to OSX (http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/miniguide.ars) for Windows users on Ars Technica that you might find useful to glance over, Francis.

[francis]

Thanks Phil. It's shipped! But TNT's order tracking isn't showing anything yet. Argh!

[francis]

Right - finally online after a bit of a mare. Looks like the Mini's USB ports aren't powerful enough for my USB modem, so I had to fork out for a powered USB hub.

So far, so good though, although I'm really missing my righ-click - far too much keyboard use for my liking; I'm a real right-click junkie, so it's going to be hard. I also have to use the keyboard to open a new tab in Safari, which isn't great - there should be a "new tab" button. AND - why the hell are the @ and " keys swapped over?!

One thing I have discovered is that MS' Office suie for teachers and students requires no authentication to find out whether you are one or not. Adobe and Macromedia require you to fill out forms and send them off (how can I do this with Greenwich?), but MS seem to work on a basis of trust.

But, other than that, woohoo!

[francis]

Phil - keyboard/OS help!

Does OS X have something similar to Win's ALT+tab? I can CMD+tab, but that only shows one instance of the open app - for instance if I've got 5 DWMX pages open, I still only see the DMWMX logo and not each page.

Is there an equivalent to Win's CTRL+tab to tab between documents in one app? Again, in DWMX I can CTRL+tab to move between open documents - I'm hoping there's a common OS X equivalent as so far there's far too much mouse usage for my liking. Also, how come you can't tab through options on an OS popup alert (eg, Save/Don't Save)?

And finally, why isn't FF showing in my Applications folder? I've got it in my Dock, but it's not in my Apps folder and, on launching FF I get a FF disk on my Desktop. Have I installed it wrong?!

Don't know if you've seen Text Wrangler (http://www.barebones.com/index.shtml) from the people that make BBEdit - it's a pretty good text editor with loads of functionality and it's completely free. So far, very useful but there's some funky "would be good if I was right-handed" keyboard shortcuts...

[Phil]

Application switching:

command - tab [command being the key with the apple and funny swirly hash symbol]

command - ~ switches between different windows of the same app

*alternatively* you could use Expose [enable it from the system prefs]
this is kind of hard to explain, but basically it gives you another way of switching between apps and documents by using F10 and F11, or moving your mouse to the top right hand corner. All the open windows (or apps) metamorphise (sp?) into tiles on the desktop for you to choose the one you want. Try it - it looks fantastic.

If you plug a three button mouse in there that'll give you back your right click,(plus you can program middle button for tab opening, etc.)


Apps / Dock

What you have in your dock is actually a shortcut to the App. When you download an app it usually unzips onto your desktop as a virtual drive. When you open that you can see the app (and launch it) but you're actually running it from that desktop folder. Sounds like this is what you're doing with FF. While it will work it's more tidy to drag it from that virtual drive to the applications folder on your hard drive, then drag it from there to your dock to make the shortcut - so the shortcut is to the hard drive version of your app rather than the only floating around on your desktop. There's no install / uninstall for (most) programs, you tend to do it by dragging and dropping. They don't have to be in Applications but it's neater that way. The settings you make in those apps then get saved in the Preferences folder.

does this make sense? usually the unzipped folder has a big text label underneath the app saying "drag this to your applications folder".

Yes, that text wrangler is good - especially when you consider it's free, i got a bit irritated by it not allowing a one click save and ftp upload but I guess that's nitpicking really.


How's the Windows networking going? There's a free tool from Microsoft called Remote Desktop Connection that you can download for OSX that lets you take control of a Windows desktop - just like Remote Desktop for XP. Just need the windows IP and user/pwd and you've got a window to Windows.

[francis]

Cheers Phil ALT+~ is going to be a massive help. I've played with Expose - it's gorgeously pretty and another example of Apple's syle. I just need to remember the difference between F9, F10 ad F11. Someone has just pointed this (http://www.htmldog.com/ptg/archives/000087.php) out to me, and they're right. What is that about - it's not even marked on the keyboard! ALT+3 - not exactly usable. I'm hoping that they insane amount of keyobard modifiers becomes easier - unlike MS' Alt and/or CTRL, there's ALT, CTRL, shift, command and those weird other ALT symbols. Copy+pasting has gone from easy to a finger dance! Hopefully this is st a learning curve, as is the concept of a program not actually ending unless you specifically quit it!

Haven't got as far as networking yet - using my iPod to switch (http://www.apple.com/switch/howto/ipod/) between machines (although XP repeatedly arsed up my iTunes transfer and I had to burn nearly 1,500 MP3s to CD this afternoon). Adding music via CD to iTUnes s amazing - ust drag the files onto the iTunes main area and it adds it all to the library. Payday will bring networking although the machines are only about 1 foot apart). I can't believe the speed of Firewire compared with USB1 - it took about 6 minutes to transfer all my music to my iPod.

Apple fanboy question: why does the iCal icon default to 17 July until you open the app and it reads the system date and updates the icon? Is there a reason behind that date?

It's interesting to note that the Mac keeps bang up to date with this forum's read/unread posts images/threads. Windows, not matter which browser I use, incorrectly marks threads as unread when they have been. OS X has been spot-on with this forum every time I've come onto it.

Finally - 13 patches next week! (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020381,39186711,00.htm) The last Apple security update was October 2004.

[Phil]

Don't know why there's no £ sign, maybe Apple just couldn't be bothered to make special keyboards for us.
Before I found the Alt-3 workaround i used to have to keep hopping to a webpage that had the pound sign in it and then copying and pasting it in whenever I needed it!
Don't know about that date either - i thought it was just retained the date that it was last used.

Here's another pretty (but useless) keyboard trick...when you minimise a window, hold down command - shift for a slo mo genie effect.

Yes there are quite frequent software updates. Also you'll find included here driver and firmware updates. Though XP does (sometimes) sometimes do hardware driver updates via Windows update I find them a bit patchy, probably because there's so many more odd combinations on a PC. With Apple building the kit, they tend to have a tighter control on whats in the box so can release these specific hardware updates.

[francis]

Those were 13 Windows patches, not Apple ones!


Thanks for the FF install thing - Macs work differently I guess in that the FF icon is the entire application and not just the .exe as it would be in Windows. I dragged that into the Applications folder and all seems good, although when I start up the app, I still get a virtual drive appear on m desktop and in finder under the hard drive. No real big deal, but I wonder what the point is - why have it there?

[Phil]

Those were 13 Windows patches, not Apple ones!

ahh! and oops!


I still get a virtual drive appear on m desktop and in finder under the hard drive

you can bin it now, you don't need it any more. just drag it to the trash

[francis]

Okay, cool.

Apple's use of the PDF format is interesting - it seems that most documentation is PDFd as is, annoyingly, their version of Print Screen to get a screen grab (I can't paste that into Fireworks!). but Apple's own PDF viewer is so quick that you don't realise that you're looking at a PDF, unlike with Adobe's unweildy monster of an app (although I've heard reader 7 is much quicker). If MS embraced the format as well as Apple have then sending documents around would be a breeze. Do you use Adobe's viewer and, if so, does that take over from Apple's one? Adobe's one has a bit more functionality, but I love the speed of Apple's own one.

[Phil]

You can put Adobe Reader on and it takes over PDF duties from preview. But like you say it's huge now - V7 is about 20Mb. Preview is nice and quick but you can't do things like look at photoalbum with it. My Mac at work is about 5 years old and Reader makes it creak so I stick with Apples lightweight one.

as for screengrabbing, there is another OSX utility called Grab which you'll find in the Applications - Utilites folder. This lets you do timed grabs, windows, etc. It will let you save as tiffs if you want - or you can do a copy from Grab itself.

[francis]

Cheers Phil

Re: educational software. I'm thinking about getting Adobe's Studio CS (£400 as opposed to £1000, massively more for the individual apps that I use and it's bonus month next month!). To save the hassle of filling out forms and getting an NUS card (not sure if I've even got one) and a letter from the uni, I can apply via an institutional email address. I noticed that the students on our first net art proect had one (****@greenwich.ac.uk) - is this something that us part timers would have as well?

[Phil]

your university email address is just your ID followed by @greenwich.ac.uk.

check you're working by logging into the university webmail at webmail.gre.ac.uk

as for the Studio CS, isn't version 2 of that due for a first quarter release?

[francis]

Hi

Can't seem to get into webmail - my ID is SF321 and I'm gussing that my password is the same one that I use to log onto a PC at the university? And the server, whether I try Greenwich or Avery Hill, doesn't want to work. It's not an IE-only thing is it?

Studio CS2 looks, via a quick Google trawl, do be due any month - possbily March. One rumour was that it would be unveiled at Mac Expo, but obviously didn't happen. I'm not desperate for it, but I'll need it sooner rather than later, so I can hang on. If it is March, then so much the better.

[Phil]

i just checked sf321 and you have mail rights (nice mugshot by the way).
your webmail appears to be working

your password is the standard uni one (starts with an 'e')
all lowercase (inc user ID)
your mail server is ah-mail
not browser specific (in fact it's *better* on FF)

[francis]

Cheers Phil - it was the case thing. I've got loads of mail!

[francis]

Phil - should I be worried. Started up my Mac this afternoon, got to the desktop and got a "you must restart your computer" message. I did and got the same message again. On the third boot, it worked fine. Mmmm

[Phil]

was it a message on a grey background in lots of different languages with some network address info on it? these are quite nasty ones, but they do go away after a few restarts.
you can re-apply the last software update - or check if there's any firmware upgrades available (don't think there are any for macmini yet).

[francis]

Yep, that was the one both times. How do I reapply the last software update? And how nasty is "nasty"? Is it a "return to Apple" nasty or less?

[Phil]

well, any frozen screen that happens more than once is cause for alarm really. Not sure its return to apple serious though.

i've had a few of these over the years, and i've never been able to say for sure what causes them. The apple tech knowledge base is a bit vague, too, hinting at driver problems and "unusal" hardware. Can't imagine that could be true of an out of the box system like yours - except for your USB modems I suppose. My hunch, also, has been that it's something to do with the networking - i got it a few times when i was experimenting with remote network booting. Basically the "fix all" steps you take with a poorly mac are.

1. if it does start up, then go to utilities, disk utilites and run a repair permissions on your startup drive. then reinstall the last software update; doing software update from the preferences won't download anything new if it thinks you're already on the latest version, but if you go to the Apple Support (http://www.apple.com/support/) pages and download the update bundle and then install it over what you've got. As it happens 10.3.8 came out yesterday so in this case software update will do the trick.

2. if it's not starting up then you can try starting from the system cd, and running utilities from there - repair disk permissions

3. "zap the pram" - Command-Option-P-R on startup, hold these keys down until you've heard the startup chime four times. This clears the Macs "paramater ram access memory" kind of like bios info.

4. there's also a few more lower level reset options that vary between models.

5. take out any recently added hardware


With a new mac you've got 90 days free tech phone support. I would be most interested in hearing the "offical" reason for this crash should you decide to give them a bell...

[francis]

Cheers Phil - I did the disk utilities thing and I've not had any more errors. I've been using my Mac constantly and getting very used to the keyboard shortcuts which, after a weekend's coding, has let my fingers very confused at work. A quick Google search seems to suggest it's not possible to change XP's keyboard shortcuts, which is annoying as I've spent all day hitting Alt+W to try and close a document and Alt+Q to try and close an app! Copy+paste has been a nightmare as well as I keep hitting the Alt key instead of XP's CTRL.

At this rate I will end up switching permantently. Next time, however, I'll get 1 gig of RAM - Fireworks has real memory problems on the Mac.

[francis]

I'm now using my Mac as my primary computer and, although still havng to get my fingers used to the keyboard shortcuts (8 hours a day at work on a Windows machine tends to re-program the previous nights 'learning'). It's all looking good and, when it comes to buying my next machine in a few years' time, it's going to be a Mac.

Phil - where is the priority thing in Mail? I've looked under all of the menu items, checked to see if there are any buttons that I can add, checked Help and Googled, but can't seem to find anything. Surely there's a way to mark an email as urgent?

[Phil]

when it comes to buying my next machine in a few years' time, it's going to be a Mac.

:D

the Mac Mail is ok, if a little basic. The only option you've got for marking mail as priority is to "flag" it. Right click - sorry control click - mark - as flagged. Puts a little flag icon next to the message. Thats about it. Would be a bit more useful if you could create a custom mailbox that only showed flagged messages but i can't see a way of doing that.

Hows the network going? tried RDC to access your PC yet? it's well-useful

http://www.eds.gre.ac.uk/temp/rdc.jpg

[francis]

Yes, but I can't seem to send a mail as urgent. I can flag it once it's in my inbox, but why can't I send an urgent email? Surely this is an email basic?

The network is going to have to wait until March's payday. I've had to buy things like this cool FTP app (http://www.panic.com/transmit/) (the best one I tried. Also, check out their amazing drag-and-drop dock-style shopping cart (http://www.panic.com/goods/) - nice!) and an upgrade to Fireworks MX 2004 so that I can transfer the licence from my Win version to my Mac. That and other "essentials" like Toast With Jam and books like O'Reilly's Learning Unix For Max OS X Panther. The fact that I can play with Unoox on my Mac is a maor plus point for me - I can learn apps like VI and play with grep without destroying someone's server.

At the moment I'm burning what I need onto CD and transferring it from Win to Mac. Come the end of March, I'll be hassling you with network queries!

Oh, and the MAMP thing you linked to waaay back in this thread works like a charm + it's very easy to switch between PHP4 and 5 - just click a radio button!

The only thing I'm still having trouble with is the keyboard - I cannot believe the amount of times I don' hit the J key hard enough and miss it. The amount of typos I produce has rocketed.

[Phil]

Surely this is an email basic?


you'd think so, though there's no Urgent flag specified as part of the POP protocol. Urgent is a thing that's got tacked on that certain (but not all) mail clients support. I guess the Apple Mail doesn't. Web based mail doesn't tend to support it either.

Microsoft's Entourage for Mac has priorites -as well as loads of other stuff, it's a fully fledged Outlook-alike. Though I'm guessing you don't want to go down that route. Obv. as Apple Mail can't tag outgoing mail as high priority, anything incoming with high priority has the priority tag ignored too.

If you're feeling like torturing yourself this weekend, why not try and do a cheap PC - Mac connection via a simple crossover cable....

[francis]

Phil - have you seen pimpmysafari (http://pimpmysafari.com/) - it's a bit like the extensions site/s for FF/Moz/TB, except that you have to pay for quite a few of the extensions.

Starting to contemplate having to network the PC to the Mac, not looking forward to it...

[Phil]

No i've never really extended my safari, i tend to leave that sort of thing to FF - though the Mac FF has a way to go yet. I am interested in a decent kiosk extension and am looking at Saft - though it doesn't seem to do any site restricting, which is a let down.

Am really looking forward to the Tiger Widgets - how about one that keeps you informed of your traffic / adsense revenue ;)