In case you missed it on Plurk or Neowin, Wednesday afternoon I bought my first Mac. Yes, you are reading that correctly… I now own a Macintosh computer. To be more specific, I now own a Mac Mini. Why a Mac Mini? Well for starters it was cheap. 
The first thing I wanted to do is to familiarize myself with OSX. The last time I used a Mac (other than my iPod or iPhone) was many years ago, and pretty much the only thing I did then was play Oregon Trail and… well, I can’t remember what else I would have played way back then.
I also wanted to explore some Apple related business opportunities. Needless to say, that’s hard to do without owning a Mac. 
What does this mean for my PCs? Microsoft Windows? To be honest, that’s a good question. So far I have not been able to come up with a single reason that I should or need to stay with a PC. As many of you know, once upon a time I was a hardcore PC enthusiast (overclocking, modding, etc.) and a gamer. Now, I’m a media (movies, music, etc.) enthusiast and a programmer/coder. While I still like to game every now and then, for the most part that’s been on my Xbox 360.
I really don’t have much time for games these days. In fact, the last time I devoted any real time to PC gaming was back when Portal first came out. Since then, there really hasn’t been a a PC game that grabed my attention. Though I am really looking forward to Spore, it will be released for OS X and Windows. and to be honest, my low end Mac is really a better system than my PC right now.
The more I think about it, I can really see my self “switching” completely to a Mac environment at home. Sure, at work I’ll still have to use Windows. No problem there. Thankfully at both of my jobs have a MSDN subscription, so I’ll have access to the latest and “greatest” offerings from M$ to tinker around.
So, as someone who’s not used a mac in umpteen years think about it? Well, I’m till adjusting. Thankfully my Linux experience had helped out some. Though it is still very different even from that. Give me a week or so, and I’ll be able to tell you what I like and don’t like about the system.
As far as the hardware, I like it. Apple really does pay attention to the little things, which I like. From the look of the item to the way things plug in. The DVI connects flush to the back of the system, and even the way the power cord connects into the power brick was designed nicely.
I picked up a Apple keyboard and a Mighty Mouse (both wired). This is probably taking more adjustment than using the OS. After having a Razer with a 6+ foot cord, it was odd to see a mouse with a cord that was maybe 1.5-2′ long. Though, it does connect into the keyboard to help reduce “cable clutter”.
The keyboard is ultra thin, and looks pretty sweet. Because of that, it feels a lot smaller than it really is. The actual key layout isn’t much smaller than that of my Saitek gaming keyboard. Like I said before, it’s just different.
So what now? I’ll be playing with it for a while to get use to it. Though I’ll definitely need to open the system up before I do to much with it. The tiny 80G drive that it comes with by default just isn’t going to fly. I’ve found a 360G drive that should work quite nicely. After than, I’ll have to extend by USB or a Time Capsule.
And now, here are some shots of my new toy…
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Tags: Apple, d3bruts1d, iPhone, iPod, Mac, Mac Mini, Microsoft, OSX, Spore, Time Capsule, Windows