Posting this from my new Mac mini. I'm moving to Mac this year - work is getting me a Powerbook and I'm going to buy an iMac in Novemberish. But I'm starting with this mini, which eventually will slide over to being a family machine.
First time I've used a Mac since 1998, and the first Apple PC I've owned since the Apple ][e. I've owned all the iOS devices so I'm somewhat familiar, and I'm definitely a power user (IT pro by trade). I've used nearly every operating system under the sun, from mainframes to Linux, but I'm coming to Yosemite cold.
My initial impressions:
I haven't migrated anything from Windows yet.
Three things that I need to still figure out...
Remote access...going Mac to Win via the Microsoft RDP app has worked flawlessly. But going Win to Mac is using a somewhat less elegant VNC connection. It's not as nice as Microsoft's RDP. And eventually I'll want to go Mac-to-Mac and I'm hoping I don't need to spend $80 for Apple's app. I don't need over-the-Internet remote, just local LAN (in my house).
Backups...my backup plan is CrashPlan & Time Machine to a Synology NAS. I haven't fully researched if I need a Carbon Copy/Super Duper/etc. backup. I figure if this sealed box breaks, it's going to Apple for a new hard drive, and those products are more for putting in your own hard drive...right?
Space...for this mini, 1TB is fine, but when I get my iMac, 3TB won't really be enough. I really find that perplexing. I easily have a couple TB of video and media files, and add in project/personal files, pictures, videos, etc. it's very easy to have more than 3TB of personal data. My Win 10 box has ~8TB of space and I'm easily at 80%. I have a Synology NAS, but it's much slower than local disk...I suppose there's external drives. And it bugs me that all the Mac configs are single HDD which makes RAID impossible. Until now, every PC I've built has used RAID-1. I understand the Mac ethos which is much less DIY but the relatively modest HDDs are just strange to me.
All in all, it's been a fun day. And this forum has been invaluable!
First time I've used a Mac since 1998, and the first Apple PC I've owned since the Apple ][e. I've owned all the iOS devices so I'm somewhat familiar, and I'm definitely a power user (IT pro by trade). I've used nearly every operating system under the sun, from mainframes to Linux, but I'm coming to Yosemite cold.
My initial impressions:
- OSX strikes a nearly perfect balance between "easy to use, but if you want to use power user features, they're there, too". I love how much is exposed but only if you need it.
- I got an Apple Keyboard and after an hour went back to my Microsoft Natural 4000. Just did not like the Apple keyboard. The magic mouse was nice, but I ended up using the magic trackpad which is just plain neat.
- Biggest hurdle so far...keyboard shortcuts! I have all the Windows shortcuts in my head and End, Control-Home, etc. don't do the same things on a Mac. Not a big deal, just need to retrain my fingers, but it made my first session using Scrivener very painful. I really didn't anticipate this but man do I have a lot of finger macros to relearn.
- The Mini has been very fast and responsive. I have the 1TB fusion drive and the 2.8Ghz i5. Have not had a single slowdown. I do notice that Safari is a huge memory pig but only because I looked in the activity monitor.
- The Terminal is awesome. One of the nicest terminal apps I've used on any platform and I do a lot of ssh/terminal work.
- Setting up mail, calendar, etc. was ridiculously easy - logged into Google and the Mac asked me if I wanted to setup my whole chain of apps and wah-lah, it was done.
- I do find the dock/taskbar a little disorienting. In Windows, I use the Quick Launch (yes, you can still enable it) to launch and the task bar to see what's running, in a nice two-row display. OSX is similar but I'm still groping with switching to running apps, minimizing/maximizing groups of apps, etc., and there is no concept of multiple iterations of an app running (or I haven't found it, which is likely). I'm putting this down to beginner needing to learn more shortcuts/howtos. The little black dot under running apps is not as visually easy to digest as the taskbar. And some apps (activity monitor, console, etc.) seem to always stay running even if you close them, which is confusing. For example, there's now an Activity Monitor icon in my task bar with a black dot, but it wasn't there before I ran it and it won't go away regardless of red-X-clicking.
- I miss the "minimize all apps in one click and show the desktop" button, though there's probably a keyboard shortcut I'm missing.
- Some Macisms are a little strange. For example, I downloaded the Dropbox installer and the .dmg shows up as a mounted disk volume. I read up on it but it's still strange.
- Volume adjustment...seriously, why isn't there a speaker icon
- Firewall not on by default? Weird, though if no services are running it's semi-academic...but I turned it on.
- I wish there was a "what just made that noise" display...something is making a notification periodically but I haven't tracked it down (I'm aware of the control panel item).
- I seem to be constantly discovering new shortcuts and pieces of the OS...I think ultimately this will be an extremely fast, fluid work environment once I have a little more time with it to learn.
- Safari is...meh...not bad, but I may go back to Chrome as it's supported on all platforms and Safari is not.
I haven't migrated anything from Windows yet.
Three things that I need to still figure out...
Remote access...going Mac to Win via the Microsoft RDP app has worked flawlessly. But going Win to Mac is using a somewhat less elegant VNC connection. It's not as nice as Microsoft's RDP. And eventually I'll want to go Mac-to-Mac and I'm hoping I don't need to spend $80 for Apple's app. I don't need over-the-Internet remote, just local LAN (in my house).
Backups...my backup plan is CrashPlan & Time Machine to a Synology NAS. I haven't fully researched if I need a Carbon Copy/Super Duper/etc. backup. I figure if this sealed box breaks, it's going to Apple for a new hard drive, and those products are more for putting in your own hard drive...right?
Space...for this mini, 1TB is fine, but when I get my iMac, 3TB won't really be enough. I really find that perplexing. I easily have a couple TB of video and media files, and add in project/personal files, pictures, videos, etc. it's very easy to have more than 3TB of personal data. My Win 10 box has ~8TB of space and I'm easily at 80%. I have a Synology NAS, but it's much slower than local disk...I suppose there's external drives. And it bugs me that all the Mac configs are single HDD which makes RAID impossible. Until now, every PC I've built has used RAID-1. I understand the Mac ethos which is much less DIY but the relatively modest HDDs are just strange to me.
All in all, it's been a fun day. And this forum has been invaluable!
