First Mac

I woke up on Monday morning and crawled out of bed to the computer.

Through bleary eyes I clicked Start and found the Firefox icon.

I tried to type the couriers site.

www.tmt.cp,

doh... typo - tap Backspace repeatedly.

check hand position...

stare at keyboard and blink a couple of times...

www.tnt.com.au

[Enter]

minimize Firefox

open a pdf on the desktop - the shipping order from Apple for the Mac Mini

double click to select the order number - right click and copy

alt tab to firefox

right click and paste

[enter]

.........

Onboard for Delivery - Gladstone

close eyes really tight

look again

Onboard for Delivery - Gladstone

Oh, sweeeeet... its here... over a week since the release of Leopard and it's finally here.

www.google.com.au TNT Gladstone Australia Big Book Business Directory

scroll down

TNT Express (Gladstone, QLD)

read the phone number

grab phone and copy the number off the computer screen onto the phone screen

"beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep"

[TALK]

"brrrp brrrp, brrrp brrrp, "

"TNT Gladstone, Sumdude speaking."

"Hey, I'm expecting a package for Jon O'Hare"

"Yeah, we got a couple here."

"Don't put them on the truck! See you in a minute!"

*click*

I took this photo Monday afternoon after getting everything set up... and before I dusted... Everything I had ordered had arrived ten days later. The custom built Mac Mini came with Tiger pre-installed which surprised me a little, but the lady from Apple I spoke to on the phone last Friday said that might happen. Instead I got a Leopard drop-in kit which is just a Leopard DVD in a paper sleeve packaged with the other disks.

I've been pretty busy setting everything up and fiddling with it, transferring photos and music from the Vista machine it replaces and integrating them into iPhoto and iTunes. For the most part everything went smoothly. I installed the software we have become used to (Joost, Vuze, Firefox, Google Earth, VLC) and some software that is completely new to me like EyeTV.

So far I'm impressed. It's so much nicer to use than anything I've used before. Even in the short time that I've played with it, I have already come to appreciate the integration of the core Mac applications and Front Row is so refreshing after battling with Windows Media Center.

Speaking of Front Row, the little remote control that comes with the Mac works really well. Toss the keyboard and mouse aside and click the Menu button on the Front Row Remote and the computer turns into a media center with videos and music from your own collection plus previews from iTunes and slide shows of your iPhoto collection.

The only problems with so far have been to do with networking. While the Mac connected to the network and found it's way to the Internet through my router without any help from me, it took some time to figure out how to get it to talk to the Windows machines on the network. Like most things on any computer though, you bang your head against it for ages and don't get anywhere until you see that one little thing, that one tiny little setting, that one radio button or switch, and you click it... and everything just works... and you feel like a idiot for not finding it in the first place.

So that's sorted. Installed EyeTV and can watch digital television and analogue television plus we can record stuff from the VHS player with it now. It seems to work well so far and also uses the Front Row remote control allowing us to pause and rewind live TV. Cilla gets a little worried about the space-time continuum when we do that.

I just finished recording a two hour VHS tape to put on DVD. It's almost exactly two hours long and takes up five and a half gig (5.5GB). I still have a little playing around to do with it yet so we'll see how it goes.

Since I've started getting into Mac computers and blogging about them and discussing them with friends and family I've noticed that they are being bought. Cilla's niece, Jemma asked me a while back now what sort of computer she should get and I suggested a MacBook. She took my advice and seems very happy with it. Mum got herself a 24" iMac which is just lovely. I got told that Uncle Phil ordered a Mac about the time I ordered ours - I have yet to catch up with him and find out which one. Mark the Electricity Man, Bill the Airconditioner Man and Steve the Drumming Man have all said that they intend to aquire Macs of their own. It's hasn't even been twelve months since Jem got hers. Steve Jobs said 2007 was going to be a good year for Apple. If this kind of interest in their products is world-wide I reckon that would be spelling even better times to come.

OSX 10.5 is a beautiful operating system to use. I've only been using it for two days and I can't think of a single reason why I'd want to put Boot Camp on and run Windows. Sure, some things are done differently on the Mac than they were on Windows - but some things are done differnetly on WindowsXP than they are on Vista.

So far, lovin' it!