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Tiger release date set
Saw this post at slashdot. Looks like the next release of OS X, 10.4 to be exact, will be released on April 29th. Supposed to be a pretty hefty update.
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More Mac mini software
I’ve switched IM clients already. Fire just wasn’t as featureful/configurable as I would like, so I’ve started using Adium X. Got Firefox for the pages that don’t work right in Safari. Fink of course for additional Unix goodies (mostly extra compilation stuff). SSHKeychain provides a convenient interface to ssh-agent and simplifies key management. DoubleCommand lets me remap some keys (ie I can make my Ctrl key act like an Apple Command key), and the next version should differentiate between left and right keys allowing me to have both a Ctrl and a Command key (since Ctrl is sorta essential for emacs).
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Ich bin impressed!
I’ve had the mini for a couple of days now, and so far I have to say I’m impressed. Cute little box and so far I’ve largely been impressed with the speed and “fluidity” of it. OS X seems awful slick so far, barring the inevitable learning curve. In fairly short order I’d found the Terminal and was greeted with a familiar bash prompt and even things like emacs (text-only) and ssh out of the box.
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On its way!
Looks like my Mac mini is finally on its way! Granted, it looks like it’s just been picked up in China today (Shenzhen?), so it’ll likely be a while. But still very cool!
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Anandtech: Mac
Turns out Anandtech has started providing some Mac coverage. Anand starts off with A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User’s Perspective providing his take on the Mac experience to the “uninitiated” with a hefty Dual-G5 desktop. This led to the mobile experience with a Powerbook. Most recently, he’s taken a look at the Mac mini.
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More Mac mini
Macworld has lots of good coverage on the Mac mini. They’ve got a nice review with benchmark results, discussion of some of the available options, and even some cool findings (looks like some of the 40GB machines come with 5400rpm drives instead of 4200, and some systems may come with faster RAM, but I don’t know whether it’s actually being clocked any higher than PC2700). They’ve got coverage on disassembly with lots of pictures (opening it up and stripping it down to bare components).
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Bit the Bullet
Finally bit the bullet and ordered myself a Mac mini. There’s a good 3-4 week lead time on them currently, so I still have time to back out if I get cold feet. But I’ve been wanting a machine that’d run OS X for some time now. Every so often I look into “cheap” used Macs on fleabay, but have always been thwarted by the remarkably high prices that old Macs go for.
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Mac mini Dissection
It was only a matter of time. Someone got their hands on one of the new Mac minis and figured out how to open it without destroying it (Slashdot). Some fellow has the video up on his blog (wonder how long he’ll survive the slashdot effect). I’ve managed to snag the video already, so if he does go down, I may make it available to interested parties. A review site has also gotten their hands on a bare motherboard.
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Mac mini
So the Macworld Expo started yesterday. The big deal as I see it is the announcement of the Mac mini. That’s actually got me kinda excited. It’s a cute, little sub-$500 Mac that’ll run OS X. The dimensions on this thing are quite impressive (6.5" x 6.5" x 2"). That’s awful tiny. Comes with a 1.25GHz G4, a 40GB ATA HDD, DVD/CD-RW, 256MB DDR RAM, 32MB Radeon 9200 DVI, and the usual plethora of I/O (10/100 ethernet, modem, audio out, Firewire, USB2).
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OS X
Looks like you actually can emulate a PPC on an x86 well enough to install OS X. It’s still a little on the slow side (basic emulation results in 500:1 slowdown over the host processor, while their JIT compiler for x86 brings that up to more like 40:1 slowdown since they cache the translated code), but the project seems pretty active, and there’s lots of room for improvement. Still pretty need to see Mac OS X running on a PC (either Windows or Linux, but I’ve just tried Linux at this point).
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