Initial Impression of Mac Mini

My friend bought a Mac mini yesterday and I helped him set it up. I say that loosely because there's practically no setup to do. You take it out of the box and plug in keyboard, monitor, power, internet and go.

The thing is insanely quiet. I'd leave the room and come back in and I'd still be amazed at how silent it was. Putting a disc in the optical drive generates some noise, of course; but even then, it's modest. I was surprised to find that the top is actually a smooth white plastic, which almost looks like it was designed to be illuminated.



My friend's young son came into the room and was perplexed as to where the computer was. Even when we told him, he didn't quite buy it.

One odd thing is that iLife 04 (not 05) is preinstalled. The newest iLife 05 disc is included in the box, but it wasn't immediately obvious that this had to be installed since the dock already has the appropriate icons. It was a brilliant move to include the VGA-to-DVI converter, since the flat planel display he had was analog.

This was John's first Mac, so I gave him the tour. He already knew about iLife and iWork, but I showed him how Apache was preinstalled (which he was quite happy about) and brought my iSight to show him Delicious Library. Also introduced him to MailDrop.

One of the first things he did was turn on Windows sharing and copy all of his photos from the last year to the mini and import them into iPhoto. He thought I was insane when we were at Fry's and told him to buy a five button USB mouse. But once he saw Expose, he got it.

I've decided that I'm going to custom order mine with a SuperDrive and such.

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