Quantum Forest

A few updates on my previous post on buying a Mac mini.

• Microsoft Office has a nicer feeling in the Mac than under Windows, which is a nice surprise but says a lot about how crappy the Windows version is.
• Why would you call an email program just Mail? It makes very hard to look for help with such a generic name. Using ‘Apple Mail’ and Mail.app helps a bit, but it is such a silly name, like calling a browser ‘Web’ or a spreadsheet program ‘Spreadsheet’.
• We started using Mail for email, but we just hit a few undesirable ‘features’, like disappearing email. It happens like this: there are some messages in the Inbox and, suddenly, they are not there anymore. Probable cause: data corruption, but I am not willing to experiment with my email. Ended up using Entourage, which comes with my copy of Office, so no extra expense there.
• Most hyped and useless feature: dashboard. I am really hard pressed to find any useful widgets. We use some times the calculator and the egg timer for cooking.
• I still have not made a firm choice between Safari and Firefox. Some times I use one some times the other. I do not care much about sharing or losing bookmarks, because I keep them in delicious.
• I am using SubEthaEdit as editor, which is quite nice (and love the logo). The interface is simple, and I have most of what I need at hand.
• We do not use any client-side email filtering: we just redirect personal email from our server (uncronopio.org) to Gmail, let Google filter it and read it from there with any email program. As a side effect we get all incoming and outgoing email backed up in the Gmail account.
• The keyboard is very nice and the mighty mouse is quite comfortable. I love the tiny scroll wheel!

In all, transition has not been difficult. It helped to have a copy of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition. It is a good resource for newbies playing with Macs under OSX. The only software I miss at home: Picasa. Hey, Google guys, when are you going to release a Mac version? It is way better than iPhoto, and forking out ~US$500 for Aperture is just too much for a hobby.