MacMini Notes

broderic on December 21, 2005

Okay it’s been almost a week since I have set up my Mac Mini. Really only 5 days. I want to make note of some things that I have experienced while using it.

  1. I need an Apple specific keyboard. I am using a split keyboard that I have had since my old Dell PC Win95. It works for typing, but there are things missing. The Windows key is the Apple/Command Key. I don’t know what the Alt key is for. Honestly, I had a hard time telling what the option key was for on a Mac keyboard. The arrow keys don’t work correctly. The home, end and page down/up keys don’t work either. I know that I can always get a key mapping software and correctly map these things, but I would really like to have a Apple specific keyboard. Split keyboard. For Christmas. See my Amazon Wish List.

  2. At first, I thought that the fan was as loud as my laptop, but I am wrong. It’s quiet. The CD/DVD drive though is loud.

  3. I partitioned the drive into three partitions. 25 Gb for the system. 12 Gb for Users. 35 Gb for Data. Is that enough or should I get an external drive?

  4. I want to turn it into a file serving machine. Can anyone help me find out how to do that?

  5. Installed the dev tools on the machine after a 900 Mb download. Apple does not include the dev disk with this machine. That’s a mistake as having free dev tools is a plus in my book. How can you convince people to develop software for the OS if you don’t give them some help?

  6. Trying to figure out a synchronization issue for my machines. How do I go about maintaining two different computers with similar data? Like if I want to access files off my laptop how should I do it? This will begin to be a complicated issue once I have the third of my PPC Macs.

  7. Should I install all applications that I have on my laptop here? Or should I wait for the third machine?

  8. Tiger is pretty cool. I use the widgets a lot. I have a sudoku widget and also the Rejks widget for the Rejks museum. There pretty neat.

Overall, I am happy with my purchase. This is what I bought with my promotion.

Mac Programmer Blogs

broderic on November 2, 2005

I wish to be one one day. Here are a few blogs from people who code for Macs.

http://rentzsch.com/
http://mjtsai.com/blog/
http://inessential.com/
http://gusmueller.com/blog/
http://www.glorifiedtypist.com/
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/index.php
http://www.unsanity.org/
http://wilshipley.com/blog/
http://www.mikematas.com/

This is just a few and it is mostly a scarfed from the blogroll in the first link. Also, don’t forget to read Jon Gruber’s Daring Fireball. This is my first read for insight into any Mac related news.

A couple of new toys

broderic on April 3, 2005

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iSightDualDisplay
iSightDualDisplay,

Forgive me for the crappy shot that this picture is, but I had to show some of the fun stuff I recently purchased or was sent to me. I took this shot with an iSight that my cousin sent to me as part of a payment he owes me. It is of my new 20″ cinema display. I have it hooked up to my TiBook and using it as a second monitor. Having dual displays rocks.

Compiling GNU smalltalk on a OS X

broderic on February 1, 2005

This is just for references, if anyone ever searches for compiling smalltalk on OS X in google. I was compiling the latest stable release, 2.1.9.

When compiling GNU smalltalk on Mac OS X, and you run into errors with poll.h, my suggestion is to comment the block of code which #includes sys/poll.h. You’ll find that the compilation will go more smoothly with the definitions in poll.h (the fake out section) rather than the definitions in sys/poll.h. In fact if you read, sys/poll.h it recommends you not #including it. Perhaps this is a bug and should be submitted to the maintainer of GNU smalltalk.

More on the Mac Mini

broderic on January 14, 2005

The other day I posted about my jonesing for a Mac mini. When I sobered up a bit, I realised that it does have some limitations. The one glaring drawback is that it comes with a base 256 meg of memory. To run OS X and the iLife suite of applications, the minimum RAM should start at 1 GB. Hooking the Mac Mini up with this amount puts it up around $800 bucks. Better to get an iMac. If you need further information, then this article from Macworld is a good start to understanding the Mac mini.