The Mac Mini arrives

The Mac Mini came Tuesday. I unpacked it and started setting it up in the open desk space near my wife. "What's that?", she asked.

"It's your new computer"", I said while plugging in the keyboard and mouse.

"No! It's so small!"

Yeah. Though in other ways, it's actually "bigger" than my MacBook Pro - more disk space, more cpu. more ports..

Setup took a while - update downloads, installing iLife, Word, Quickbooks, Firefox. I hooked up a Mac aluminum keyboard, an HP mouse and the 250GB USB drive her Windows machine had used for local backup. I gave that drive to Time Machine and it started doing its first backup. In the meantime, I set it up for smb sharing and started copying over her data.

While that was chugging along, I set up Screen Sharing and tried making a connection. I found that the Apple Screen Sharing Connection didn't work - I'd just get a black screen. Chicken of the VNC worked perfectly - well, except when I put it into Full Screen mode and could only get back to my machine by turning off Screen Sharing on the mini. There must be a key sequence that escapes that; I'll look for it later.

Found it: command-option-control-backtic.

I'll have to do some training.. I hope it goes better than the last time she used a Mac. Most if it really is the same -Quickbooks, Firefox, Word.. she'll have to get used to Apple-C rather than Ctrl-C and a few other things, but most of it shouldn't be unfamiliar and most of the time I'm right here in the next chair to help. I don't expect any big problems.

Yet I am a little nervous about this. There will be things she likes, and things she won't like. Heck, just finding the on-off button isn't all that obvious, never mind switching operating systems. I'm going to be out of the office today, but fortunately she's going shopping and I should get back before she does. I sure hope so..

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Wed Apr 15 11:14:49 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


I just realized that I forget to set up a printer :-)

Ooops..



Wed Apr 15 12:25:05 2009: Subject:   NickBarron


D Day... ;)



Wed Apr 15 19:09:46 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


It was a little rough this morning :-)

We both needed to get out the door, but we needed to print Estimated Tax checks first..

Oh my.. much fun ensued.



Wed Apr 15 23:16:31 2009: Subject:   MartinMalden
http://www.wealthydragon.com/blog

Tony, hi,

I hope she likes it - you sound as nervous as if you were setting up a blind date :)

Cheers,

Martin.



Thu Apr 16 05:51:05 2009: Subject:   DonalWhooley
http://www.iforb.com

I got my wife a MB about 18 months ago. At first she hated it and cursed me for pushing it on her. There was so many things that frustrated her after years of XP. It wasn't helped that she runs the OS in German and almost all of Apple's help comes only in English. Then I got a MBP a few months later. I read the book "Switching to Mac" and within a matter minutes of sitting down with her I was able to show her all the tricks she was missing.
From that moment on she saw the light. If ever the choice of computer comes up in conversation she is the first to jump on someone's head and give them a good insulting for even considering buying an Microsoft pimped machine! I don't get a word in edge ways.

Making the transition is not obvious to someone who has not used a Mac before, but a little bit of guidance will easily get most average users up to a level of using the power of a Mac way beyond what they ever got out of MS machines.
Ubuntu and Mac OSx easily pass the grandmother test. Sit them down, give them a 5 minute guided tour to their new space and they'll be reading email and browsing the web very happily. One comment I got from my 79 year old mother, after switching her to a refurbished Ubuntu laptop was "I had to do so much clicking on the old XP machine... Always clicking. Everything on the new machine is just one click away"



Thu Apr 16 11:15:25 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


I think she will become a fan - it's just that she has so many years of using XP.

As I said, I know there will be things she really appreciate. For one, her music will work (that wasn't XP's fault; the machine had a hardware problem). She'll like the ease of printing to PDF, she'll definitely not miss A/V software slowing her down.



Thu Apr 16 11:45:20 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


I realized this morning that I had forgotten to install VLC: http://www.videolan.org/ and JumpCut ClipBoard : http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/

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Take Control of Easy Backups in Leopard

Take Control of Fonts in Leopard

Take Control of Screen Sharing in Leopard

Take Control of Permissions in Leopard

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Thu Apr 16 12:10:09 2009: Subject:   NickBarron


Little things will keep coming to you ;)



Thu Apr 16 12:13:37 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Once she sits down, she'll be telling me what she needs..

I left the "Switching" book ( http://aplawrence.com/Books/switching-to-the-mac.html ) near her desk.. :-)



Thu Apr 16 12:22:48 2009: Subject: Shame on you   DonalWhooley
http://www.iforb.com

Shame on you. You unpacked it yourself. You should have left that pleasure to your wife.
When you see the effort Apple put into every aspect of how they present their products, you appreciate how every product should be created.. Created with love!!!



Thu Apr 16 12:26:04 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence




If I left it to her, it would have still been sitting there come Xmas :-)



Thu Apr 16 15:35:49 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


I also added the Gmail Notifier. She didn't have that on the XP because the poor beast was struggling enough to run what she really needed. She'll like that because she often complains that she got busy and forgot to check new email.

http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html



Thu Apr 16 19:22:30 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Because she found other programs windows confusing, I set the Dock to automatically hide other programs when starting:

$ defaults write com.apple.dock single-app -bool TRU

$ killall Dock



Thu Apr 16 19:24:01 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


If you happened to do that and don't want it, put it back to normal with:

$ defaults delete com.apple.dock single-app

$ killall Dock

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Take Control of Your iPhone Apps

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Thu Apr 16 19:37:39 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


And I found the problem with Screen Sharing.

NetAuthAgent was hung. I finally noticed it in Activity Monitor (yet another reason to keep AM up and running). Killed it off and Screen Sharing now connects beautifully.

I was concerned about this because she's having shoulder surgery soon and will be laid up for a bit. She can use my laptop in bed but now and then she'll want something on her computer so I needed that to work well. I think the Apple Screen Sharing does a better job than Chicken of the VNC for this, so I'm happy to have found the problem.



Fri Apr 17 12:34:18 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Ooops.. she doesn't like the keyboard. That shouldn't be too hard to fix:

http://www.gadgetspage.com/comps-peripheral/alternatives-to-apples-aluminum-keyboard.html

http://lowendmac.com/misc/mr07/1210.html



Fri Apr 17 12:49:04 2009: Subject:   NickBarron


What the Aluminium Apple Keyboard?

Did you buy her one as well?



Fri Apr 17 12:54:14 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Yes, the aluminum keyboard. Actually I didn't buy it specifically for this; I had one that was unused so that's what I gave her. She doesn't like it - she's hardly the only person in the world so it's not surprising.





Fri Apr 17 12:58:27 2009: Subject:   NickBarron


Ah ka poodle that keyboard is lovely best one they have made in a long time I think...





Fri Apr 17 13:06:03 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Well, I can see her point. It's very flat - she likes curved keycaps.

No big deal - she can use any USB keyboard she likes.



Tue Apr 21 10:47:08 2009: Subject:   anonymous


who cares....

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Tue Apr 21 11:50:56 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Not you, apparently.

So move along.. nothing of interest for you here.





Tue Apr 21 11:57:05 2009: Subject:   NickBarron


hmm clearly nobody that is why there are no comments on this thread and the site get no visit...

oh I see...



Tue Apr 21 12:02:34 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Well, because I can't focus on any particular thing, some people come here expecting one thing and of course they find a giant mish-mosh of anything and everything. Sometimes they get upset by that. Or just bored.

I've been told over and over that if I want to be successful I need to focus and specialize.

That's NOT going to happen :-)



Wed Apr 22 12:32:28 2009: Subject:   NickBarron


And who says that is a bad thing :)

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