I recently let go of a twenty-five year grudge by purchasing a Mac mini. The grudge? In 1979 my Dad brought home an Apple II Plus. Being genetically predisposed to hacking I wanted to learn everything I could about it. Unfortunately we could not afford a diskette drive so I was stuck using a cassette tapes for I/O. That just didn't cut it for me...and I was left feeling that a computer == frustration. It took me a few years to shed my initial opinions of PCs - and once we got an IBM PCjr, I was off and running.

I have been spending less and less time using Windows OSes, preferring Linux (Gentoo being my fav distro). In fact I plan to migrate PerCS from DasBlog to an open-source Linux solution (possibly a mod of Drupal). Enter the Mac mini. A couple months ago I found myself with a few "technology wants": 1) dvd burner; 2) safer OS for my wife; 3) staging server for various web services. I hoped the Mac mini would be an inexpensive solution to each...so I set aside my differences and took the plunge.

After a week with it here are my thoughts:

• The Mac mini is simply sexy.
• Rendevous has an issue with ".local" domain names. You can hack a solution...but I'm a little disappointed here.
• After years of Windows and a few years of Linux - Panther seems so simple.
• The claim of "it's just unix" is true, and not. The unix distribution deviates quite a bit from traditional unix e.g. directory layout, file-naming. The absolute crucial files are there tho'. One interesting thing is that root is locked down - and you have to jump through hoops to actually login as root (no complaints there...just not comfortable not knowing my root's password).
• Any review of Mac mini ROI really must consider how many devices it displaces. A direct comparison between it and a like-configured Dell is incomplete. This device is an Apache web server, a development desktop, an pseudo-"Internet appliance", and a graphics design desktop - all in one. In my house this device displaces three Dell systems...

So all in all I am very pleased with this mini-mite. I am looking forward to finally hacking into the innards of an Apple OS.