macmini

My new Mac Mini

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During the host move I mentioned that I had purchased a new Mac Mini. I currently own an original PowerPC Mac Mini, which as well as not being able to run Snow Leopard is also feeling very lacklustre performance-wise, and a MacBook, which is starting to die a slow death due to overuse and abuse (it really wasn’t designed for long World of Warcraft sessions).

I settled for the Mac Mini as it provided the best compromise between power and price. As much as I’d love a Mac Pro, I’m not at a stage where I can spare over a grand for a computer. The iMacs are nice but I already have a relatively new 23″ screen (the LG Flatron I wrote about in September), and don’t have the desk space for a second monitor.

The model I picked was the 2.53Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo model, with 4 GB of RAM and a 320 GB hard drive. Like all Mac Minis it packs a nVidia GeForce 9400M graphics chip, which isn’t amazing but is significantly better than the Intel GMA 950 chip in my MacBook. All in all, it made a £600 dent on my credit card.

Thanks to Time Machine, setting the machine was so easy it almost felt disappointing – it took all the fun out of playing with new settings as everything was copied over from my MacBook. But it did mean I could use it as I’d used my MacBook straight-away, with only a few programs needing re-installing for 64-bit compatibility. World of Warcraft is a much nicer experience – rather than struggling with every performance setting to minimum, I can set it to ‘Fair’ and have a smooth 30fps almost everywhere in the game. It’s nice to be able to see further into the distance and have spells at a higher level of detail.

Compared to the older Mac Mini model, this is an improvement – 5 USB ports rather than 2, thus negating the need for a USB hub, and the use of mini-DVI (with an included DVI adaptor) means there’s also room for a Mini DisplayPort as well, which presumably means dual monitors is a possibility when I get more money and a bigger desk.

I’ll keep the old Mac Mini for, um, something, but the MacBook will be finding itself a new home once I’ve bought a netbook to replace it. Or an iPad, I haven’t decided yet.

Mac Mini alive again

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January wasn’t a great month for me and my 2 Macs, as I managed to get both of them to stop working. First of all, the backlight on my MacBook’s screen stopped working, which I managed to fix after about half an hour’s Googling. Then I found my Mac Mini was refusing to boot but alas was not able to fix it.

The good news is that I have now fixed it. The bad news is that I’m not entirely sure what it was I did that got it to work again. Essentially, I took the lid off (easier said than done as it requires using a thin, flexible knife to prize the shell away from the base), poked at it, put the lid back on again and it booted up fine.

I say essentially because there was more to it than that. Because I was receiving the error ‘ALLOC-MEM request too big!’ from OpenFirmware while booting, I first assumed it to be a RAM error, so I took the RAM out and re-seated it, then booted the machine without putting the cover back on. That didn’t work, so I poked at the Bluetooth and Airport aerials to see if that made any difference – again nothing. So I put the lid back on and was about to concede defeat, but decided to see if putting the lid on had made any difference. And it had – the machine booted up, albeit slowly.

The computer is now running, although it does seem slow – that may just be because it always has been slow and I just haven’t used it recently. I haven’t yet restarted it so it may of course be a fluke, but right now all the programs on it seem to be working fine – no unexplained crashes and no grey screens of death as yet.

So if you have the dreaded ‘ALLOC-MEM request too big!’ error, trying taking your Mac apart and check if everything is seated correctly, and then try booting again. It may fix it. Of course, if it doesn’t, it may be indicative of bigger problems so don’t rule out a trip to the Genius Bar or a call to AppleCare.

And now it’s the Mac Mini’s turn

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As many of you will know, as well as my MacBook, which I use as my main computer, I have a Mac Mini as well – this was my first Mac which I bought in 2005. It has spent the past year or so searching for a purpose – I was, and still am, hoping to turn it into a media centre but I’ve neither had the time or money to go ahead with it, and to be honest, I don’t really need to either.

Anyway, after yesterday’s shenanigans with my MacBook, it’s the turn of the Mac Mini to refuse to work. It’s actually not a problem that developed today – I noticed it wasn’t working last week, but as I run it headless I didn’t have a computer monitor to plug it into. All I knew was that it wasn’t registering itself on the network.
Today I had chance to use it with an external monitor. I heard the startup sound, saw the Apple logo on the screen, and then, nothing. No status indicator, just the Apple logo.

So, I zapped the PRAM – Command+Option+P+R. This time, the status indicator appeared for about 10 seconds before the Grey Screen of Death appeared, showing a kernel panic. This happened with subsequent boots.

So, I tried booting from the OS X CDs. Same problem. In fact, after a while, all I could do was access the Open Firmware command prompt.

This therefore means that there’s something wrong with the RAM or another component. Over the Christmas period, I took my Mac Mini with me to my parents in York, rather than leaving it in Bradford as I figured it would be safer. I’m guessing that it may have got jolted in transit and one or more of the components is out of place. It could also be bad RAM, but the RAM was only replaced in November 2006 and it was good-quality Crucial RAM. Plus, it’s a faff trying to get the damn thing apart and will probably require the purchase of another putty knife seeing as my existing one has gone missing.

In the meantime, I have a nice iOrnament.

Memory upgrade

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Today I finally got around to upgrading the memory in my Mac Mini. Since buying it last year it’s had 512 MB of RAM, which is fine for general computer-ry stuff (reading email, browsing the web, maybe running iTunes in the background) but lately it’s been used more and more for playing World of Warcraft, which is a very memory-intensive program. With it running, doing anything else on the system is, at best, difficult – switching between World of Warcraft and, say, Firefox takes a long time.

I ended up buying the memory from Crucial – I’ve bought from before and had no problems, and this time was no exception. I ordered the memory yesterday morning, and despite going for the free delivery and not the more expensive guaranteed next day delivery it still came today, which is excellent. Crucial also happened to be cheaper than buying Corsair memory from either Scan or Dabs, and I’d rather not have generic memory if I can avoid it.

The reason why I have been putting the upgrade off isn’t so much the cost aspect (which ended up at £85 for 1 GB of PC2700 DDR RAM), but the actual upgrade itself, and in particular taking the unit apart. It’s a very small unit and the case isn’t screwed on – you actually have to pry it open with a knife – I used a standard putty knife from Wickes. Because my unit also has Airport and Bluetooth, you have to then detach one of the antennae before then lifting the RAM out and inserting the new module. Thankfully, there are videos which explain this process – I really would not have bothered if I hadn’t seen it being done first. One thing I did do, however, was boot the computer before putting the lid back on and making it sure it worked – after going through all the effort of taking the machine apart I didn’t want to have to do it all over again just because the module wasn’t seated correctly, for example.

Thankfully, the upgrade worked, and now the Mac has double the memory to play with. It’s not a seismic difference in speed but it does feel snappier; still, my MacBook, with its Intel Core Duo processor, beats it when playing WoW. But not by quite so much.

Mac Stuff, again

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I think this will be the last post of this series for at least a few days now, since I’ve pretty much explored the OS now.

  • Managed to get 10.4.2 to install. It turns out I needed the ‘Combo’ update and not the standard one, which is presumably only for US English users or something. It would have been nice for the non-Combo installer to tell me this though.
  • I also managed to finally sort out the keyboard mapping problems using this UK keyboard map. It’s a shame I had to resort to third-party software to fix the problem – Apple should really have addressed this in the operating system, especially as one of the selling points of the Mac Mini is that you can bring your own keyboard and mouse.
  • Now my next keyboard problem: getting the Home and End keys to do as they do in Windows. In OS X, they do nothing. Any ideas?
  • One of the flaws I heard about the Mac Mini was its headphone socket and poor quality output. This is something I’ve noticed as well; there’s not nearly the same depth of sound as on my laptop. It sounds very muffled when hooked up to my stereo, for example. Sure, it’s only supposed to be a headphone socket but it is the only built-in audio output, and when you consider it comes with software like GarageBand and iMovie you would expect something a bit better. I may have to consider the Griffin iMic (£30 or $40), especially as the Mini has no way of inputting sound (no microphone or line in).
  • The network tools applet in Utilities is awesome! Whois, DNS lookups and allsorts, all in a nice interface. Nice one, Apple.
  • I gave in and downloaded StuffIt Expander for the Mac. Even though the StuffIt web site uses browser sniffing and will only let Windows users download the Windows version. Thankfully I have Chris Pederick’s User Agent Switcher installed so I pretended I was actually a Mac user and it was okay.
  • The main reason for this is so that I could install Windows Media Player 9 for OS X since I imagine I’ll need it to view some movies. Alas VLC doesn’t yet support many of Microsoft’s proprietary media formats (or at least not on its non-Windows builds) so I’d better get it just in case. And you need StuffIt to be able to open WMP since it doesn’t use a disk image like, um, just about every other piece of Mac software I’ve downloaded recently.
  • I also have a feeling that I’ll need to get a copy of RealPlayer for OS X. Unless, of course, anyone can suggest another program that plays RealMedia files?

Even more Mac stuff

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I’m sure these posts will stop eventually, but anyway…

The Good Bits

  • Despite what Joe said, Adium X looks really good. The lack of internet at home has meant I haven’t had much chance to play with it, but the interface is very nice and I like the cute duck icon, whose eyes open when Adium is launched. It’s everything that Gaim should be on Windows.
  • Like I was expecting, software installation, and indeed uninstallation is a breeze – arguably easier than Windows and much, much easier than Linux.
  • NeoOffice seems to work well, and being based on OpenOffice.org means that I’m immediately familiar with the interface. Alas, it still uses the same interface as the Windows/Linux versions so it looks a bit ugly, though it is an improvement on the standard OpenOffice.org builds for the Mac which also require X11. My other complaints would be that it is based on OOo 1.1.4 which means it doesn’t yet support the OpenDocument formats (which some of my work is saved in) and the splash screen is ugly – too much text. The icon is nice though, however quite what a galleon has to do with an office suite I don’t know.
  • Deer Park also works mostly okay bar some minor display issues; Thunderbird seems to be fine.
  • After upgrading the firmware on my router, Airport is working fine. We’re using WPA-PSK in the house to encrypt the Wi-Fi transmissions. It still doesn’t work with my Wintel laptop but I’ll put that down to the rather old 802.11b PCMCIA card and not Windows XP itself which supports WPA as of SP2, and in SP1 with an optional download. I’ve got a new 802.11g card with WPA support on order.
  • Unlike in Linux, I’ve barely had to use the terminal for anything – the only thing it was useful for was for finding out where a CD was mounted so that I could use it with DOSBox which is a pretty niche use. Mac OS X gets it just right – the Terminal is there if you feel the need to use it, but there’s usually no reason to unless you need to engage in some real geekery.

The Bad Bits

  • Still not got the keyboard thing sorted, however I’ll check these threads out:Ucontrol may also be worth a look.
  • Can’t seem to be able to install the 10.4.2 update. As far as I can tell I just have plain vanilla 10.4, but when I try to install the 10.4.2 package it tells me my disk is “not suitable”. It doesn’t tell me why it’s not suitable, nor how I can make it suitable though. This thread seems to cover my problem so I’ll look into it.
  • On the subject of updates, in addition to the OS, I’ve had to update iTunes, iPhoto, iSync and QuickTime. This is a brand new machine; why weren’t these already on there? iTunes was at version 4.7.1, yet 4.8 came out in early May – surely the best part of 3 months is ample time to include an update. 4.9 has been out for over a month too.
  • I don’t really appreciate OS X creating .DS_store files on my laptop when transferring files over, however there is a way of disabling it. It does require dropping to the Terminal and a reboot, though.
  • More StuffIt ranting: StuffIt is not included in Tiger, so any new Macs, like mine, don’t support .sit archives. Ironically I’ve had to expand them on my PC using ExtractNow before copying them over. Mac people: please, please use .zip files from now on 🙂

More Mac Stuff

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If you’re not in the least bit interested in my experiences with my new Mac then you can safely skip this post. Otherwise, read on…

The good bits

  • Bootup and shutdown are very fast in comparison with my Wintel laptop, but this may be because my laptop has quite a bit of software loaded on it and a number of things which run on bootup: virus scanner, memory manager, ActiveSync, phone manager utilities, Microsoft Antispyware and a series of hotkey/background utilities for managing my sound and video. The majority of those won’t be needed on the Mac.
  • Despite mice with more than one button being a rarity in the Mac world, my two-button wireless mouse with scroll wheel works just as it did in Windows. If you’re only used to one button then trust me, you don’t know what you’re missing.
  • Not really tried it yet but installing and uninstalling applications looks like a sinch.
  • iPhoto is an awesome tool to have out of the box. Not quite as powerful as Picasa for Windows but a nice tool to have.
  • Seems to work fine with all of the hardware that I’ve plugged into it thus far.
  • Preview works well as a PDF viewer. And I appreciate native support for creating PDFs when printing, rather than installing an add-on like PDFCreator (or the full Acrobat package, obviously).
  • The Terminal, and all its Unix command line goodness.
  • Nice to see iChat making the first steps into cross-network support by allowing connections to Jabber and Bonjour as well. That said, I’ll be downloading Adium X to enable the other networks.

The bad bits

  • OS X is still not properly respecting my keyboard layout. Sure, I’ve found the options that let you change it, but what it thinks is a UK layout, um, isn’t. When I press Shift+2 I should be getting “, not an @ – that’s what it’s labelled as.
  • Closing applications takes some getting used to. Clicking the red X doesn’t actually close it – it just sends it to the dock. You have to press Alt+Q or right-click its dock icon and choose Close. Minimising sends it to the right-hand side of the dock, incidentally.
  • Though it’s not as bad as many PC manufacturers (see Ed Bott’s weblog entry) there’s still a bit of bundled crap that I don’t really want, namely trials of Keynote and Microsoft Office:Mac 2004. I’ve downloaded NeoOffice to replace the latter.
  • iSync doesn’t support my phone (Nokia 7250i) or PDA (Dell Axim X50v). Though I will be getting a better phone soon (next 6-9 months, I reckon) and The Missing Sync fixes the latter problem, albeit at a cost of $40.

Software I have lined up to install

  • Deer Park Alpha 2
  • Thunderbird 1.0.6
  • Adium X 0.82
  • NeoOffice/J 1.1
  • VLC 0.82
  • Flickr Uploadr for Mac OS X
  • Flickr plugin for iPhoto

Any other suggestions? I’m considering buying Transmit but would appreciate some free alternatives. I might give FireFTP another spin once DPA2 is running.

It’s here!

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All booted up

So, it’s here. Actually, it would have been here yesterday but no-one was in when the delivery guy called.

First impressions

Setting up was pretty easy – not much more than a case of plugging everything in and pressing the On button. Which, confusingly, is on the back.

It picked up my mouse and keyboard fine, although it did ask me to press the key next to my left Shift key just to verify the layout. Even then, it’s on the US layout and not the UK one, despite saying I was in the UK the whole way through the setup. Will have to adjust that later on.

Network settings were picked up no problem and it detected the wireless network in the house too. It couldn’t actually connect to it but then neither can my laptop so I’m guessing it’s an issue with the base station. It probably needs a firmware update but we’ve not been able to get on the internet to do it.

The first-run installation looks very nice, with the revolving dialog animation. All in all it took under 5 minutes, after which I was looking at the OS X desktop in all its white and silver glory. Work commitments have meant I haven’t been able to explore much though.

Since my monitor has DVI inputs as well as VGA I’m using a DVI cable to connect the two together and this seems to work fine. OS X even defaulted to the 1280×1024 resolution, which is the highest the screen can take. Using DVI has the added bonus of not needing a KVM switch when switching back to my laptop; I’m hoping to use Synergy to share the keyboard and mouse between the two machines.

So yeah, I’m pretty happy right now 🙂 . Unfortunately we still have no broadband, and now the phone line itself doesn’t seem to want us to make calls, so I’ll have to keep using my laptop in the library for now. Small though the Mac Mini may be, when you include the keyboard, mouse and screen the package gets somewhat bigger, and not exactly portable.

Here’s a Flickr photoset of the unpacking.

Woohoo!

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Just got this email from Apple:

Today Apple announced a new Mac Mini. Accordingly, we are pleased to revise your recent order by substituting the original product you ordered with the new Mac Mini at no extra cost to you. The new configuration either matches or exceeds that of the original product. In fact, depending on the configuration you ordered, you may be entitled to a partial refund. If you are paying by Credit Card, Loan, or Leasing, the price will be adjusted automatically.

The new Mac Mini is basically the same as the old one but includes 512MB of RAM as standard instead of 256MB, and the 1.42GHz model includes Aiport Extreme and Bluetooth as standard. I’d gone for all these options which means that Apple should hopefully be refunding me £46 very soon.

Mac on Friday

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The latest update to my Mac Mini’s order status suggests it will be ready by Friday, so hopefully delivery will be either then or the beginning of next week. I don’t yet know if it’ll be one of the “new” models or a standard one, but seeing as it has taken some time for it to be ready I’m hoping it’s the latter (I ordered it 9 days ago). We’ll see, anyway.

This week is somewhat less interesting than last week was, though I am going home to York this weekend for a friend’s 21st birthday.

Update: As you may have guessed, it didn’t come on Friday. Apple’s current estimate is on or before next Tuesday (9th August). I’m guessing the launch of the new model is the cause of the delay, but considering that it’s going to be considerably cheaper and that I still have no proper internet at home I’m not too bothered about the wait.

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