Mac Users Have Hope, Frustration, Complaints.

“I think this was my final year waiting for the re-appearance of a Newton/iPod.  I still use my Newton 2100 everyday and it’s still far better than any Palm I’ve come across.  However, working with OS X is frustrating and it is probably time to move on as much as I hate the idea.   

I think the Mini, Shuffle, iWork and iLife are terrific.  Just wish there was a hand-held to round out the whole system.  Maybe iPhone will be the clincher.”

“FWIW syncUp 2 cost me a ton of time…. there’s NO cancel button.  Once you start a backup your stuck. No quit, no force quit, nothing. I ended up disconnecting my FireWire on my server! And I _still_ need to reboot things because I can no longer see my AFP partition. 

To add most aggrevation, it has a quirky way to select your drives. Source you need to click the dropdown, destination has a command button.  Finally, as if that isn’t enough - it’s a “preview”.

While not clearly indicated as such on his site, when you start the thing up it throws a “contribute” screen claiming it will stop working “after a period of time”. Guess you get what you pay for in this case. I’ll stick with SilverKeeper.”

“I think you’re missing the point, Jack. Existing Apple customers are smart enough to know that the Mini is not worth buying, unless they have other reasons -  like size - to buy it. Maxing it out on RAM alone makes it $1000 with tax and shipping. 

The Mini is purely for new customers, Wintel users, or people who have been hesitant to upgrade because of a psychological fixation on price. Will they end up spending the same as if they bought an iMac G5? Yes. I can’t explain the mindset, but it does exist.

Once these people use a Mini, they will then consider buying something better later on. In any case, I certainly don’t think it will hurt. Spec-wise, it’s fairly similar to a current iBook without a display. So I’m not sure they’re even taking much of a hit on price. “

“I’ll be buying two of them Mac Minis when they become available, a Superdrive one in my living room and the basic one to replac my 800MHz G4 (at double the performance plus a lot less noise and energy consumption I think it’s more than worth the asking price!). 

Talking to a few friends, incuding non-Mac people, I have a feeling Apple may have a killer app on its hands. 

I’m just wondering, though, that once the Mac becomes more widespread, how long will it take before Windows’ chronic malware disease spreads to the Mac platform? The more Macs you sell, the more them virus writers will be attracted to this side. It’s like dripping blood in the water, no?”