Pem’s Tech Blog

Software Updates
Even before messing with the keyboard/mouse stuff mentioned in the previous post, the first thing I did is run Software Update, and it found 13 updates (including a 449 MB download to upgrade from Mac OS-X 10.5.6 to 10.5.7) (btw, 10.6 "Snow Leopard" is coming out 2009/09 for a $29 upgrade price, so I’ll probably upgrade as soon as it comes out). I think the Mac Mini went into low power mode during the download, so it got interrupted, but I just started it again. After the reboot, I checked Software Update again, and it found 3 more updates to install: wow just like Windows Update. Then it asked me to reboot again for Bluetooth update. Oh well, I don’t complain, because I tend to like software to auto-update to the latest version.

Quick Boot
If I restart or shutdown-then-turn-on my Mac Mini, it’s literally less a minute before I can open up Safari web browser and surf the web.  I’m saying it like it’s a big deal, but probably my desktop used to boot about that fast: it just takes really long now because I have so much extra stuff that starts up during the boot.  Maybe one day my Mac Mini will take 5 minutes to reboot.  Well, hopefully not, but we’ll see .  Actually, hopefully one day I’ll get a fast SSD hard drive for it, and it will boot in 15-30 seconds?  We’ll see

Speakers
One big thing I noticed, especially when playing the DVD is that the Mac Mini has built-in speakers.  I actually didn’t think about this beforehand, but for me personally, this is a huge convenience for the Mac Mini as a secondary computer and as a portable computer.  Of course you can still plug-in external speakers/headphones, but as long as it doesn’t take up a significant amount of space/weight, then I’m all for having some decent convenience internal speakers, like this Mac Mini has.

Play DVD Movie: not enough buttons on Apple Remote
Well it’s got a DVD drive, so I might as well try it out, right?  I put in the DVD and it opened up in full screen and played, and my Apple remote worked.  However, I’m going to say that although I was not necessarily disappointed, my first reaction is that I like better my remote that I use for Windows Media Center (that came with my HP desktop for Windows XP).

The main reason is just because I like the bigger remote with more buttons.  For my personal tastes, so-called simplicity and so-called think different loses again.

With the Apple Remote, I was unable to change the volume during the DVD Menu, because volume up/down turns into a controller.  Similar problem, to fast forward or rewind, you have to hold down forward or back button; for me this is annoying because it’s less instant than having 2 separate buttons for skip-forward vs. fast-forward.  In fact, even my much larger many more buttons Windows Media Center remote I am not totally happy with because it doesn’t have enough buttons: many times I want to be able to press a button on the remote to fast-switch between sub-tittles and languages (such as English voice-over vs. native language).

Another remote quirk is that having to hold-down for fast-forward and rewind meant there were only two modes; 1x and 8x.  While on my Windows remote you can press/click it multiple times for like 1x 2x 4x 8x 16x 32x or something like that.

That said, I can probably just get a different Mac-compatible remote that has more buttons, and/or see if there is other remote-centric DVD movie playing software for Mac OS-X.  Assuming I can get a remote with more buttons that works with Mac OS X, these are probably just gripes about the remote.

In fact, unrelated to the remote, I did notice that it doesn’t lag when switching between rewind vs. play.  On my Windows XP media center system, there’s an annoying delay in the audio for some reason when you stop rewinding and go back into play mode.

I think long-term, it’s (form factor, built-in speakers, fast-boot time) gives it great potential to upgrade to a Blu-ray movie player and other multi-media.

Pem (Admin) :: Jul.11.2009 :: Mac OS :: No Comments »

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