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I managed to acquire Leopard for my Mac mini and have been putting it to use for almost a week now. Initially I was a bit underwhelmed, probably because of all the hype, but after spending some more time with it I’m really liking some of the changes put into it though I haven’t had a chance to really get to know all of the new features Leopard has to offer.

Right away I was put off by the color scheme. I was really liking the colors used in Tiger for selected menu items and the title bar on windows. The menu bar also being translucent doesn’t excite me and I’ll probably install this utility to disable the transparency, but I’ll give it some more time. The glass shelf dock looks fine to my eyes except for the odd shadow behind the icons. They are shadowed as if light is shining up through the glass shelf, it ends up creating an effect that just looks like a poorly drop shadowed image. It just looks wrong and would be much more pleasing if there was no shadow at all, or a very subtle shadow similar to how all windows in OS X are shadowed.
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I’ve had the Mac mini for a few weeks now so I thought I’d write a bit my thoughts on the mini and OS X in general. There is a lot to like about the mini and OS X but there are also a few items I’ve come to dislike which I’ll discuss below.

The Mac mini is a tiny computer that looks great. I am personally not aware of any sort of PC that is this small, includes the same features AND looks good doing it. That said, aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder and are a matter of opinion. With that in mind I’ll try to steer clear of personal opinion and concentrate more on practicality and usability.

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Accessing the Linux command line is quite simple. I’ll describe the process as it is on a Ubuntu system but only because Ubuntu has the most market share of the Linux distros today. The concepts here carry over all most if not all other Linux distributions. One other thing I should point out is that the command line is sometimes referred to as the “console” or “terminal” and I may use those terms from time to time.

There are times that you’ll need to use the command line in order to get something done because there won’t be an appropriate GUI tool available or a GUI tool that is available doesn’t have a needed option. In these cases you can access the command line to get the job done.
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One of the top reasons that I use Linux at all is because of the command line environment. It is far more likely that you’ll see me using my Linux systems via putty from a Windows system than actually sitting at my Linux system itself. Now this isn’t because I’m anti Linux on the desktop or anything, not at all. In fact I do run Linux on my laptop for when I cannot remotely access my server at home such as when we’re traveling yet it’s usually so I can run a terminal.

Read on to learn more about what you can do with the Linux command line.
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One of the more dismissed iPod features announced recently is the one that allows users to instantly find out what song is playing in a Starbucks and then buy the song on the spot if they so choose. At first glance it’s easy to dismiss this as something you’ll never use but I believe this will lead into something bigger.

Although I would tend to agree that teaming with Starbucks is a bit of a yawn you can’t deny that the idea is great. How many times have you been somewhere, heard a song and wished you knew the name of the song or artist? Now imagine if more places teamed up with Apple to make this a reality. The local gym, mall food court or what have you could be setup with similar equipment to what Starbucks is putting in to place. Or, how about a small band playing at a venue making album sales while performing?

Since Starbucks is a place that benefits simply because it is the kind of place a person can order a drink and listen to music, I imagine Apple would need to build in some kind of incentive for other businesses to get involved. Someway for the company to pay for the equipment needed to run the service.

The real benefit, for Apple anyway, is that the chance for an impulse buy goes up substantially because the customer can buy the song right away, they don’t have to try to remember the song and buy it later. This will undoubtedly lead to increased music sales for Apple and even though we’ve always been told iTMS exists to sell more iPods one has to think Apple makes something on music sales. With an increase in sales volume iTMS will become more of a money maker than it is today.

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I just read on engadget.com about the new iPod touch. New iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone minus the phone part, but it adds in WiFi so you can connect to 802.11b/g networks. It includes Safari and a special icon for YouTube specifically. Battery life is claimed to be 22 hours for audio and 5 hours for video.

iPod Touch can also buy songs directly through WiFi without the need to be hooked into a computer but it will sync songs back to iTunes when the two are connected.

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Here is a tip for anyone who may read this. When you send an email, it should always have a subject. Always. It’s just common net etiquette. An email without a subject is like a book without a title and a book without a title is not something you would want to read because it apparently has no point. If you’re writing an email and you can’t come up with a subject, then you need to rethink whether or not your email has any purpose in the first place and if not, then don’t send the email.

Subjects provide the potential reader with a starting point of what your message is probably about. It sets the tone, makes it so the message is easy to find again later and sets it apart from all of the others. A subject allows the reader to sort messages, follow a conversation, group related messages and most importantly it tells the reader that your message has some sort of purpose.

So please, the next time you’re about to click that send button, take a moment to check your subject field. If it’s empty, fill it in. If it’s not then kudos to you my friend.

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I recently started doing some freelance web work. The company I’m working with right now demands that sites be coded to XHTML strict standard and that testing be done on all major browsers on the major platforms. Macintosh is one of those major platforms that I don’t have yet have always secretly wanted to get one. Doing freelance work is the perfect excuse to pick up a Mac Mini so that’s just what I did today and I’m expecting it to arrive sometime next week.

I’m not sure if owning a Mac Mini will convince me to make a full switch or not. It’s hard to say at this point because I’m so used to the Windows world but others have tried to make the switch for themselves and lived to tell about it. And with the new Mac’s being based on Intel processors and the availability of VMware Fusion or Parallels it’s possible to run Windows along side OS X anyway.