For my work for my page publishing business daily routines include equal doses of image manipulation, text file management and shell scripting. The Mac was the perfect platform given the underlying operating systems (Mac OS X, child of Free BSD) and the long standing relationship with Adobe®. I bought my first Mac, a Powerbook G4 in 2003 and, in the ensuing years have purchased a second Powerbook G4, and, last year a Mac Mini powered by an Intel Processor.
The Mac Mini has, until now, been a disappointment. To cut to the heart of the matter, I am sitting here with several proprietary applications that were written specifically for a Mac powered by a PowerPC chip. Those applications include Adobe® CS2® and Microsoft' Office for the Mac (2003). The Mac Mini performs terribly with both of these packages.
While I find Apple's Mac & PC television ad campaign to be cute, a better word might be "charming" with an emphasis on the verb "to charm." Having purchased a Mac Mini "before its time," I can attest to having been charmed by something devilish. After all, I now sit here post purchase of Adobe® CS3® (out an additional $600.00), when I would have been fine with a machine running Windows (and at least $600.00 richer) had I known that what I had as far as shrink wrap software wouldn't work on the Mac Mini.
Live and learn. Hopefully not the hard way.
© Mike Blonder, 2007, All Rights Reserved