A Mac has invaded my house! [View all]

[MineralMan]

UPS stopped by a couple of days ago with a box. It turns out that my wife had ordered a Mac Mini computer, unbeknownst to me. Until now, our home has been a Mac-free zone, but there it is. So, since she's busy with deadlines just now, I set the thing up on the dining room table so she can play with it and decide whether or not she wants to switch over to it for her primary PC.

I did have to run out and pick up a new monitor, because none of the spare ones in our house have an HDMI input. No biggie, though. I found a nice Lenova model at Best Buy for under $100. Since the claims were that the thing could use pretty much any keyboard and mouse, I plugged a cheapo Windows keyboard and mouse into a couple of the USB ports.

I hit the power switch on the Mac Mini and there it was: The Dreaded Apple Logo. During setup, I had to press a couple of keys on the keyboard so the OS could identify what sort of device it might be. "Aha!"...the disembodied voice said, more or less. The PC mouse, though, worked fine from the start. Setup was easy. It immediately found all of the wifi connections available. I had to get my wife's Apple ID from her Rolodex (she still has one of those things). If it goes on her desk, eventually, I'll plug in the Ethernet cable, for somewhat faster performance online.

Dead simple, really, and much faster to setup than my recent Windows 10 PC purchase. No lengthy OS update or anything of the sort. I fired up Safari and downloaded Office 365 on my wife's account. That appeared to work fine, as well. I downloaded Chrome and synced it with her account.

Job done. It's a cute little box. Looks like an over-sized CD-ROM player from the old days. Doesn't take up any space, really.

Then, I took off my hazardous materials protective gear and went back to my own desk.

Note: I have sworn never to touch the thing again, though. I do not want to be contaminated with Apple Cooties.