This is the second in a series of posts exploring my ongoing experience with my first Mac. For the first entry in this series, click here.

In my last post, I talked mostly about my experience with the salespeople involved with the purchase of my new Mac. In this post I want to talk about the machine itself.

I entered the Apple Retail Store and was immediately surprised by the sheer number of people inside. There were easily 50 people in the store, and it seemed to me like about a quarter of them were Apple employees. I casually moved towards the 13" Macbook Pros - one of the several models of Mac I was considering for my purchase. I hadn't really seen one of the new 'Unibody' type Macbooks in person yet, and I was blown away by how nice they all looked. The aluminum enclosure with the glass screen is definitely slick. I went to use the touchpad and was pretty surprised by the lack of buttons. I admit that for about 30 seconds I could not figure out how to click that thing. I am used to lightly tapping the touchpad on my laptop for click functionality, or at the very least, just using one of the two mouse buttons. The idea of pushing down the entire touchpad is, while an interesting idea, not something I really like.

It was as I was thus engaged with the Macbook Pros that Scott (the salesperson from my previous post) walked up and introduced himself. I talked about how I was a computer science type guy and was interested in getting into iPhone/iPad programming, and that I was considering either a Mac Mini, a Macbook Pro, or an iMac. I had already basically ruled out the Mac Mini, and since he found me looking at the Macbook Pros, he told me he wanted to show me the iMacs. I told him I was interested in the smaller (21.5" screen) iMacs, and we walked over to a table full of computers. He grabbed the mouse of one of them and started to show me the screen. I stopped him and explained again that I wanted to see the smaller iMacs - the ones for $1200. He explained that the one we were looking at was one of the smaller iMacs, and he pointed to a table with the larger size up iMacs...my first reaction was something like "Huh, yeah, those are definitely the big ones". My second reaction was "Holy crap, 21.5 inches is HUGE!".

For some reason, that size is significantly smaller in my brain than it is in reality.

After the size, my next impression of the iMac was that it was gorgeous. This is easily the best looking computer I have ever seen. Now don't get me wrong, my Windows 7 laptop (a custom-built Sager) is a workhorse. It's got great internals, a fully HD screen, and it absolutely screams. But wow, the iMac is just, well, pretty.

Now, fortunately pretty doesn't sell me a computer (I likely would have walked out with much of the store!). I checked out the specs and the speed, browsed the internet for a minute or two, and, oh who am I kidding...I was sold the minute I saw the thing.

About an hour later I am unpacking my new iMac and putting it on my desk. The kids are in the room watching me and there is a whole chorus of "Ooh's" as I get everything plugged in (you know, the whole one cord I need to plug in). My wife's reaction was "Umm, I thought you were going to get the small one..."

I turned on the machine, and the screen lit up in a solid (and very bright) white. It sat there just long enough to make me worried that something was wrong with it, then it played a little movie in which the OS X logo made my daughter cry from the noise. Also, I think it may have charged the old solar powered calculator I had lying on the desk.

I went through the setup process (which took me about as long as the Windows 7 process...wasn't exactly blown away here), and then I finally got to the desktop. Then my new iMac told me there were some updates I had to install and then restart the computer.

I thought I was getting away from things like this by getting a Mac?

I push forward through 3 (!) update and reboot cycles, and finally my Mac seems to be up-to-date and usable.

Just in time for dinner.

So, back from dinner (yum, sushi...), I sit down at the Mac with the intention of swapping my iTunes folder from my Windows laptop over to my Mac so I can use the Mac to sync my iPod (it just seems more natural than syncing it with the PC). Well, it turns out you can't just access windows shared folders from a Mac (or vice-versa), you need to go through and setup some complicated file sharing stuff. Now granted, it is likely only complicated because of my limited Mac experience, but still, I can't be the only person on the planet with Windows 7 computers and an iMac on the same network.

This brings me to my next gripe - the seemingly total lack of online community-based support for the Macs. With any given PC problem, I can Google an error code or general issue and have a couple dozen results describing the issue, some workarounds, and a possible fix. It took me close to two hours to figure out how to do something as simple as setup a Windows-accessible file-share on the Mac. The process itself took about 2 minutes, but good luck figuring it out on your own!

Now, this post probably has come off a bit negative. The reality is, despite the frustration from some strange menu systems and things of that nature, I have had an absolute blast doing even mundane things on the Mac.

Now, with the more boring stuff out of the way, tune in next time for my first impressions of the iLife software, including what I think is one of the coolest features I've ever seen in photo organization!