Today, I purchased my first Mac. It’s a Mac Mini 1.42GHz with Combo Drive to be precise. Set up was a breeze, everything came preinstalled and I just had to fill in my details such as name, password, contact details, etc. and it’s all ready to go.

The software update feature is also easy; it immediately let me know what needed to be updated and just a few clicks later, it started downloading and installing. In some ways, it’s even easier than Windows Update. Additionally, I also downloaded and installed Firefox versions 1.0.7 and 1.5rc2 with ease and I must say that dragging an icon to the Applications folder is a much quicker and easier installation than any Windows installer.

Now that I’ve been playing with it for just a few hours, I’ve already managed to connect it to my phone via bluetooth, synchronise my calendar and contact information (which I couldn’t do on Windows without resorting to MS Outlook and, naturally, I refused to do that. I’m quite sure I’ll have a lot more to play and experement with as I learn the ins and outs of OSX.

One difficulty I am having, though, is that the keyboard shortcuts I’m used to don’t seem to function in the same way that they do on Windows; at least not not in Firefox as I’m writing this. For example, the home and end keys go to the beginning and end of the text area, rather than the current line; I have to use ? where I would normally use Ctrl; and my usual undo (Alt+Backspace), cut (Shift+Del), copy (Ctrl+Insert) and paste (Shift+Insert) don’t work, I have to use ?+Z, ?+X, ?+C and ?+V instead.

Well, I’ve got a lot to learn, and not much time to do it. Any usage tips to help me out with this new toy would be greatly appreciated.