The Rat's Nest

I want to let my fellow Mac-users know about a layers-based image editor I recently discovered: LiveQuartz. It uses CoreImage filters and it's faster than Gimp (on my system) and properly integrated into Aqua. It can't do everything Gimp can, but it does enough to replace Gimp in my regular day to day use. The only downside is that you need Mac OS 10.4 to run it and a recent Mac with a CoreImage-compatible graphics card to get good performance out of it.

Apple have released their new Intel Mac minis. I'm not ready to buy a new computer yet and I won't be until at least late this year and obviously I'll look at what's available at the time, but I'm seriously considering buying a Mac Mini instead of a tower this time around. I bought a G4 tower (a mirror shade G4, for those who keep track) last time because I wanted the expandability but then I'm paying for a lot of power I don't need. A Mac mini would be a lot cheaper, small and quiet. I have taken advantage of the tower's expandability (two extra internal ATA hard drives, a DVD ROM drive, an extra firewire card and more RAM) but if I'm willing to make a few compromises (I store most of my material on an external firewire drive anyway) I might have something that better suits my present "digital lifestyle" (God, I hate that phrase!). The Mac mini only has one firewire port, but I'm already daisy chaining.

Am I missing something? Comments are welcome, but please don't tell me to buy a PC. I've been down that road before. :P