I decided last year to begin a migration to Mac OS X, and right now I am in the middle of it. So far, so good. I started by grabbing a cheep iMac to see what I could do with Mac OS X. I have since bought a G4 Cube as a desktop, and in August, will be grabbing a TiBook.

First, the mouse comment. Yes Macs ship with a single button mouse, but I currently use a Logitech trackball, and with no drivers ever installed, I get "context" menus when I right click, and the scroll wheel works everywhere. I didn't even think about it much until I booted into OS 9 and lost all that functionality.

Microsoft Office seems nice, and will be there when I need it. It does seem to be a bit different then the PC version, but is probably on par with XP for all the features and such. And the nice bonus feature, complements of the OS, is the ability to generate a PDF. That has been useful on several occasions.

I haven't played with X yet, but I understand XonX makes it pretty easy to deal with. Since more and more distros are putting out PPC versions, software shouldn't be too much of a problem either.

iTunes seems to be one of the nicer media managment programs out there, but I don't like a manager program. So far I've ripped a few CDs to have in it's library, but it's been used most as an internet radio player. If I could figure out a way to embed lame into it, I'd be happy enough to use it. For now, I'll probably rip on my PC with AudioGrabber until I find a solution.

jemplode works very well on Mac OS X, and should serve as a great replacement to emplode.

Definitly look into Virtual PC though, it will be nice to have just in case. Also, don't forget a USB to Serial converter for upgrades.

Will I be pissed that Apple has this weird DVD-R drive when other folks seem to be going to DVD+RW?

Not really, all the hype around DVD+RW is just that. DVD-R is a solution that works now, and works well. DVD+RW on the other hand dosen't have the excellent compatibility, nor the ease of upgrading firmware that everyone expected to get DVD+R support. So you are stuck with expensive RW disks, and have to wait on a manufacturer to decide to recall every DVD+RW drive to send out DVD+R/DVD+RW drives. Enough manufactueres beyond Apple have shipped DVD-R drives, so it's not going to just fade away.