Yes "learning curves" as you say keeps us on our toes.... I haven't been on the machine you own as of yet but I'm sure you will like it once the "curve" has straightened out. hehe
Mine's the MACMini. It's about 7.5" x 7" x 1" high, and it fits UNDER my LG monitor! MAC MINI /2,3/2X4G/1TB 0 FUSION, SERIAL co7xfly2dy3h, PART NO. ZONP0001S, MACMINI Model A1347, 1.11 T hard drive.
About all I don't like about it is that it has very few USB ports. I bought a powered 3-port USB connector to solve that. I still use the Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse from my now deceased and scrapped previous desktop.
Our grandson set it up to store files for free in the Cloud (the Dropbox) from which it adds all updated files to our laptops as soon as they're started up. I use MS Office 2011 for MAC, and have MS Office 2011 for Windows on the laptops, and the files can be opened on any machine in that machine's format. The Quicken and Family Tree Maker (7800 individuals back to 1560), and other programs operate the same way.
That is super convenient, not having to manually change formats between machines!