My Mac: Step 1

I'm on a "diet". I must refrain from posting as much as I'd like until I have finished my taxes.

This seems like a nice opportunity to procrastinate a bit and put off working on assembling data for my taxes.

As I mentioned earlier, I acquired my DROID, my Macbook Pro laptop, and my iPod Touch all within a few weeks of each other.

For years I would sit down at other people's Macs to solve specific problems and often struggled to figure out how to find applications or settings. And yet at the same time, my family and friends just raved about how great and easy to use. Not being technically unsavvy, I figured I just wasn't familiar enough.

After a couple of weeks, I decided that Apple does do an amazing number of things right. So many, in fact, that it is rather astounding to me when I come across things where they definitely don't.

No new news: It does start with the packaging. For the first time that I could recall, I really wanted to hold onto the boxes and wraps for my Macbook and the iPod Touch.

Then there are lots of little touches that really grab me. For me, having magnetic connectors for things like power are really brilliant. Spending a lot more for equivalent hardware begins to feel less painful.

Gradually, I'm overcoming most of my issues with familiarity but:
- File systems. Yikes. I have a hard time finding documents and then saving in the right places. It often makes little sense to me. Under places, for example, I have my "home directory" and then I have a Desktop, and then I have Documents.
- That application bar across the top. Even now, I have to remind myself to look up there. It seems to be an antiquated mechanism to me. Also, you can click various places and not actually see the application on the bar. For example, click on the background and you'll get Finder but Finder doesn't open.
- Why do somethings get installed and you see them in the Applications folder but then others hover around as "disks" on my screen?
- Some plug-ins like Shockwave just don't work right. I have to disable Shockwave for Director for a number of sites, even in Firefox. There are other sites where I just cannot figure out what the problem is and so I go find my Windows device. I'm going to load VMware soon and solve that. I've resisted running Windows applications to date, but I can see that is going to change.
- Knowing that there really is UNIX and X11 under there is both amazing and frustrating. I'm gradually figuring out how to get to those, but it increases the feeling that Apple is thwarting aspects.
- "Ejecting" devices. Windows figured this out 10 years ago. Why should I have to eject a device? OK, I know why on some level, but it's time for Apple to figure this out. Also, I have some devices that just reconnect. For example, I like listening to NPR while I work out in the early morning or at the end of the day. The best, cheapest, and most compact way to do this is with a basic MP3 player for $25-$50. I can charge this with the USB connection but when I "eject" this on the MacBook, the MacBook just reconnects to it. Stupid. No big deal to ignore it, but...

Next: the Touch