Friday, June 22, 2007

"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." - Gore Vidal

***

Having been forced to use a Mac for 2 weeks, I was acquainted with many of its failings:

- There's no right mouse button
- You can't resize windows normally, but only from the bottom right
- You cannot press "escape" to close an MSN window
- There is no backspace, only delete
- There are a gazillion modifier keys - function, control, alt/option and the Apple button, and the system is inconsistent: Apple + Tab is the equivalent of Alt + Tab in Windows and Apple + Tilde is the equivalent of Ctrl + Tab, but in Firefox Apple + Tilde doesn't do what Ctrl + Tab does, so manual dexterity is needed in changing fingering positions to switch between tabs and applications in turn; Alt + Left skips a word to the left, but Apple + A selects all text.
- Focus keeps running around in Firefox. Page down doesn't always work. (this may have been a system configuration specific issue)
- When you open (not save) a file in Firefox it isn't saved to the cache but the desktop (this may have been a system configuration specific issue)
- Apple + Tab switches between applications, not windows, so when the MSN messenger icon jumps in the dock showing there're new messages, when you switch over you have no idea which windows the new messages are in. These windows may not even be visible, being hidden behind others, resulting in a frenzy of frantic clicking to find them.
- Of all the laptops, the Mac had the most trouble finding, connecting and staying connected to wireless networks

Of course there're the little touches, like how the power supply plug magnetically snaps into its socket, the cover snaps shut mangetically and the light on the Caps Lock key itself that turns on when it's on, hurr hurr.