myMac

My school is further cementing my loyalty by purchasing new laptops for all teachers. On Friday, my boss sent a couple of us home with a Mac Powerbook to test them out and see how we liked them. All of my computer experience has been with PCs, but I have heard a lot about Macs from friends who are loyal Apple fans. I was excited to explore the wonderful world of Macs for myself.

So on Saturday morning, I toted my pleasantly lightweight laptop up to Panera, my favorite wireless hotspot (for how much fun can it be to explore a computer with no internet?). I watched the "Getting Around Your Mac" tutorial and clicked around the brightly colored icons at the bottom of the screen. I took pictures of myself in Photo Booth (note the new profile pic), admired the lovely stock photography in iPhoto, and listened to the demos in Garage Band. I played with the settings as much as I dared on a borrowed computer.

It's a little bit like getting used to a new car, when you keep turning on the windshield wipers every time you want to use the turn signal. Obviously, there are many fun new features. But I am also a little clumsy, beacuse my keyboard shortcuts don't always work, buttons are not where I expect them to be, and I keep having to click the mouse button rather than just tapping the finger pad.

After an hour or so of playing with all the pretty toys , I decided to look for the software that I would actually use the most: whatever would let me do word processing and spreadsheets. I knew better than to look for Microsoft Office products right off the bat, but I couldn't find anything! I had to laugh at a computer that made it easy to create my own DVD but challenging to create a document.

After much searching, I finally found a Microsoft Office demo. It was a little anticlimactic (don't know if I spelled that right...and I can't figure out how to open a new window to check dictionary.com), because Word was basically the same. I also worried that having to pay a couple hundred more dollars for a software license might be a deal breaker for my getting to keep this computer. Of course, there may be a superior word processing program right underneath my fingertips and I just don't know where to look...I'm sure you AppleHeads will let me know.

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep exploring.