Trying to understand the Mac world
I've had my IMac for nearly 2 years now but have struggled all the way to migrate from a Windows environment. There seem to be so many hurdles to overcome, not least due to the horribly closed Mac universe which has made accessing things like music files, and sharing documents, incredibly difficult.
I've tried the One to One service, and asked questions at the Genius bar and via the Helpline, but rarely get a useful answer. Nice people sure, but I feel I'm dealing with staff that have been weaned on Apple (through Ipods etc) - they know a fair bit about Macs, but seemingly very little about Windows and therefore of limited help in getting from one to another. Try asking someone about FLAC audio files for example . . .
Some of the sort of issues I'm struggling to sort out include;
1) In Windows I can use the F4 key to 'repeat last action'. An incredibly useful feature when formatting a number of separate cells in a spreadsheet for example. Yet I can find no equivalent in the Mac world - I can't even see how I might configure my keyboard accordingly.
2) Having more than one application open on the desktop at a time. For example I open Word (MS Office for Mac), I then open Excel so I can cut and paste a few bits and pieces. As soon as I open Excel, Word minimises and zooms down to the Dock.
3) Screen sizes. Why oh why does my Mac insist on opening applications in a window it determines the size of ? For instance I open Numbers - on my 27" IMac it opens a window at best about 6" square, complete with tiny, almost unreadable fonts. Is there no way to get applications to open full screen, and in a set font size, by default ?
4) Screen resizing - I guess this is a feature of the OS (Snow Leopard 10.6) - only available in the bottom right ahnd corner. Just means more shuffling of windows about to use it effectively. Why can't screen resizing be done from any side as in Windows ?
And don't get me started on hardware - why does a 27" IMac get shipped with a tiny wireless keyboard ? Wireless is good for sure, but surely a desktop computer isn't trying to save space to the extent that ones loses the numeric keypad, and worst of all, the DELETE key (aaagagahgha). I've had to buy a wired version to get the functionality I need (along with some accesible USB sockets). And then there is the card reader that can only cope with SD, the USB sockets helpfully out of easy reach round the back (makes using a datastick a real pain) . . . .
Perhaps I shouldn't have gone down the Mac route (but now I've got an IPad too so heaven help me) . . . .