Getting My Mac On

Beth's out of town this week and I've got the house to myself. I've been cleaning, mostly, but I got this new (well, relatively new) iBook G3 and am having a time with it.

The fact that I've not used a Mac since about 1987 has a bit to do with my apprehension, and the absence of the context menu. I've told hundreds of people, "When in doubt, right click." I have repeatedly found myself in doubt with no way out, but I have resolved each issue fairly quickly.

Take for instance that aged Apple logo. Once I found it, I couldn't figure out how to save the picture to my computer. In any graphical web browser I've used, I simply have right-clicked the image (Windows and Linux) and selected "Save Image As..." or something very similar to perform this task. Not on this Mac. There is no right-click. I tried holding the button down, looking for a "copy image" function in the menus, and then it occurred to me: just drag the damn picture to the desktop, Ben. And it worked. Silly me.

But there are others yet. I still can't find my Home and End keys. I am a keyboard shortcut warrior; it's part of being lazy. I think it's why I like the UNIX/Linux terminal so much - very little physical effort. Having to move that mouse and click those buttons just to advance the cursor to the end of the line is ridiculous.

But truth be told, I like this thing. It's old (2003 iBook G3, OS X 10.2.8), but it's quiet, cool to the touch, and doesn't have any vents on the bottom. I'm blogging from bed this morning, without the worry of blocking an air vent and burning my thighs. I think I'm going to try to upgrade the OS to 10.4 soon because 10.2 doesn't support the current version of iTunes or WPA WiFi security. I'm learning new stuff every day, and I think I might keep it.