“It’s so much easier.” Four little words I can’t resist.
And so, after years of hearing how my life would be easier if I switched from my dying PC to a Mac, I finally caved. I sit here typing on a MacBook that says “Whooooosh!” every time I send an e-mail and sends an icon bouncing up and down on the screen, invisible hands clapping, every time I activate a program.
I have to admit it’s fun. Who can’t figure out where the photo program is? There’s a camera and a palm tree hopping up and down. Who can’t find e-mail? There’s a postage stamp a few inches to the left. And who could miss Keynote, Mac’s Power Point equivalent? Just click on the lectern.
A month in, I already sound like the typical Mac user. “I LOVE my Mac. It’s soooo ‘intuitive,‘ I hear myself say to anyone who will listen. In other words, the layout is so picture-driven that you could follow your instincts even if you had no instincts at all.
But for those I’ve Mac-attacked with the so-much-easier message, I feel bound to add this caveat for the organizationally impaired. “It gets so much easier after the first 160 hours.”
The journey from PC to Mac, stunningly simple for most, has been anything but simple for me. It sure sounded easy at the store.
“Just bring in your hard drive,” said the Mac-sters who sell these, “and we can transfer everything over.” It sounded as easy as those TurboTax ads make a 1040 – a few figures in and a completed return pops out.
Like the tax ads that omit the laborious part – finding the figures to enter in the first place – the “transfer everything over” concept was deceptively simple. It presumed the files were on a single hard drive and in pristine order.
Unfortunately, they were not. Some were on my hard drive. Some were on my late husband’s. And the rest were on a multi-colored set of flash drives, handy for carrying information between the two and giving birth to duplicates.
The Mac-sters aim to make computing fun. If I’d fessed up, I’m sure they would have suggested that I rent a really long movie to watch while I created subject files for random documents from drives that had never before cohabited. It would have also entertained me while I reconstructed the groups in my address book that didn’t survive the transfer and organized my pictures by “places” and “faces.”
Thank goodness they suggested – even urged – that I come in for weekly “one-to-one” lessons. They’ve been a Godsend, as much for the cheerleading as the instruction.
“You’re almost there!” declared Emily the other morning, as we clicked through an address book now in quadruplicate, thanks to an unfortunate conversation I’d started between my MacBook and my Blackberry.
“Once you get it all organized,” she added, “it will be so easy.”
I’m sure she’s right. Before long, I’ll have the drudge work done and be learning to play the guitar by clicking the icon called “garage band.” I can’t wait. The moment will be magic. A guitar hopping up and down on my screen in happy, silent applause.
Copyright 2010 Pat Snyder
