Naming is Hard

So, finally, I have ditched my PC for a nice shiny new Mac—a 24″ iMac to be precise. Did I mention it’s sexy? Right now I’m feeling a bit disoriented, mainly because I’m a keyboard shortcut kinda guy (what’s this round orb on my desk?) and they’re all completely different on the Mac. That’s ok though cos I wanted different, right?

My initially skeptical girlfriend fell in love with it the moment I turned it on and she discovered Photo Booth. By the time I showed her Front Row she was begging me to swap my PC back in exchange for the Mac!

There are a few things I’m finding a bit funky but it’s probably just a case of inexperience. For example, the button I presume is “Home” on the super-thin super-easy keyboard doesn’t behave as IBM-PC home does. Shift-home selects all text to the left, but Home alone doesn’t move the caret to the far left? Same jive with Ctrl-delete and Ctrl-backspace: no word-at-a-time deletion for you, matey. Also, I would be grateful if someone could point out to me what the mysterious key above the “7″, left of “=” on the number pad does?

Also, I’m kinda out of the loop with which software to go for. For example, for an office suite (for occasional letters and presentations): iWork, Office 2004 for Mac, or OpenOffice? For coding, TextMate? Or BBedit? Or something else? For email, I chucked .Mail for Thunderbird. I was in love with Thunderbird on the PC despite it’s Ugly Betty looks but on Mac it’s just gorgeous, naturally!

All in all, a great purchase—I heartily recommend anyone considering the switch to jump in feet first!