About a month ago, I switched from PC to Mac. This was a momentous change for me. Terrifying and frustrating. Like landing on an alien planet.
It was also necessary. My PC was on its last legs. The shift key was broken and I was starting to get about one blue screen a day. And between my podcast and Speak Up, I was using the Mac more and more. It only made sense to switch over.
After a month on the Mac, I have grown accustomed to this new planet. It’s working. I can love with the change. There are moments when I might even like it.
But I have a few issues:
- It’s ridiculous that there is no right-click button,. I have grown accustomed to using the keypad’s right-click feature, but still, it’s asinine not to have a right-click option.
- The command key (Control key on a PC) is placed adjacent to the spacebar – in the middle of the bottom row – instead of in the far left corner. It’s not as easily accessible as it is on a PC, and it’s one of my most frequently used keys. I use it much more often than the damn function key, which is where the command key should be.
- There is no delete key. There is a backspace key masquerading as a delete key, but in order to delete a word, I must move to the end of the word. On a PC, I had the option of deleting a word from the front or the back. The absence of a Mac equivalent to this is baffling.
- I don’t have a way of instantly returning to the desktop. On my PC, there was a square in the bottom left corner of the screen. Click it and I’m on the desktop. This was an extremely useful feature. The Mac allows me to swipe three fingers across my mousepad to see all of the programs that I have open – which is excellent – but many times, I just want to return to my desktop. It’s not easy.
- I can no longer hover over program icons like Word and Excel and see how many documents of each are currently open and switch from one to another easily. This seems like a no brainer in terms of features that Apple should adopt.
- There are programs like Windows Live Writer that are not compatible on a Mac.
