Change what stuff? I just plugged mine in. 
Well, that is one more example of slight inconsistency.
On my MacBook Pro, the F keys are assigned to one set of things.
When I added the nice slimline bluetooth aluminum keyboard (slick), I found that those F keys have different pictures on them, and they are indeed mapped entirely differently — several are assigned to iTunes functions such as pause or next song.
I realize that it’s a matter of going in and messing around with settings, but why did they make them different in the first place? At least OS X keeps track of the differences and does respect the different silkscreen buttons for each keyboard. But it sure screws up the muscle memory.
That was the precise point I was trying to make on my second item in post 40. Apparently I didn’t make it very well or the other points detracted from it.
Anyway, to reiterate, I totally agree. It isn’t a two button mouse unless it comes out of the box right clicking all the way.
Just look at the thing: Mighty Mouse.
Is there anything there that would lead you to believe that the mouse has sophisticated touch sensors hidden inside the shell that detect which side your finger is on to give a true right or left click? A naïve user would never know because the right click feature is disabled by default 
Though I guess that was only on the older OSes. Still, it was there well after the fact that Apple knew lots of Mac users were buying and using mice with right-buttons, but still made the default one-button for both the hardware and software. It took them too long to change what the default was for no reason other than a smug sense that they were right with their version, and not wanting to admit that maybe someone else did something better than them.
Just jumping in here to provide my thankfully limited experience working with Macs, in a semester long multimedia class in college. Basically, I had a Mac tower (Maybe a G4?) running OSX of some flavor, and I had all sorts of fun weirdness.
If I wanted to save a project from Director to my thumbdrive, I had to save it to the desktop, then drag it from there to the thumbdrive. If I attempted to save directly to the thumbdrive, every single thing inside my Director project would be blanked out and I’d have a beautiful animated series of nothings that I would have to make again if I wanted to turn it in for a grade.
I had the system just freeze up on me. Of course, Ctrl Alt Del doesn’t do anything on a Mac, so I had to figure out how to do their version of the three-finger salute, which to this day I can’t remember how to do again.
The desktop looks like a freaking three-ring circus. Everything is bright and animated and colorful and obnoxious. What’s wrong with just a taskbar like Windows and Linux (with Gnome) use? This when Windows XP was criticized by Windows 9x users for looking like a circus itself.
And then you have just plain weird stuff. If I use Microsoft Office on a Mac and save it as a Doc file, I ended up with a Doc file that was absolutely unintelligible on my PC. I don’t know why.
That said, Macs obviously work for lots of people, or else they wouldn’t use them, right? Most of my friends who used Macs tended to like them, but for what you had to pay for a Mac, I’d certainly hope you’d like it.
When it comes down to it, the worst thing about Apple products is also the worst thing about Christianity. It’s not so much the system I can’t stand, but some of the followers 
Folks trying to convince me that the iPhone is better because it doesn’t have a keypad that I can touch and feel while I am using the phone, or trying to convince me that my system is horribly unstable and vulnerable and is ready to explode and kill my children at any moment.
That said, I will give Apple this: Their marketing can be brilliant sometimes. Their commercils are very simple, easy to replicate, both for fanboy support, friendly parody, or even anti-Mac commercials (I love the Mac vs. Dell XPS commercials on Youtube). I just wish someone had found a way to make a Mac/PC commercial with the Mac kid and Bruce Willis after DH4.
On Apple’s new aluminum keyboard, you have to hold down the “fn” key (located next to the home button) in order to use the top row as function keys. Otherwise, by default, they’ll operate according to their icons. There’s a checkbox under the Keyboard & Mouse system prefs to reverse this, and turn them into regular function keys (then “fn” will allow you to use the sound, play/pause, et al).
ETA: On the wireless, the “fn” key is in the lower-left corner, next to the Control key.
And I have discovered each of these. Doesn’t change their inconsistency. And the results are not as satisfying as one would like, as there are some odd side effects.
I deal with it. At least I’m not forced to use some annoying crappy keyboard with fifteen Internet buttons that I don’t want, a multimedia controller, and a useless keypad sticking out right where the mouse should sit.
I find myself siding with the guy in the suit in the Mac/PC commercials, the younger dude comes off as a know-it-all snob. Who would you rather have do your taxes?
You want to be an accountant?
I like finances but hate accounting. Failed it in high school, squeezed through in college. :rolleyes:
But anyway, I don’t see anything wrong with being an accountant, it’s better than being a professional jerk like the Mac guy. 
I don’t understand the comments about the mighty mouse? my right click has worked since the day I opened the box and hooked it up–there was no changing of default anything. Perhaps you had to do so on older Macs? When I looked at the mm, I figured that the small roller ball divided the two “clicks” into right and left. If you didn’t think that, that doesn’t mean anything–if anything, it’s a design element that does appeal to you, not a fault of the function of Macs. I like the streamlined, clean look of the mm. I just wish my scroll ball worked.
I use the default Safari skin or screen or whatever–it’s a crisp blue and gray and white. The only colors are the 3 buttons–and you (general) are correct–the green one doesn’t do much at all. I don’t see “3 ring circus”.
I dunno–to me, much of this discussion seems to be about people’s comfort levels and expectations. We could have much the same conversation about car choices or flat screen TVs or cell phones. Isn’t it great that we have options? I’m not sure just where this whole “one must be inherently superior to the other” stuff comes from. Mac v PC is much like Coke v Pepsi. (ok, that’s a bit dumbed down). They both have aspects that are superior to each other’s. Maybe a stick shift vs an automatic would be a better analogy. I’ll let you all duke it out as to which is the stick and which is the automatic. 
I use both OS–my family has PCs. The only irksome thing about it (when I’m not railing at the odd way things are organized or categorized in either system) is my husband’s irritating way of saying “it’s a Mac issue, the PC doesn’t do that” re anything I happen to complain about. Now, that is annoying.
One thing that annoys me about Macs is people will whine at you for not making a Mac version of your software. What I want to say to them is “Look buddy, you bought a computer that you know has a fraction of the market share of Windows and a fraction of available software. Do you expect us to learn a whole new OS and development environment for maybe 10% more sales at best? Not to mention tech support.” I know it’s a vicious circle, but that’s the reality of small business.
Maybe Mac users are all left handed creative brain types but that seems a tad overblown to me. Windows does the same with pretty descriptive images of what happens when you minimise or maximise windows.
I’m my memory’s correct, the change happened at least 15 years ago. That’s a long time to hold a grudge, especially for a tech product.
I have a highly customized environment — something that isn’t terribly unusual among folks who have used the same platform for a long long time, but it does make me a bit of a bystander to a lot of the complaints about OS behavior. Things I don’t like, I get rid of; and things I wish the OS had but doesn’t, I add.
Even there though, historically, there is an OS difference. In the dim dark days, the PC environment had nothing akin to the Mac’s extensions and control panels; the closest thing, if I understand correctly, would have been a “terminate and stay resident” or TSR program. So we modified our experience rather extensively (sorry) while PC users at first were less prone to do so. Then there was a fairly protracted time frame in which experienced & sophisticated PC users also modified the heck out of their environment but a great many average-to-skilled PC users were scared to install much. Even to install a couple dozen commercial applications with good reputation made them nervous because it seemed like every new program installed added instability. (In all fairness, installing a double row’s worth of extensions and control panels could make for a pretty unstable Mac, too. But still, my sense was that Mac users felt like they could troubleshoot their Macs and figure out extension conflicts, whereas PC users would curse and erase their hard drive and start over).
Nowadays, both operating systems are very amenable to being “skinned” and tweaked. I would not run either one “out of the box”, unmodified; I know far less of what’s available for the Windows environment but even I would have FileBox Extender and QuicKeys installed within hours, would switch the interface to Windows Classic, would shut down a dozen or more services, would rename some things (“My Network Places”? BARF! My Little Pony! Sheesh!), and would go prowl tucows.com and versiontracker for some other goodies.
There are PC folks who have Windows skinned and modified to look pretty convincingly like Leopard. There are Mac folks who have done the opposite. I’ve got my 10.4 environment looking so much like MacOS 9 that I had an Apple “genius bar” fellow convinced I was booting my G4 PowerBook in 9 even though it is years past the last model that would actually do so.
Whatever you don’t like, fix it, change it. It’s your computer, make it your own!
OK there are a few commonly cursed things I don’t know if you can fix yet, such as:
• Windows: Getting rid of the ‘outside’ program window, so that only documents have windows and the menus go there and not in a surrounding program window.
RECIPROCALLY:
• Macintosh: moving the menus from the universal menu bar to the top of the windows. (I know a lot of Windows switchers would like that)
… but it’s not like you’re just stuck wtih what they give you!
This is for Ice Cream Man
MWAH!
A kiss from me to you–my mm works fine now! And I don’t have to buy a new one.
C’mere, lemme kiss you again!
If your scroll ball is getting grotty, there are ways to clean it out, usually involving compressed air and rolling the mouse upside-down on a sheet of paper. Sadly, after a while it doesn’t do the trick.
If you have AppleCare, they will swap out your mouse for you if it was bought with the machine. They did this for me and I am so happy that my MM is back in action. I love my Mighty Mouse. It is such a beautiful mouse, and it is Bluetooth, so no wires and no dongles.
I am certain that with a wiped-clean install of Leopard on my MBP I had to re-enable the right click button. Perhaps other machines have that on by default, as you said.
ETA: How did I miss out on the kiss? I can’t see how Ice Cream Man slipped in with the MM answer…
It’s funny. My school says we can use Macs, as long as the meet the minimum hardware & software requirements. But as soon as class starts they insist you start using Office 2007 because it’s “the latest version.” Well, I don’t run Windows so I can’t use '07!. Then, I got Office 2008 for the Mac and started submitting papers with it, and immediately started getting yelled at and having points docked from my papers. “You need to downgrade your papers to the older version so we can read them!” “Hey, what happened to using the 'latest version?”
Anyway, I don’t hear Mac people whining too much about having Mac versions of things except for video games, but most people who are hardcore gamers don’t buy Macs or off-the-shelf PCs for that matter. Get a gaming machine.
I can’t remember a time when I’ve whined there wasn’t a Mac version of a Windows app I actually needed. What does disappoint me is large, commercial websites that come out with the latest whiz-bang feature and blow off Mac support. For instance, Netflix came out with on-demand streaming movies but of course you need Windows. At least you did; I haven’t checked recently.
Right, but you can’t fault Apple for changing their keyboard layout after 20+ years of consistency. Sooner or later, things evolve. It’s not like they’re drastically changing their layout every year. I love the new keyboards, despite having to get used to the new features, and for most of the reasons you listed above. 
I PMed her with the paper trick.
You’re welcome.
You didn’t miss anything–he told me about the upside paper thing to unclog the mm via PMs. I just thought since he’d been a prince, he should get public appreciation. Didn’t mean to make confusion!
I do have Applecare, but I’m going to see how this goes. It works like a charm right now.