I haven't gotten very deep into this thing, but so far it seems pretty cool.

the missus or the Macbook Air?

Setup an appointment at an Apple store and get some free training. I'm always surprised that i learn something new each time.

Thanks, I'll check those out.

So far, this thing seems pretty simple.

My advice is to get a nice two button mouse. (The Apple mouse can be configured for as a two button mouse, but it's a turd. Get a good one, with a nice scroll wheel, not a tiny peppercorn sized ball for scrolling.) Use the right click button. The more you use it, the more uses you find for it.

I use the Magic Mouse - very nice feel to it and incorporates all the nice swipe functionality of the touchpad without the terrible ergonomics of it.

Me too. Swipe gestures on the trackpad and magic mouse are really useful when you stop "windowing" and using full screen mode. It rocks on a laptop screen.

Personal bias but full screen mode is one of the things about how Windows defaults that drives me nuts. I abhor full screen mode and it also defeats a major part of OS X efficiency / ease of use, drag and drop content between open docs even across different applications.

Tip, hit Command key with left thumb and while holding it hold the Tab key. Icons for all open apps pop up. While still holding Command tap the Tab key to cycle through the open apps. Adding shift key reverses the order. Really useful when you are copy pasting from one app to the other. A quick Command + Tab hit will cycle back and forth between the 1st and 2nd position apps.

Command plus Tilde (right above Tab) does the same thing to open windows within the same app.

lots of good stuff guys. keep it coming. thanks

MS Word will crash on the mac and destroy your work - years long issue but MSFT is either unwilling or too stupid to fix it.

I would not run Windoz on a mac - it is really the ultimate gloss on a Unix box. Grep on!

We're trying the, "use the stock software route" first. So far Pages and Numbers will open all of her old documents. I'm getting her to drink the Kool-Aid.

I have to say, this thing is freakin' cool. I can understand why people switch. I may see an iMac in my future.

I run Word (and pages) just fine on my MacBook. Maybe the error is between the keyboard and the chair?

So you're saying Id10t or pebkac?

Don't let her turn into a menu surfer.

Tons of keyboard commands are available to minimize mousing.

When you pull down a menu look for a keyboard shortcut associated with the menu item. Release the menu and use the keyboard shortcut. If you get in the habit of doing that you'll soon start using the keyboard a lot more and will work faster / more efficiently.

Many of the shortcuts are common across different apps, even those from different companies.

yeah, i like keyboard shortcuts, and Im slowly teaching here shortcuts. fortunately, things like select all, copy, paste, etc are essentailly the same. I'm going to print them out for her.

No. It is a known problem with Word. I only have it on the McMini, never on the McBook. Others report problems with laptops however.


BTW - another big problem is with the Superdrive not being recognized (episodically). If you buy an external CD/DVD reader, you might want to get the Samsung or other non-Apple brand.