Twins

So wow, I actually just Switched at work as well. I'm right now using my work MacBook Pro as a palmrest as I type this blog entry on my home MacBook Pro. Crazy. I'm so far up on Maslow's hierarchy of computing needs right now that I can barely see the ground any more. Get me oxygen!

I guess that after I switched to Safari at home I must have become used to the real (Cocoa) edit control keyboard shortcuts in most Mac software. And then having left behind the confusing FrankenMac Windows-ized Firefox 2 (Carbon) ones, staying on Windows at work was just too much... well, work. So here I am. With twins.

I'm starting to get productive on Mac in some ways. Exposé: I finally see what Mac users have been raving about all this time. Spaces: I'm gingerly getting used to it. TextWrangler seems like a decent text editor and Twitterific is good fun. I only used iMovie once so far but it did make editing and uploading a video to YouTube amazingly easy. Seriously impressively so, in fact.

I'm a keyboard guy, though, and so in some ways the Mac is disappointing. How do I assign global keyboard shortcuts to things, so---for instance---whatever I'm doing I can press Apple-Shift-T to bring up a terminal window? How do I pull down and explore menus with just the keyboard? Is there a way to navigate dialogs and messageboxes without a pointing device? This stuff eludes me so far.

I also had brief inner panic earlier today when I realized I don't really have within reach an actual physical functioning Windows machine. Everything I've learned over nearly 20 years of programming Windows and knowing the internals of the OS I'm using: suddenly no practical use whatsoever. All of a sudden I'm a platform expatriot with new mannerisms to learn and a new culture to absorb.

As an actual expatriot, though, living a very real 5,000 miles from where I grew up, I think I can make it. With stereo MacBook Pros, like an Apple-esque Jean-Michelle Jarre with a hand on each keyboard, I think I might like it here.