iMac spell

I've been getting used to my new iMac, not that it's difficult to do. Mostly, I love it, a few things I'm not sure about, and a couple others, well, not so good.

First, I love how zippy the thing is—the fastest computer I've ever used. Even running Windows software via Vmware Fusion and Bootcamp with not much memory allocated and one processor produces acceptable results. But on the Mac side, things fly. Like start-up and shut-down, for example, which is really fast—the way all computers should be, but no PC I've had has been.

I hadn't used Mac OS X before, and I really like it. I also like all the cool toys that come with it, like the iLife suite. I've played around a little bit with all of it by now, including producing a podcast in Garage Band, where I had mixed results. More successfully, I “played” the virtual grand piano in Garage Band (don't get excited—it was that “doe o deer” thing, hunt and peck style). I'll have more use for this program once I'm used to it.

I've played with the built-in iSight camera, video chatting with Nigel (to test it), and I used Photo Booth for the photo above and also for the weird photo I made earlier. I've looked at iMovie, but with no video to use (yet), I couldn't really do anything with it.

All of which is the fun side. On the more serious side, I've been trying out different word processors on the Mac, and so far I haven't found one I like. The iWork suite test drive that comes with the iMac reminded me too much of Microsoft Works, so I ignored it because I need a full-function program.

So then I tried the Office for Mac tryout and found that I didn't like Word for Mac as much as the PC version from 2002 (I haven't tried the new version of Word for Windows, so I may not like that, either). I also tried NeoOffice, which is the Mac-specific version of OpenOffice (because OpenOffice for Mac is simply ported to Mac, not written for it). The reason I dislike these two programs is the same: Spelling. Neither one can find simple spelling errors. For example, both programs see “htings” (instead of “things”) as spelled correctly. NeoOffice also doesn't allow removal of a hyperlink from text, which Word:mac at least does.

Ironically, only “Pages” from iWork identified “htings” as incorrectly spelled (along with every other incorrect word in the document). So, as an experiment, I'm trying out Pages for this post. Hopefully, that means that there will be fewer spelling errors than has been the case lately.

About the hyperlinks problem I mentioned: On the PC I used to write my posts in Word, add hyperlinks, the copy and paste the entire thing onto Blogger and the links were there. On the Mac, those hyperlinks are lost no matter what word processing program I use, though that seems to have something to do with Firefox for the Mac.

And that's my adventures in Mac so far. Videos are inevitable, as are other creative things.