MacOS is exactly like Windows except everything is different.

A couple of days of silence is good news.

The iMac up and running. I'm finding my way around. Just about everything I have tried so far is a lot harder on Mac then it would be on Windows, but of course that's because I'm try to do Windows stuff.

Dear Mac folks, keep that in mind when you say Windows is harder to use than Mac. If you try to do Mac stuff on Windows, well D'oh!

I haven't run into any more BSOF level issues, just a continuous, low-level state of frustration. Typical issues include:

Right click doesn't work to bring up menus. Of course, once I figured out that you had to actually turn the right click on in system preferences, it works. But for heavens sake, why have such a stupid default. Two buttons on the mouse that do exactly the same thing is silly -- unless of course you are a true believer that one button should be enough for anyone (and 640K RAM is good enough for anything you'd ever want to do on a personal computer, right?) [Note: a two hand/two finger click is *NOT* and acceptable substitute for a right click]

Speaking of two hands and two fingers, where's the @#$%^&* delete key! Please don't tell me I don't need it. I know I don't need it -- I want it 'cause it makes life MUCH easier.

I can't get back to my home page in Safari. I went through ALL the menus, looking for a "go to home" option. You can't do it through menus. You can't do it through a toobar button[*]. I can't find a keyboard shortcut to do it. For a while I simply used "open a new Safari window" but that's an unpleasant mini-hack. [*]Finally someone told me I needed to customize my toolbar to put the "go to home page" button on it. For heaven's sake, why have such a stupid default. Going "home" is such a common thing to want to do, why should I have to turn it on -- and why didn't Safari's help tell me how to do it!

I miss the Start menu. For all the flack it's taken over the years, the Start menu works really well. It caches recently used applications so it adapts to your normal usage patterns, yet for unusual situations the "All Programs" option lets you enter a nicely hierarchical organized list of the applications on this system.

Sure I could double click on the hard drive, then double click on applications to get to the equivalent of "All Programs", but Start menu is a lot more convenient -- it tends to "do-the-right-thing[TM]" automatically, and when it doesn't it listens politely when you explain things to it.

PS: I've started rolling my own start menu by putting a shortcut to the Application folder on the dock. For some reason it wouldn't let me put it where I wanted it -- with the other frequently used applications. Instead it insisted that it had to be over on the right side of the dock. I'm sure there's a lame excuse (er. I mean a perfectly valid and logical reason) for this restriction, but the motivation escapes me.

And there's more. You get the idea. Once I have adapted to the differences, I'm sure that MacOS will blend into the background and I can concentrate on doing the stuff that interests me rather than playing with the (admittedly pretty) operating system controls, just like I do on Windows where CTRL-ALT-= pops open the calculator; CTRL-ALT-T gets me notepad; CTRL-ALT-D opens a new DOS window, etc. [And don't tell me about the dashboard -- I know about it -- it's just like Windows except completely different (grin)]

Speaking of missing keys, and strange keyboards. The Logitech wireless keyboard & mouse came last night. O Frabjous Day, Calloo, Callay, I can type again! [Anyone wanna buy a Apple Wireless keyboard -- barely used.]

And to end on a positive note. I was able to read recordings I made with my digital recorder in and edit them with an open source audio editor then play them back on my "home theater" speakers with no grief. That's what I'm talking about when I mean the OS should disappear into the background and let me focus on the work I want to do.