Banging Abacuses

When I was considering buying a Mac, I heard from everybody, and they all said the same two or three things. "You'll love it," they chorused. "It's so intuitive." The script never changed; it was almost creepy.

So when I got my big shiny iMac, I set it up (pull out of box: plug in) and sat in front of it, and waited for it to demonstrate some of its vaunted intuition. We stared at each other for a while. We were both very quiet. Sometimes it would snap a picture of me. I thought a truly intuitive machine would size me up and then rumble, "You look like a person who'd like to type a blog post. Let me show you around," but it didn't. It didn't really know the first thing about me, which is that I do not like my picture taken.

At some point I recognized that the machine itself, contrary to popular wisdom, is not intuitive, but that I personally will find it easy to operate, because it would work just the way I think it should. My friends, in assuming I will have sound ideas, give me far more credit for clarity than I deserve. In fact, I have a very convoluted method of thinking that only works for me because I don't much care if I get the right answer.

A while back, Dave watched in disbelief as I tried to put together one of those spatial-puzzle toys, something that was supposed to be a wooden cube when solved. I was at it for at least five minutes and making no headway at all. Finally he seized it from me and snapped it into place in three or four quick movements. "What were you doing,"--he was incredulous--"just banging it together until it came around?" Well, yeah. That was the plan.

It's worse when I'm under some kind of stress, such as, for instance, when I'm running, an activity I used to loathe four times a week. I would run up the path on Terwilliger Boulevard, with its distance-markers every .2 mile, and try to distract myself from my wretchedness by calculating my miles per hour.

I'd pass by the marker that said "1.4 miles," glance at my watch and attempt to come up with elapsed time, summon up the latitude and angle of the sun, and then, once I'd assembled a quorum of data, I would begin to calculate. I would wonder if this gazinta that, or if that gazinta this, and what goes on top and what goes on the bottom, and whether it was really kilometers after all, which would make me instantly over twice as fast, or maybe it's half. If you listened carefully, you could hear me banging abacuses together in my brain. Ultimately I would conclude, as I finished the loop and bent over, huffing miserably, that I was running at a pace of 42.6 miles per hour, which I thought was pretty dang good. It would not occur to me for hours, if at all, that I may have introduced a flaw.

So this is the sort of logic that my new computer is expected to understand. The machines are, indeed, different in their approaches. Take the little issue of putting a document to bed. With my old PCs, I would ask if it could put my file away.

"This file here?" it would query. Yes.

"You want to put it away?" Yes.

"Hum. Hum. Hum. What do you want to call it?" Gosh, I don't care. What do you suggest?

"We could take the first sentence and whack it down the middle and call it that. That would be a nice name. I just need something to sew in its underwear so it doesn't get lost. Okay with you?" Sure, sure, whatever.

"So where do you want it?" I don't know. Where do you suggest?

"We could put it here, here, here, or way over here where you don't have anything at all. It's all the same to me. I have a lovely little location in a cul-de-sac over here where it will be really, really safe. You'll probably never find it again. Ha! Ha! Whaddya say?" Sure. As long as it's safe.

"All righty then. Click click. Thump thump. Braaaaa-aaaaap. Gone!" Bring it back. I just thought of something.

"Okay. Where'd we put it?" Shit, I don't know. You just had it.

"I've got a cute little search puppy. We could send him after it."

The new Mac, on the other hand, has a different approach. You just take the document, pick it up by the scruff of the neck, and haul it over to where you want it to go. I will admit this is much simpler. But it is not intuitive. How was I expected to figure that out?

How Do You Like Them Apples? Part Two

You will recall from a previous post that my Dell computer with Windows Vista has been hit by a comet and all my data are either cowering inside or have become glassified. Only a professional will be able to tell. Meanwhile, I have some decisions to make.

I posed the Mac vs. PC dilemma on my Facebook page and was soon mobbed by Mac evangelists. They were so effusive and seductive that I felt I could fling myself onto them and crowd-surf all the way to the Apple store. Then a few of my most trusted friends dared to challenge the dogma. "It's your antivirus software that causes most of the problems," one said. "I haven't used it on my PC for years." This may be true, but this is from a man who can see trouble coming and whack it off at the knees. Some of the sites we've been known to visit could give us a virus, never mind the computer. Glory hole? Sounds uplifting. Camel toes? Cute! Must see!

This friend loves to tinker about with this and that on a computer, and I'm happy for him. But everything I try to do in the way of maintenance or trouble-shooting feels like a battery of IQ tests, each one presenting new evidence of personal dunderheadedness. I don't need this aggravation. I held onto my SAT scores for decades to defend myself against those who would cast nasturtiums on my intelligence, until I finally realized that anyone looking at those scores today would invariably blurt out, "Good lord, woman, what happened to you?" And I would reply, as I often must: I have no idea.

Same man enjoys manually updating his PC, but I emphatically do not. My PC is a total bitch about updates. I slap the reminders off the screen ("Poo," I say) until they begin forming a posse on my taskbar, and then, resigned, I go to the site for my update. That's when the trouble begins. There is no "update." There is an entire menu of updates, and service packs, and patches, and it wants me to choose which ones to download. And that is what I'll do, just as soon as I get off the phone with NASA about their Hubble parameters.

It's worse than Jiffy Lube. You pull in there, and there's just a whirlwind of activity, with scrubbed mechanics barking efficiently at each other from all around and underneath your car. Ultimately someone comes forth with a list of things he thinks you should do. "Your drabnitz lining is getting a little worn [here he's holding out a damp carcass of some kind for my examination], and we can replace that for $19.95. We've tightened up your splagnuts but you could use a new furtle filter, $24.95. It's about time to top up your humours and rotate your radio buttons, and we're showing you're overdue for your ten-point farkling system inspection." This goes on for a while.

I always bend over the list, furrow my brow and tilt my head in an imitation of intelligence, and then pick out two or three of the suggestions completely at random. Just on principle, I'm not going for the full boat. If my furtle filter strands me on a dark country road, so be it. I do not have a clue.

Same scenario at the Microsoft site. Confronted with a plague of packs, patches and updates, I hurl mental darts at the screen and elect to download this or that. But we're not done. It wants to know where I want my download to go. I know where I'd like it to go--wherethesundontshine.exe--but that's never an option. So I click on their default setting, and that's the last I'll see of that download. If I ever stumble upon its location, it will be sitting back with its feet up smoking cigars with Dick Cheney.

I admire people like my friends who navigate serenely about the innards of their computers. And some day, assuming there is such a thing as reincarnation, I will be that person. For now, though, I am cleaning off my desk for the arrival of a new iMac. It's sleek, it's slim, it's fully automatic, it doesn't need the protective undercoating, and it comes with everything but heated seats. And Windows.

Update.

It's here. It's got a screen the size of a pillowcase, and the Mac boys dug into my old PC with a forceps and vise grips and pried out all my files. It's fast, it's quiet, it's limber, it took a picture of me and my cat Tater just for fun, and I'm thinking about letting it do my laundry. Also, my seat is heating up.