Entry Into the MAC ZONE

Today is my wife's birthday.  And I write this from a small table adjacent a huge picture window allowing a wondrous view of the Pacific Ocean, on the second floor of a nice motel no more than a hundred yards from pounding ten-to-fifteen foot waves.  

Furthermore, it is written on my new MacBook Pro laptop.

I swore for the past year that I was fit-to-be-tied with the PC world.  I was tired of receiving the continuous Microsoft Message Of Doom, replete with the You'll Never Get Your Shit Back error box, to include the sparks issuing from my HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop with its marvelous 17" screen -- when its very dry keyboard and processor met my very wet glass of Steinlager Classic.

I'd had a Mac IIcx many years ago with its concomitant ImageWriter (which, literally, took about 20 minutes to complete a full page of simple text), purchased in 1987 for $6,000 in Cuptertino, the early home of Apple Computers.  

I was then dragged kicking and screaming out of the Mac world when I received a PC whilst engaged in the Robbery Bureau.  My first PC ever, which utilized the -- dare I admit this? -- dreaded DOS prompt.  Even further back, when I worked for my association as newspaper Editor, that fossilized computer used actual 5" floppy disks which, then, were truly floppy.  Anyone remember those?

Enough of the walk down Memory Lane. 

Now it's time to come to grips with an entirely new operating system, purchased by my wonderful wife and gifted to me on her birthday, if you can possibly feature that!  What an incredible surprise!

I'm not quite sure what year this laptop was manufactured, but I discovered it is the MacBook Pro with the older and coveted 15" matte screen, with the Firewire port.  It came loaded with OS X Leopard 10.5.1.  It also came with iLife, iWork, Aperture, the Aperture 2 upgrade and -- zowee! -- Final Cut Express HD.

I was able to figure out that Safari is the Mac equivalent of Internet Explorer, hence my ability to write this now, also due in part to the motel WiFi connection being recognized immediately upon startup.  

This is huge.  This is astounding.  This is amazing.  My wife never ceases to amaze me.

Boy, am I gonna need help and advice in the Mac Realm.

Anybody else out there use Macs?

BZ

P.S.

Got, of course, some great photos so far, but can't figure out how to get them from the side USB port, into the computer, and then into the posts.  I'm just a Baby Mac User.