The iFolly

Before descending to wreak havoc upon the enemy the Barbarian Hordes were said to let loose with a chilling array of vocal sounds meant to terrify the enemy and Confederate soldiers whooped out the Rebel Yell during the American Civil War as their battle cry. Neither group has anything on the average Apple store in terms of an unholy din.

It started last February, my trusty Sony Vaio felt decidedly unwell. It wasn't actually belching out clouds of smoke and requesting the last rites, but to say it was sluggish would be to imply that it still moved and that's not accurate either. It was six-years-old but that turned out to be the extent of its lifetime. Even launching Firefox caused it to crash, and lie motionless in a fit of machine malaise the likes of which I had never seen.

So I decide to buy a Mac, my first mistake, really. It's just that everyone who has one of those things swears up and down, and down up that they are the answer to prayers. I don't think any item has quite the brand loyalty that Apple does but I'm here to tell you I'm in the dark as to why.

I decided not to take the offered tutoring classes, which was a mistake, in retrospect. It's just that since dinosaurs roamed the earth with 14400 baud modems strapped to their backs I've been using PCs and I get by just fine.

"We'll teach you how to do anything you like!" The young man said with a smile.

That should have been my first indication that I was iScrewed. . Three times I'd been shooed off of a stool since entering the store, "I'm sorry, but those are for a class that's about to start." I'm actually not blaming Apple for that. They must get a lot of looky-loos and their classes are for customers that have already purchased their products.

I heard the offer of classes, looked around at the babbling insanity that was the Park Meadows Mall Apple store and thought that only if attending classes there was a condition of the ransom for my favorite nephew (it would have to be my favorite) would I ever volunteer to hang out in the joint, trying to learn.

"You tutor people here?" I asked, and the young man cheerfully assured me they did. I couldn't figure out a polite way to say I'd rather transport directly to a Medieval Rendering of the Bowels of Hell than try to do anything there, so instead I said, "I'll be fine. If I get stumped, I'll get a book."

iGoofed.

That was nine months ago. Nine months of searching for drop down menus that don't exist. Doing the old trial and error, but having it only end in error. I'm pretty tenacious so I kept at it, consulting the web for answers and finding helpful passages that began with things like, "Macs are very intuitive..." which I can only assume means "keep guessing" because good lord, I couldn't even save and use an image on this computer. Right clicking? There is no right click menu. Or options to delete, or really anything other than fevered prayer, as far as I can tell.

So I bought a book for Dummies, because it was clear that I qualified when it came to Macs. The first thing I did was to look up "Save Image" and that went nowhere fast. I'm an iIdiot. Do they make books for me?

For nine months whenever I wanted to use an image, or really, a computer I scurried to my trusty HP laptop. Vista, the most dreaded operating system in the world, was still the preferable option for me. Finally I decided I'd had enough and this entire week I've been beating my brains out on my Mac. One of us is going down, and I fear it is going to be me. Half the time when I touch this mouse, it immediately goes flipping back. I've lost enough text in these past nine months to crush a small nation with the sheer volume of words.

iTried. iFailed. iSwore. iTried again, and again. Finally I had some marginal success.

After a week of trying I have three things to show for my efforts. Are you ready? Here is the picture I wanted to share with you. The one that started my week long battle. I need a member of the Barbarian Hordes to scare the wits out of my Mac long enough for me to accomplish anything, but we're going to try.



If that didn't work there's going to be some iDrinking in my future.

Then I wanted to change my profile picture so I used Photo Booth to take some picture, straight from my home office to you, and I settle on this one because I look appropriately baffled in it:



However, I took photos like this:



Which was clearly a mistake. And this:



As I tried to figure out the timing on the iCamera. I think I look best in over-exposed light, by the way. That can't be a good sign.





That's when I realized something. I can't even figure out how to delete the blasted things!

iScreamed.

iQuit.

At least for now.