Mac Attack

[captlychee]

In 1990, I was helping out with the production of the second Visible Ink annual effort out of RMIT. When I say 'helping', I mean that I was slowly typing out a manuscript into some God-forsaken publishing software on an Apple Macintosh. Said Macintosh had a ten inch black and white screen, pretty good graphics for 1990, microscopic icons that made less sense than an emoji-filled text message and the keyboard from Hell. I swore then by all that was then holy—the World Trade Centre in New York, the colony of Hong Kong, and apartheid—that I would never use a Macintosh again.

Flash forward thirty-two years-odd to yesterday. I had, in November last year, made the case that a Macbook would be a form of visual aid to help me live a more or less normal life, and that therefore the NDIS could pay for it. They had allocated $10220 for me to spend on visual aid equipment, and I had spent around $640 on computer repairs between November 2019 and November 2021. I hadn't spent any more because I kept getting knocked back on computer expenses, and they wouldn't go for a large screen TV, either. So, I finally convinced them of the utility of a Macbook and got a quote from JB Hi Fi on November 13^th.

Then, by the time I'd forwarded the quote on to McCallum Financial Services so they could pay JB, my plan had expired and the new plan only had $5000 to spend. (Explaining these plans and why we need them I may do some other time.)

On January 7^th this year, McCallum ring to say they'd paid the quote but the money would take a few days to reach JB. I gave it four days, and trotted down to JB on the 11^th. After a bit of finagling with quote numbers and some ID on my part, they gave me this box:

There's no doubt about it. The unboxing process on Apple products is something of a delight, and I was sitting here with such expensive (or dollar-intensive) machinery that I felt like putting on a suit and tie.

After the delight of taking the thing out of its paper wrapping, I was even delighted to find that it even smelled nice. This was in stark contrast to the smell of my actual desk which had become a bit putrid over the previous week what with spilled tea and biscuit crumbs. In honour of this new machine, I cleaned off the desk using Windex and a Chux superwipe. Meanwhile, back at the box, I unpacked the charger and charging cable.

As you can see, the charger is about the size of an actual Dodge (or Valiant) Charger, so I had to unplug the Lenovo and the CZUR camera to plug this thing in. It was, as you would probably suspect if you've been following my journal for a few years, the work of a moment to plug the thing in. When I opened the lid it gave me a nice 'tada' sort of sound, the original 'tada' from the earliest days of the Mac if memory serves. Then the screen came on:

You can see the bottom of the monitor from an actual computer there. I was Googling like a mad thing to find answers to setting up a Mac.

After that there came a few hours of absolute Hell while I set the thing up. I won't go into that too much because the pain is still present and the wounds raw and bleeding, but fuck this thing was a pain where you simply don't expect pain to be, even at my age. snaky_poet once said that the good thing about Macs is that 'things just work'. I can now appreciate what an utter torture chamber the rest of her life must be. If she thinks things 'just work' on a Mac, she must turn on the lights by cramming coal into the loungeroom generator and strangling a kitten to propitiate the impedance gods. Nothing 'just worked'. The keyboard was easier to use then the one on the 14" Macbook that I had tried at JB, but not much easier. And I had to keep squinting at the dark screen to find the mouse cursor. It was tedious to follow the pointer across the screen until it was on the correct clickable bit, which I had to do because I was using the goddamned trackpad which, incidenntally, only works if you use one finger, but I kind of managed it. By 11:15 on Saturday night I was exhausted and resolved that everything I hated about Macs hadn't changed and that I w3as going to kick some obedience into the bloody thing on Sunday morning.

As gorgeous as the Macbook's packaging was, I had eschewed the very expensive Apple mouse in favour of a Logitech Pebble.

On Sunday I arose from the procrustean bed, if I may so call it, full of vim and vigour and, after tackling that morning's Wordle, cracked the old knuckles and…had a shower and got dressed, then had a cup of tea and, fortified by the morning's routine and the sustaining powers of tea, settled down to have another go at this stupid machine.

I got my darling Kelvatari on the ol' Skype because she had one of the damn things and could probably help. She got me through most of the process. At least to the point where I could fire up Safari, a browser I had previously only used on my phone, to try and install Microsoft Office on the Macbook. This process, very easy on a computer, is yet another arse-reaming on this thing. After five attempts to download the installer, each download taking approximately forty-five minutes before mysteriously halting, I finally got a complete file. I was able to install it just in time to head over to Write Club.

I still haven't been able to get the mouse to work. It's a Bluetooth mouse, so it should work without having to plug in the wireless receiver, which is impossible anyway because there're no plugs on the thing that the USB dongle from the mouse will fit into. I've got the thing connected to the network via WiFi, which is good because there's no Ethernet plug on it, either, and so far the only thing it's found is my Kindle Fire. It kept searching for the mouse for four hours before I was finally able to make it stop. But by 2:00PM on Sunday it was time to go over to Write Club. With a Macbook.

Now—even though I haven't written anything on it—I can say I'm a real writer.