The Mac OSX Experience - Day 4

Optical Media Problem:
I ran into a "gotcha!" with Apple's elegant designs. I can't eject a bad DVD disk.

Macs, unlike PCs, do not have a CD/DVD tray that comes out. Instead, they have a slot that you stick the disk in to. Sort of liking sticking a piece of bread into a toaster. To eject the CD or DVD that is in the optical drive, you have to drag the icon representing the disk to the trash can. That tells the computer to eject the disk.

So what do I do when there is a disk in the drive and the OSX doesn't see it? Because it doesn't see it, there is no icon on the desktop to represent it. Because there is no icon, I have nothing to drag to the trash can to ask the computer to eject it.

I have no idea why it can't see the disk. I inserted a blank DVD-R disk that I planned to burn some files to. I suppose that I will have to reboot the computer in WinXP and hope that XP can see the disk. It should at least see the drive, which means I could ask XP to issue an eject command.

There is no manual override button to force eject a disk. What does Apple expect people who aren't computer gurus to do when it eats a disk and refusing to "see" it? Most people aren't going to install two OS's, like I did, to see if the other can fix the problem.

MacBook & OSX Help System:
While trying to solve the above problem, I discovered another problem. There is no comprehensive help system on the HDD. I had to go the Apple web site. What would I do if I was not connected to the internet? What if the problem that I was seeking help on was getting the computer to hook up to the internet? The OSX comes with a search utility called "Spotlight". But that did not find any sort of help data.

I did find a small Macbook user guide PDF. But it was very high-level and brief overview of how to do basic things. It was not comprehensive at all.

Strange... I would think that Apple would be sure to include a good help system. Perhaps they are so confident that their hardware and software are so perfect and easy to use that a help system is not needed. Well, they are wrong!

Bluetooth Mouse:
Yesterday I bought a small bluetooth optical mouse. The Macbook comes with a built in Bluetooth transmitter/receiver. This works great! And it works under both OSX and WindowsXP. So I now have a small little wireless mouse that I can use without tying up a USB port. I didn't buy the Apple mouse. They are over priced and do not have a right click. I'm not a Mac purist, so I refuse to give up my right click button. Personally, I find OSX easier to use with the right click.