Hypercompendia

Convinced by a friend that one of the reasons to go-Mac is the startup time–Windows, nicely loaded, can end up taking as long as two minutes to get itself out of bed and caffeined up enough to be lucid.

In learning the way of the Mac, particularly in using the Dock instead of Icon Shortcuts all over the Desktop (which is probably one of the reasons Windows took so long to get everyone awake and in line), I find there are certain programs that I kind of leave open–Mail, Netnewswire, and of course, Storyspace. 

Storyspace usually needs minimum two, usually three windows parts of itself open to work with: Map view, Tool bar, and Writing Space.  Usually there’s the SSP program blank open as well–though this isn’t necessary, as witnessed by the initial shock of opening an Adobe program such as Photoshop and having the desktop as the background rather than a blank white space to fill with creative energy!  My method of closing down the file I’m working on in Storyspace was meant to relegate it to the dock, and so, after learning how to do it with the single-window apps such as Firefox or Mail, I’d click on the close button on the application menu bar–not the top which uses "quit" to close it down, but still left in on the dock.  This habit left me with three, sometimes four separate SSP windows to close.

Thanks to guidance from above (north from me) I’ve gotten the proper procedure to match the intent.  What this all brought to mind however is what I call the microwave syndrome or effect; what was once amazingly fast (or big, tiny, lightweight, etc.) becomes the new norm.  The new norm in turn becomes aggravatingly slow, cumbersome, heavy, too small to see (though middle-age does contribute to this one!) in, well, an amazingly short time.

Is this what they mean about mankind being adaptable?