One of Those Nifty Mac Things

I make little secret that I’m a born-again Mac guy; I started in the Mac world, moved to Windows about 1994, and then in 2004 made the move back to Apple-land, and I’m not going back.

Sometimes it’s those little things that make all the difference. (Well, it’s also the big stuff like the way the computer always works and I don’t have to mess around with it and the audio/MIDI support is so terrific and it works so easily with peripherals and the iPod/Mac match is made in heaven and the digital sound output and and and and and and and.)

Microsoft Word has a built-in Thesaurus. It doesn’t really need one because the Mac also has a built-in Thesaurus, which you can either get to directly within applications (if they’re built with Cocoa) or at the very least as a Dashboard widget. The difference between the Thesaurii is sympatomatic of the difference between Apple and Microsoft, to say the least. The Microsoft one (in MS Word) is really lame; it offers very few suggestions and none of them are anything special. The Macintosh one, on the other hand, is a great resource.

So I decided to try: “delightful” as test word. Here is the MS Word thesaurus:

pleasant – charming – lovely – wonderful – enjoyable – amusing – agreeable – enchanting – pleasing – delicious

And here’s the Macintosh:

[as in “a delightful evening”]: lovely – pleasurable – enjoyable – amusing – entertaining – diverting – gratifying – satisfying – marvelous – wonderful – splendid – sublime – thrilling – (informal) – great – super – fabulous – fab – terrific – heavenly – divine – grand – brilliant – peachy – ducky

[as in “the delightful Sally”]: enchanting – captivating – bewitching – appealing – sweet – endearing – cute – lovely – adorable – delectable – delicious – gorgeous – ravishing – beautiful – pretty – (informal) – dreamy – divine.

So whereas Microsoft and Apple agree nicely on words like “enjoyable” and “amusing”, only the Macintosh moves on into the headier spaces of being diverting, gratifying, sublime, or even peachy.

I was looking up a nice synonym for ‘neurotic’ the other day (part of an article for the SF Symphony — oh, don’t ask — ) and while the MS Word thesaurus had a few boring ideas, only the Mac came up with the perfect word: ‘twitchy’.

By the way, did you know if you hold down Control+Command+Shift+4 on the keyboard, you can then select part of the screen and have it immediately transferred to the clipboard as a graphic? Such a nice little thing.

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