As to having to click separately on AOL to connect to the Internet, that seems wrong to me. I’ve never been an AOL user, but Macs have been automatically connecting to the Internet when an Internet app starts up for about as long as I can remember.

Anyway, I basically agree with you — I don’t think any modern desktop computer is particularly intuitive for someone who’s never used one before.

But “the same concepts” being there isn’t at all the same as skills being transferable. I sit down at a Mac: There is no way I’ll know that some two-hand combo is equivalent to a right mouse click. There is no way I’ll know that the Apple key substitutes for the Ctl key–if anything, I’d expect it to substitute for the Windows key. And “of course you just hit F11 to get the equivalent of the desktop”…

Yes, I overstated non-transferability–but in fact, “obvious similarities” make all the actual differences even trickier. All the examples noted here are ones where things I’d do by habit just won’t work, unless someone hands me the decoder ring for Mac equivalents.

None of which would matter were it not for the common cry of Mac users (or, more specifically, Mac believers) that Macs are intuitive and don’t require learning…

* There’s the obvious similarity between the windowing systems (desktop, recycling bin/trash, etc.) I suppose the following similarities would best fall under the description of the windowing system. First, in OS X, windows of the same application are grouped together under the application’s icon in the dock – which bears remarkable similarity to the way the Windows XP taskbar groups windows of the same application. Also, there’s a little desktop icon in the taskbar that hides the other applications – which you can do on a Mac by hitting F11.

* In terms of system configuration – the System Preferences of the Mac bear remarkable resemblance to the Control Panel of Windows.

* The basic word-processing sort of commands are almost exactly the same. Ctrl-S for save, ctrl-c for copy, ctrl-v for paste…all that’s the same with a Mac, except it’s Apple-S, Apple-C, etc. There’s even an equivalent to ctrl-alt-del – ctrl-apple-power key. (Though in recent years I tend to think of ctrl-alt-del as the way to get to the task manager rather than as a way to reboot the machine. But there is a way to force quit Mac apps, too – option-click.)

* While the typical Mac mouse is one button, the functionality of the two buttons is still there. By either holding down the mouse button or ctrl-clicking, you get the same menu you would get by right clicking.

Like I said, it’s by no means plug-and-play – but all the same concepts are there. I would have to agree that it’s not something that’s intuitive – I suspect the only reason it’s so easy for me to switch between operating systems is that I’ve been using both since 1996!