I wanted to save you, but I couldn't

Dear doc,
I am so distraught with the way things have turned out between us. I haven't been the same since I lost you. I lay awake at night wondering if there was anything I could have done differently.

We had so much time together. Not a day went by that we didn't see each other. Hours were spent formatting, editing, and spell-checking. Mornings bled into evenings as we continued our conversations, I taking arguments in different paths and you reeling in my exuberance and helping to maintain the word-count limit.

I sensed something had changed between us each time I drifted through to Windows from OS X. I couldn't help it, doc, I swear. Every lab on campus runs Windows and I teach statistics using Excel in Office 2007. If I happened to look at Word 2007 once in a while, all I can say is that it was a mistake and I didn't like it for even a second. I always came back to the X side. Always. And I felt dirty for having wandered.

I blame Microsoft for having driven this wedge between us. Why does Excel in Office 2008 for OS X have such reduced functionality? All I want to do now is what I used to be able to do in Office X but now I have to go to Windows to do. I praise Jobs for paving the path to run Windows on an Apple. This is the only thing that has kept me sane these last few months while I conditionally add, generate a histogram, and calculate descriptive statistics. But I cannot do it in Excel 2008. I have to use Excel 2007 to do what I need to do. And so when I do these things, I crawl through a Window.

In fact, doc, I blame Microsoft for having lost you to the digital ether. I fail to understand how in this day and age, after innumerable versions (so many not even worth remembering: Windows CE, and Windows ME and Windows NT make CEMENT), how is there still no key command for saving a document, doc? When you and I were together in Word on the Mac, all I had to do was type command-S and you were saved, literally reborn to live another moment. I did it unconsciously, like tapping the space bar. Command-S. I did it between piecing together thoughts. Command-S. I did it without thinking. Command-S. It was easy. A loving tap-tap and you were mine. Command-S. Every time I did it, I strengthened our relationship. I felt it kept you from drifting away to be lost forever in a swamp of bytes.

But I could not do it while in Windows. There is no key command to Save. When I work in Windows, saving the document actually tears me away from creating the document. My hands are on the keyboard, turning ideas into words and words into bits to be saved—but only if I move my hand to the mouse to move the cursor to a tiny patch of pixels that show a tiny save icon. My computer screen is the size of a football field and the only way I can save a document is to click in a piece of real estate not much larger than an eraser on the top of a pencil. To make matters worse, this target is sequestered in the top-left corner of the screen. I swear the Miscrosoft engineers don't actually use the products they cough cough design.

And because of this, doc, I've lost you. I've owned a Mac since they existed. I've used Word for just as long. I've generated many, many, many docs and I've been able to save them all easily and often and I can go back and visit them on their drives or in the folders they call home. But I've lost you forever, doc, because I called on you through a Window. I could not move my hand fast enough to save you when you began to fail. The key command that saves in X calls up the Start menu when in Windows. I couldn't reach you across the divide because I couldn't get to the mouse in time to click on the icon in time to save you.

I hope you can forgive, across the digital divide. I hope you've evolved into something better, faster, stronger than you were. I hope you're happy. Please know that I think of you often and that no matter how hard I try, I'll never be able to make another just like you.

Your friend,
Hunt N. Pecker