Trying to understand the Mac world

Question

I've had my IMac for nearly 2 years now but have struggled all the way to migrate from a Windows environment. There seem to be so many hurdles to overcome, not least due to the horribly closed Mac universe which has made accessing things like music files, and sharing documents, incredibly difficult.
I've tried the One to One service, and asked questions at the Genius bar and via the Helpline, but rarely get a useful answer. Nice people sure, but I feel I'm dealing with staff that have been weaned on Apple (through Ipods etc) - they know a fair bit about Macs, but seemingly very little about Windows and therefore of limited help in getting from one to another. Try asking someone about FLAC audio files for example . . .
Some of the sort of issues I'm struggling to sort out include;
1) In Windows I can use the F4 key to 'repeat last action'. An incredibly useful feature when formatting a number of separate cells in a spreadsheet for example. Yet I can find no equivalent in the Mac world - I can't even see how I might configure my keyboard accordingly.
2) Having more than one application open on the desktop at a time. For example I open Word (MS Office for Mac), I then open Excel so I can cut and paste a few bits and pieces. As soon as I open Excel, Word minimises and zooms down to the Dock.
3) Screen sizes. Why oh why does my Mac insist on opening applications in a window it determines the size of ? For instance I open Numbers - on my 27" IMac it opens a window at best about 6" square, complete with tiny, almost unreadable fonts. Is there no way to get applications to open full screen, and in a set font size, by default ?
4) Screen resizing - I guess this is a feature of the OS (Snow Leopard 10.6) - only available in the bottom right ahnd corner. Just means more shuffling of windows about to use it effectively. Why can't screen resizing be done from any side as in Windows ?
And don't get me started on hardware - why does a 27" IMac get shipped with a tiny wireless keyboard ? Wireless is good for sure, but surely a desktop computer isn't trying to save space to the extent that ones loses the numeric keypad, and worst of all, the DELETE key (aaagagahgha). I've had to buy a wired version to get the functionality I need (along with some accesible USB sockets). And then there is the card reader that can only cope with SD, the USB sockets helpfully out of easy reach round the back (makes using a datastick a real pain) . . . .
Perhaps I shouldn't have gone down the Mac route (but now I've got an IPad too so heaven help me) . . . .

Answer 1

A couple of answers:
1. Microsoft Mac Office apps use command-Y for repeat last action, but that appeard to be missing from Apple's own apps, so it might be a Microsoft-specific thing.
2. The "open Excel and Word minimizes" issue is one I have not seen in something like 14 years of using them on Mac OSes on a few dozen Macs. Sorry. I honestly don't know how to do that, but it's worth asking Microsoft Support about it.
3. Traditionally, Mac apps open windows in the sizes you left them in; that is, the size at which you last saved the document. I can't think of a better convention. The exception is the new full-screen view added in OS X 10.7 (Lion); you appear to have to enable that each time you use the doc. Consider this dueling conventions: For years, I hates using Windows machines precisely because it insisted on obscuring all the other open windows with the current document, which I found terribly unhelpful, in my case based on experience from older windowing environments.
4. Lion changes resizing as well: you can now resize from any boundary of a window. Don't know, considering your antipathy to the Mac experience, if it's worth spending whatever Apple charges for Lion in your country for these last two features alone.
    If my memory serves, Apple's original wireless keyboard was a full one (home &c. keys, numeric keypad), and the delete with a right arrow key was near th ehome key, as on the wired keyboard. I'm guessing Apple's marketing and focus groups found most people who wanted wireless keyboard didn't care about the extra keys, ("I want to be able to stick this in my backpack") and vice versa for the size of the wired ones, but that is, again, just a guess. There are lots of third-0party Bluetooth wireless keybaord that work with the Mac --- and probably cheaper than Apple's (in every sense of the word "cheaper").
    You don't say which card formats other than SD you want to use, but the last micro-SD card I bought came with an SD-sized adapter, for what it's worth.
    I have to agree with the inconvenience of using USB (and FireWire, and now Thunderbolt) ports on the back of the iMac, but (a) Jonny Ives like "clean" design (sorry, bad attempt at blaming the issue on a Brit), and (b) brlieve it or not, you get used to roatating the iMac 90 degrees, craning your neck around, and inserting your bit of kit. And if you have an Apple wired keyboard, you can stick USB thumb drives into the ports at either end.
    I think most people who've used both Macs and Windows machines for a while agree that the first reaction to the "other" platform is irritation: "Why does this thing not do things the way I'm used to?" Just as I learned not to expect Windows to do things in a Mac OS-like way, I don't expect Macs to do things in a Windows-like manner. Not a great answer, but it's the way it is.
    Can't imagine this helped at all, but hope it at least cleared a few things up.