I use both Windows and Mac in the course of a normal day and have grown used to the differences between the two platforms. I use a Windows ThinkPad for my day job and a MacBook Pro for my personal business. The differences become glaring when I use the two side by side while working from home hooked up to the same keyboard, mouse, and monitor via a KVM.
One thing that makes absolutely no sense to me is why Outlook treats incoming email as an editable document. Shouldn't the email be preserved as sent from the original author? Why should I be able to change the information in the email? Sure, if I am forwarding or replying to the email I should be able to edit the content then, but why would I want to as I am reading it?
Where this behavior really irritates me is deleting a message after I read it. In Apple Mail I can hit either the Delete (Backspace on non-Apple keyboards) or Forward Delete (Delete on non-Apple keyboards) key and the message is deleted from my inbox. This behavior makes sense to me. To get the same action in Outlook using a keyboard I have to hit cntl-D, which is not that difficult, but not nearly as obvious as the Delete or Backspace key. If you hit the Delete or Backspace key while reading an incoming message in Outlook, it attempts to delete a character in the message (usually, the cursor will be at the beginning of the message, so the Backspace key will generate an error sound as it has no character to delete, whereas Delete will delete the first character of the message).
Even more inexplicably, if I close the message first and then try to delete it from the inbox listing in Outlook, hitting Backspace sends me to the Calendar (Why?), whereas Delete does perform the expected action. If someone could please explain the theory behind these actions, please feel free to contact me. End Rant.
