Thinking with the right side of your Mac

Once again I find myself stymied and then amazed by Apple. I've really liked for a while now that when you receive an e-mail that contains pictures in Mail.app, there's a handy "Slideshow" button beside the "Save" button, and if you click it you get a full-screen slideshow of all the pictures in the e-mail. Brilliant. If you receive an e-mail with pictures, you want to look at them, right? Apple understands this. They don't over-do it and automatically play the slideshow for you, they just offer what you want, when you want it. Which is where the stymied part comes in. The two buttons, as I've said, are "Save and "Slideshow". Save, well, it saves the picture files on the file-system in a folder you select, just like Save always does. But I don't keep pictures in folders like that... I keep them in iPhoto. How can it be, I think, that there is no iPhoto integration? Apple usually seems to understand how I do things, and the next thing I want to do with the pictures after I've looked at them is bring them into iPhoto. But there's no "iPhoto" button, and nothing in a drop-down menu. I can save them all to my Desktop and then drag them into iPhoto, but why should I have to perform extra steps? That's so... Windows. Then I have it. I'm still thinking like a Windows user. What would a right-brained Mac user do? Click and drag, my friend, click and drag. OK, I think. What can I drag?

How about the paperclip? Sure enough, I drag the attachment paperclip on to the iPhoto icon in the Dock. Presto magico. All the photos from the e-mail are now in iPhoto. Every time I think I'm mad at Apple for not understanding me, turns out I'm thinking too left-brained. I still think there should probably be an "iPhoto" option in the Save dropdown, but I'm happy enough with my occasional right-brain epiphanies. After all, Apple's brilliance with interface is what prompted me to make my latest purchase... a MacBook. As Denny says, "The white one like all my friends." Except, of course, those friends who have fancy silver. We shall not speak of them lest I lust for more than I have...