Apple's new user-friendly Macintosh could turn out to be just a little too forward for the experienced micro user.

The machine is so easy to use and operates in a fashion so unlike most traditional business systems that many experienced hands may find themselves confused by it.

The disk filing system, for instance, can be operated in one of several ways - each of which has a bearing on the ultimate performance of the machine. If you use the Mac's disk system in the normal way some very unexpected things happen.

On the single-drive version (which is what will be sold first in this country), you open a MacPaint or MacWrite data file from a data diskette merely by placing the 'pointer' over the appropriate ikon and pressing the mouse button twice.

You must then make up to ten disk swaps with a program disk in order to start work.

Apple says this option is only for people who have dual drives - where the disk-swapping wouldn't be necessary and the Mac would automatically get the files from the second drive. To use the single-disk system to its best advantage you must load up a program from the program disk - once it's loaded - close the data file it automatically opens.

The screen will then go blank except for five 'keywords' at the top of the screen. You would be forgiven for thinking at this point that you'd exited from the program. But it is actually at this point that you eject the program disk and put in a data disk from which you can load data files with only two disk swaps.

A little confusing for those old hands among us accustomed to mostly blank screens meaning mostly blank memory.