spell make it work emacs on AppleMac

[Richard Smith]

On AppleMac "Air" - laptop - using as-installed emacs.

ESC-x ispell not working - nor any other spell command.  Have lived
for years without "spell" program in emacs

Then couple of days ago, got surprise when accidentally pressed what
must have been the ESC-tab command - and got spell-check on preceding
word.
So ispell is installed?
Can I get it to work?

Fifteen to twenty years ago, would charge forward typing text making
many typo's and let ispell sort it all out.
Miss it terribly - help appreciated.

PS - does it make more sense to install a full unix?
Miss GnuPlot, xfig, the GIMP, etc.

Rich