- The Finder is Mac’s Windows Explorer.
The Mac alternative to Windows Explorer is the Finder. It’s the smiley face icon sitting at the far left side of the dock on the bottom of your screen.
- The Dock is a home for frequently used applications.
The Dock is the bar that sits along the bottom of your screen — it’s a convenient place from which you can access all of your frequently used applications.
- There are more apps than what’s in the Dock
There are more applications on your Mac than what’s in the Dock. Open up the Finder, click on “Applications” and take a look at what else you’ve got.
- You can add to the Dock
You can add an application to the Dock by dragging its icon from the Applications folder to the Dock.
- You can right click on a Mac.
If you have a one button mouse, you can right-click by holding CTRL and clicking.
- Save anything as PDF
You can save any document as a PDF by clicking File → Print and pressing the Save as PDF button.
- Learn the keyboard shortcuts
Many shortcuts are slightly different on a Mac, and use the CMD key instead of the CTRL key. For instance, Windows users copy & paste with CTRL-C/CTRL-V while Mac users copy & paste with CMD-C/CMD-V. The CMD key is the one with the Apple logo on it. Three other super-useful shortcuts are:
- CMD-Q - Quit the current application
- CMD-W - Close the current window
- CMD-Spacebar - Spotlight search
- Kill frozen applications
If an application is not responding, right click on its icon in the dock and select “Force Quit”.
- Spotlight helps you work superfast
To find anything on your computer, be it file, application, e-mail, contact or whatever, hold CMD and press the spacebar, then start typing what you are looking for.
- You can view WMV videos on a Mac
In fact, we published an entire article on how to play Windows Media Video on a Mac.
- Windows is to Mac as IE is to Safari
Apple’s alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer is the Safari web browser. Safari is the “compass” icon that’s sitting in your Dock. If you don’t like Safar, there’s always the excellent Mozilla FireFox.
- Learn the ins and outs of Expose
With one keystroke or flick of the mouse, your Mac can show you all your open Windows, move everything out of the way to show you the Desktop, and more. Read Of Zen and Computing’s “Take control of your Mac desktop with Expose” for a more in-depth look at this great program.
- Widgets are fun
In the dock, right next to the Finder, is a little speedometer-looking icon that brings you to the dashboard. The dashboard is a place for Widgets — mini programs designed for one specialized task such as showing you the weather or searching for the nearest cheap gasoline. More widgets are available from Apple’s Dashboard website.
- Removable hardware and media shows up on the desktop
Any time you attach some sort of device or insert a piece of media, such as CD, DVD, USB drive or memory card, an icon representing that device will appear on your desktop.
- Installing software is a snap
Installing new software on your Mac is extremely simple. Most software comes in the form of a “dmg” file. DMG is short for Disk Image, and when you double-click on a DMG file a “virtual disk” will mount to your desktop. Double-click on the newly mounted disk’s icon and you’ll see an icon for the software you’ve just downloaded.
For most software, installing is as simple as dragging its icon to your Applications folder. For other software packages, just double-click on the software’s icon to run its automated installation. You will see instructions alongside the software icon that tell you which of these methods to use.
That’s it for our list. There are many more tips for making the most of your new Mac, but these 15 should provide a good introduction to OS X for the newly converted. Macs are an excellent computing platform, and you should feel at home with your new machine in just a few hours or days. If you’d like to share your own tips with the readers of Of Zen and Computing, e-mail them to bliss@ofzenandcomputing.com.
[tags]Apple, Macintosh, Mac OS X, Switch[/tags]
