Derrick
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A Twitter contact recently asked for a list of the top 10 things to know on a Mac. I switched about 10 months ago, so I’m still new. Here’s my contenders.
I’m a geek who grew up on DOS, and in our house Windows was definately ‘lower class computing’. However, because of my DOS background, I had a very good understanding of Microsoft’s system architecture. I also taught networking and systems software at university for a few years.
To install software, you just drag it to the ‘Applications’ folder. No installers, no registry, no registration. Just drag the .app file to the ‘Applications’ folder and it’s done. To uninstall you just move the .app file to Trash.
An application might seem to be only one file with a .app extension. In fact it is really a package that contains several files.
Hardware upgrades are mostly impossible. So forget about tweaking your hardware. But you can upgrade and add software.
Spotlight is powerful, but not always useful. It’s the built in search function, available from the top right in every app.
The little apple icon in the top left corner is known as the ‘Apple icon’. Sounds daft, but took me a couple of days to figure out. It contains universal links that’s always available.
The application menu is *always* across the top of the page. When you switch to another app, the menu stays in the same place but changes name.
An application’s preferences is *always* in the same place: under the application’s name on the menu bar.
Mac has Expose. *Use* it. It’s a built-in app that allows you to see all the windows, all the windows of the current app or no windows and only the desktop.
File extensions don’t define the type of file: the OS doesn’t use the extension to figure out how to use the file.
On the new Intel MacBooks, scroll up/down/left/right with two fingers on the track pad. Right click by touching two fingers and then clicking the button.
This is the first ten things I could think of in about 20 minutes. It’s obviously not complete, so feel free to add your top usefull things to know about Macs.
I’m a geek who grew up on DOS, and in our house Windows was definately ‘lower class computing’. However, because of my DOS background, I had a very good understanding of Microsoft’s system architecture. I also taught networking and systems software at university for a few years.
To install software, you just drag it to the ‘Applications’ folder. No installers, no registry, no registration. Just drag the .app file to the ‘Applications’ folder and it’s done. To uninstall you just move the .app file to Trash.
An application might seem to be only one file with a .app extension. In fact it is really a package that contains several files.
Hardware upgrades are mostly impossible. So forget about tweaking your hardware. But you can upgrade and add software.
Spotlight is powerful, but not always useful. It’s the built in search function, available from the top right in every app.
The little apple icon in the top left corner is known as the ‘Apple icon’. Sounds daft, but took me a couple of days to figure out. It contains universal links that’s always available.
The application menu is *always* across the top of the page. When you switch to another app, the menu stays in the same place but changes name.
An application’s preferences is *always* in the same place: under the application’s name on the menu bar.
Mac has Expose. *Use* it. It’s a built-in app that allows you to see all the windows, all the windows of the current app or no windows and only the desktop.
File extensions don’t define the type of file: the OS doesn’t use the extension to figure out how to use the file.
On the new Intel MacBooks, scroll up/down/left/right with two fingers on the track pad. Right click by touching two fingers and then clicking the button.
This is the first ten things I could think of in about 20 minutes. It’s obviously not complete, so feel free to add your top usefull things to know about Macs.