Joe’s

Introductory Guide to the Mac

Written by Jacob Tyler

Useful Accounts 2

Applications 3

Application Equivalents 3

Useful Applications 3

Useful To Know 6

Useful Links 6

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts & Tricks 6

Key Points to Remember 6

Useful Accounts

These would likely be useful to set up before you leave your existing system, they may even
be useful for the transition, you probably already have most of them.

Account Features You May Want to Utilise Integration

Apple ID • This is very useful for features such as the apple iWork Suite,
online shopping, but also iTunes & iWork iTunes

Google Account • Email - this is IMAP, currently the most superior Apple Mail,
protocol for email, it also means your email is Mozilla
integrated into any and all email clients on any Thunderbird,
OS, additionally changes are mirrored across all Browser, Read
clients including the web Air, Address
• ‘Google Reader’ - this is an RSS feed client, it Book, iCal
takes feeds from websites such as news and
blogs and collates them into a single feed or
access point, then changes are mirrored across
all devices / clients including the web interface
• ‘Google Wave’ - Postulated as the next evolution
of email, having this service recently out of
google’s labs should put you at the forefront of
the protocol’s dissemination and evolution, plus
you can chat to me!! :)
• Contacts - enables you to synchronise and
maintain a constant address book which is
identical across all of your devices
• Calendar - again enables synchronisation of your
calendar across all of your devices and has a
nice web interface

YouTube • Allows upload of movies from apple video Keynote, iMovie,

(kinda Google but programs via the share menu Quicktime X,
sort of separate)

AIM • This is incredibly useful for native support of iChat

video chat with iChat

Facebook • Though you most certainly already have one of iPhoto

these, the integration especially within iPhoto is
highly useful

Scribd • This is very useful for sharing documents in iWork Suite

HTML format with other people on any system,
even mobile devices, in fact anything with html
capabilities will be able to access your shared
documents.
Applications

Application Equivalents

Application Windows OS X Options Link to OS X

Utilisation

Blackberry Sync Blackberry Desktop Blackberry Desktop http://

Software for Software for Mac uk.blackberry.com/
Windows services/desktop/
desktop_mac.jsp

Media Library iTunes for windows iTunes Pre-Installed

(inferior stability)

Media Playback Quicktime 7 Quicktime X Pre-Installed

Productivity MS Office iWork http://apple.com/uk/

iWork

System Monitor Task Manager Activity Monitor Pre-Installed

IM Client MSN Messenger or Adium http://adium.im/

Windows Live
Messenger AMSN http://www.amsn-
project.net/

Useful Applications

Unless otherwise stated the below applications are free.

Application Functions Link

VLC Is an open source library of media playback http://

codecs. Will play pretty much any AV media www.videolan.org/vlc/
type download-
macosx.html

Handbrake This is an open source video encoder, it uses http://handbrake.fr/

media encoding libraries from VLC to re- downloads.php
encode video from a variety of formats
(including straight off a DVD) into a variety of
formats but I would recommend you encode
into H.264 and use the ‘universal’ preset
 Application Functions Link

Google Chrome An Alternative Web Browser, although it uses http://google.co.uk/

the same rendering engine that Safari uses chrome
(webkit) the architecture is different as well
as the UI, personally I use it as a
complement to Safari, it can be faster to
start up than safari & firefox

Mozilla Firefox An Alternative Web Browser, although slower http://

to initiate and often slower browser speeds www.mozilla.com/en-
than safari & chrome, it is useful to have US/
around since it uses a different rendering
engine (gekko) to Chrome & Safari, as such if
a web page is broken in either of the above
then it may work in firefox

Skype VOIP application, proprietary, widely used http://

alternative for www.skype.com/intl/
en-gb/

MindNode Is mind mapping software, although it http://

cannot handle pictures yet, it is pretty www.mindnode.com/
impressive, there is a light version with a load
of features missing which is free, otherwise
the full version (MindNode Pro) is around
£10.00 it is totally worth it though as, as
soon as you get it, it will become one of the
most valuable revision tools you have. Oh
and you have got to love it when you
‘reorganise nodes’ and they all side into
place perfectly

BBC iPlayer Although it runs through an inferior adobe www.bbc.com/iplayer

runtime, i.e. ‘Adobe AIR’ which is similar to
flash in that it aims to give cross platform
compatibility for those too lazy to build native
apps, this is not a mac specific program
though the BBC’s implementation of the
flash runtime rather than a native application
is rather frustrating especially when they had
to re-write the program into the AIR runtime
anyway. The program performs the very
basic functionality, though not particularly
efficiently, there is no hardware decoding of
the video content, so expect the program to
be unnecessarily processor intensive and to
eat up a disproportionate amount of system
resources. You also no keyboard control.
 Application Functions Link

Address Book The address book is an alien concept to Pre-Installed

Mac new comers, used to coming from an
inferior implementation of the windows
contacts if you ever used this program I
doubt you will have placed much trust in it.
As a program the address book functions to
access the central contacts database, which
is a core system resource. As such any
native programs written for mac are used to
accessing and writing to the central
database. This keeps all your contacts in
sync across all uses u may have for them.
The address book may need a little initial
organisation to get things just the way you
like them and to gain uniformity across your
contacts, especially if you are importing an
existing database.

Apple Mail The apple mail application, presents a unified Pre-Installed

inbox for all your mail accounts. It works with
all industry standard mail accounts, if you
have a choice of protocol then use the IMAP
protocol to access your email and keep all
changes synced, POP will simply download
the messages to the mail app and you will
be forced to read them on the app, since
they are removed from the server. The
application will therefore work with a GMail
account as well as your keele email. The only
service I know of that does not use modern
email protocols is hotmail, since this is a
backwards MS service, it’s failed
implementation is solely supported by ad
revenue so they do not provide modern
email protocol support or alike.

Safari Is the native implementation of the open Pre-Installed

source webkit project. Chrome runs on the
same rendering engine (webkit), chrome can
be faster at times, however safari is apple’s
native browser and is often easier to use.
Useful To Know

Useful Links

http://www.apple.com/uk/getamac/

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts & Tricks

First off most keyboard shortcuts are labeled on the menu commands, but symbols are used.

Symbol Name

⎋ Escape

⌘ Command

⌃ Control

⌫ Backspace

⌥ Option

⇧ Shift

Command clicking a link in browsers will open the link in a new tab, command + option
clicking a link will open in a new window.

Key Points to Remember

• Watch the ‘Anatomy of a Mac’ video on the apple website

• Give yourself time to adjust to the windowing model, since maximising a window is
impossible don’t try and do it!! Get used to the windowing model, it is far more efficient and
effective model than maximising things all the time like you are brainwashed into doing on a
windows system. Inspectors are your friends! Remember you can usually open another one
by option clicking the inspector button or a tab in the inspector.
• Mac OS X is not windows, it is a far superior operating system and one of the most
confusing things during the transition to most people is the way applications work! The
dock is kind of like the start bar, however it isn’t just the programs with windows open that
will run, some apps will stay alive ready to pop back open at the drop of a hat, this is
intended behaviour and it is rather useful, especially in situations like when iTunes is
downloading something, even if you accidentally (or on purpose) close all the windows
iTunes has open (usually just the one) then the program is still running and therefore the
download is uninterrupted. :) Mac OS X has what is called pre-emptive multitasking, it
means that pretty much however many programs you have open or things doing things,
you will hardly notice any performance change, you have the full power of the system
whether you have 5 programs open or 20! Obviously if you are doing high power things like
encoding a video you may notice a slight drop in performance, however this isn’t to do with
 multitasking it is simply that it is using the full power of the CPU to encode the video as fast
as possible. So although you may not feel right having a load of programs open at the
same time it’s all good, the OS can handle it.
• The dock works best if you keep it uncluttered, when you first log on it is populated with an
inordinate amount of programs many of which you will only use once in a while. I would
suggest completely clearing the dock (simply drag them off the dock into a puff of smoke)
then repopulating it with those applications you use a lot after a few days of use I would try
and limit the number to around fifteen applications, then drag the applications folder onto
the right side of the dock to make a stack
• Programs are far superiorly implemented on OS X, whereas on a windows system, the app
itself is not available to you it is spread across the system haphazardly. In contrast most
small to midsize apps that you install are self contained, you simply drag the program
(which is actually a package - a folder that appears as a single file) from the disk image
(.dmg file) which mounts to the computer and appears as an external disk into the
applications folder. Alternatively large complex programs which are either badly coded (MS
office suite) or want to install system resources, can present an easy to use install programs
(.mpkg files) which will install everything for you. Yes most programs put common resources
and core data in your home directory and system directory libraries but that shouldn’t affect
you. To uninstall a program simply drag it to the trash.
• The trash can fills up with files you delete or files which are replaced during an update, it
functions similarly to the recycle bin (which again was a badly implemented MS copy). You
may want to empty it often, I find myself annoyed when there is rubbish in the trashcan.
• To unmount an external disk simply drag it’s icon from the desktop to the eject icon, which
is where the trashcan is, but only appears when you begin to drag a disk icon. Alternatively
use the sidebar in the finder.
• Don’t expect to feel right at home right away! You are used to a completely different OS
(*cough* a far inferior one *cough*). Once you are used to the Mac you will find it really easy
to switch between systems it isn’t like your OS X relationship replaces your Windows one.
• The ‘CTRL’ key on windows DOES NOT map to the control key on mac, it is MS attempt to
copy the Mac Command Key, which was the original modifier key. Therefore where ‘CTRL’
+ ‘C’ is copy on the mac it is Command + C
• You can’t quit the finder, so don’t try, however if you are having problems with it, you can
relaunch it through the force quit dialogue (on the apple menu or ⌘ + ⌥ + ⎋)
• To force quit an application, either click and hold on the dock icon to bring up expose for
the app and the app window options, if you then hold the option key, the quit choice
changes to ‘force quit’! Alternatively Command Option Escape will bring up something
similar to task manager! DO NOT use activity monitor to quit processes, it will fuck you up if
you don’t know what your doing, since I don’t I doubt you will! Xx
• If you save your passwords to the keychain, although they are highly secure you can
access them through the ‘keychain access’ app, in the utilities folder, you will have to type
your password to access the password in the info panel.
• Try and keep your home directory organised.
• Play around with the OS, it’s hard to break, your fine to just change settings etc, play
around get to grips with what it can do.
• Enjoy OS X it is far superior! Chances are that if you think it can’t do something that
windows can, you just don’t know how to do it on OS X - YET!