Ah yes. You just spent weeks at the mac store trying out products, pestering the employees and you finally made a decision. You bought a mac. You bring it home and open it up. Plug it in, turn it on and wait. The boot process is rather quick and soon you are prompted for all of the usual information that is required when setting up a new computer. The interface is quick, smooth almost like... water? There is a reason that the mac user interface is called aqua.

Now that the computer set up is done, it is time to get familiar with the mac user interface. The first thing that you will notice is that there is no start menu. The bottom of the screen consists of a dockbar that contains application launchers and open applications. To launch an application simply click on the icon. Open applications will appear to the right of the dockbar. To add applications to the dockbar simply drag the icon into the menu. Installed software items all appear in the file system under the applications folder. The file system can be accessed directly by double clicking the hard drive icon located to the right of your desktop.

The top of the screen contains a tool bar. The date and time are listed to the right, along with the volume control. The left of the tool bar contains a number of menus. The apple symbol will allow you to edit system preferences as well as shut down. The finder menu allows you to edit and keep your file system in order. File, Edit, and View all allow you to manipulate, create, and edit folders. The first thing that you will probably notice is that mac mouses by default do not contain a right mouse button. A two button mouse can be used however. The go menu makes it easy to access different folders in the file system. The window menu simply controls which windows are in focus. Finally help is just what it seems. A help menu that tries to answer common questions about the mac operating system.

When an application is open the menus for the application itself actually appear in the tool bar that was just mentioned above. Minimize, maximize and close buttons are all located in the upper left hand corner of the current application window. To exit the application itself you have to go to the actual application menu and select exit. An open application will be marked using a black arrow at the bottom of your dockbar. If you have more than one application open at a time you can switch between them by selecting it from the dockbar. Another quick way of switching between applications is to tap the f9 key. This will show a thumbnail version of all applications open. click on the thumbnail of the application that you want and it is brought into focus. While fundamentally different from the windows operating system macs are relatively simple to learn. A lot of the headache has been taken out of setting them up and getting them to run right.

Learn more about this author, Matt Schmittdiel.
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