PC to Macintosh

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Recently, I got addicted to the Trackpad on the new Macbook my mom bought so I decided to trade in my Dell 12 inch for this 13.3 inch. Although I had used the Macbook before 3 years ago, a lot of things still took time to get used to. Here, I have some tips for us PC-users unused to the formats of the Macintosh. Trust me, once you get used to these, you'll be able to get things done even quicker!

1. When you want to customize an application in Mac, click on the bolded name of the program and Preferences will be located there. This is unlike PC where options/preference customizing are under different tabs in different applications.
2. To "uninstall" or "install" an application in the Mac OS, simply drag the application out / in of the Applications folder.
   
3. Clicking the "enter/return" key in your PC allows you to open up a file. In Mac, it doesn't. It allows you to rename the file.
   
4. The counterpart of the lovely "ctrl" key we use in PCs in the Mac OS is the command key.
   
5. The "close", "minimize", "maximize" buttons for your window are at your top left hand corner now.
   
6. The maximize button (the green one in the top left hand corner of your window) does not expand your window to the full size. It expands/shrinks your window to what the system thinks is needed to view the window OR to the setting you set.
   
7. In order to expand a window, you longer can click on any side bar and stretch. You must go down to the bottom RH corner and click that corner (with the diagonal lines) to stretch / shrink your window.
8. Althought clicking the "exit" button in Windows will close the program for you, Macintosh requires you to actually quit the program yourself by either click "Command-Q" on your keyboard or going to the top navigation bar, clicking on the bolded name of your program and going to the bottom.
9. The dock is like your tool bar in Windows. (You can customize it way more. I'll go over it)
10. Don't look for a start menu. There isn't one. If you want to go somewhere quick, get into your Finder and go to the "Go" menu.
11. You know the MSN lock of PC's that Messenger Plus provides? That handy-dandy tool that allows you to hide MSN so that your parents/teacher won't know? You can now do that with every single application in the Mac OS by clicking Command - H on your keyboard (I'll go over more keyboard shortcuts)
12. To show all of your open windows in Mac, simply scroll down 4 fingers on the new trackpad or click Fn - F9. (I will go over the trackpad)
13. To show all of your windows in the application you are using right now, click Fn-F10
    
14. To hide all of your windows and reveal your desktop (sort of like that Desktop shortcut in Windows), simply scroll up 4 fingrs on the new trackpad or click Fn-F11