Learning OS X | Mac Basics

by Joe on January 23, 2010 5 Comments

Essential Apps for new Mac Users

Updated October 2010 – This used to be a list of my 10 favorite apps, I find I’m using a lot more each day to make my life easier.

After you have time to play around with the applications built into the Mac, you might be wondering what else is out there. Here is my list of essential applications that I use everyday to make my Macbook more productive. Note that this list contains both freeware and commercial software. Some applications just need to be purchased.

Adium – Free - great cross platform messaging client. I prefer it to iChat because it cleanly manages all my accounts
Cyberduck – FTP application. If you manage a website you are going to want this program
Things – an awesome task list application. It’s great if you follow the GTD methodology. I’ve tried dozens of todo list applications and this one is the best
Screenflick – Commercial – inexpensive screencasting software. I use it to create the videos for this site
TweetDeck – I’ve dumped Seesmic for Tweet Deck, I like the layout and the support for multiple accounts
Transmission – Bittorrent client, download content from the Internet, fast.
VLC – if you download a video using Transmission and you need to play it, this application plays everything
1Password – great password manager, integrates with Firefox and Safari to keep all your passwords in a encrypted safe
LaunchBar – took over the duties of Quicksilver. Quicksilver, you were fun but sadly, you’re not well supported anymore. LaunchBar was endorsed by the original creator of Quicksilver and it rocks. Allows you to drive your Mac without using the mouse. Get, Love it.
VMWare Fusion – As much as I love OSX, I still occasionally need to run Windows applications. VMWare Fusion is the way to do it.
Unison – This is a great program for downloading binaries from USENET news groups. It’s really cool because it supports NZB files. If you don’t know what any of this means, check out newzbin.com.
Mac Office – the king of all office suites. I use it everyday and well, it’s really the best player out there.
Skitch – This is my new favorite application for taking screen captures. I use it nearly every day.

If you have any favorite Mac applications that you can’t live without, tell us about them.

by Joe on December 13, 2009 4 Comments

Welcome to your OS X Desktop

If you are following along in order, this is the first post you should read.

Welcome to OS X and your Mac Desktop. If you’ve never used a computer before or if you’ve never used a Mac, this post is going to give you a great overview of the pieces of the Mac OS X desktop. It covers some basic concepts and introduces a few terms that will be using over and over again. The entire tutorial should take you about 10 minutes to read through.

Behold, the Mac OS X Desktop in all it’s glory:

Behold! The Mac OS X Desktop

The desktop is broken into a number of sections. We will touch on each of them briefly here and give them deeper treatment in later articles.

Let’s start at the top of the screen.

The Apple Menu

The Apple Menu designated by the Apple symbol is a system wide menu and contains important menu items like Sleep, Restart and Shutdown. If you have your Mac setup for multiple users it also has a Logout Menu. The additional menu items we will touch on in later articles

The Menu Bar

Your interaction with your Mac is through running Applications When you surf the web, check email, view pictures, etc. you are using specific Applications. These applications are like obstinate children, they must be commanded before they will do anything. Commands are given through the use of application menus. When you are running an application, the commands for that application are always placed in the Menu Bar.

The commands are typically laid out in a logical structure so if you learn commands for one application, you will find similar commands for another application in the same place. Since you are currently reading this article on the Internet, you are probably looking at the Menu for Safari. Go ahead and click through some of the menu items. I’ll wait.

Menu Extras or Menulets

To the left of the Menu Bar is an area that holds Menu Extras or as they are affectionately known, “menulets”. Menulets provide quick access to common System Preferences items. They provide both a menu (click on one and you’ll see) and feedback (note the battery indicator in the screenshot). We’ll discuss these more in a later post.

Desktop

Below the menu area is the Mac Desktop. You can do all sorts of cool customizations to the desktop and we’ll get to those later. For now, know that the Desktop like a real desktop can hold things that you use frequently. In the screenshot above, our desktop contains an icon for a Mac Disk Drive. Keep in mind, you can drag any type of file or folder onto the desktop and if you’re not careful could end up with something like this desktop below.

The Dock

The Dock is the strip of icons at the bottom of your screen. The Dock is broken into two areas, the left side holds program icons, the right side holds everything else including folders and the trash can.

The program area of the dock provides you with one click shortcuts to open your favorite programs. You can add and remove programs to the dock by dragging the icons on and off the dock area.

The right side of the dock contains shortcuts to your Documents and Downloads folders. You can drag additional favorite folders into this area. It also houses the trash can where unneeded items go to die.

Summary

This is the end of our brief tour of the Mac OS X Desktop, additional articles will dive into each of these items in more detail.

by Joe on November 22, 2009 Leave a Comment

Opening and Closing Finder Windows

The Finder is the main application that you will interact with under OS X. This series of articles explores the very basics of the Finder. In this video we will show you how to manipulate the Finder window itself.

Open a New Window

You can open a new Finder window a number of ways, right click the Finder icon and select New Window, select New Finder Window under the Finder File menu, or pressing Command-N to open a new Window.

Minimize, Zoom, Close

Each Finder Window has three icons a + – and x. These control zooming, minimizing and closing.

by Joe on November 21, 2009 1 Comment

1Password 3 Released

1Password Icon I’ve talked about how much I like 1Password, the password manager and automated form filler, before. Now, version 3 is out and it looks to be a great improvement over it’s earlier versions.

The new version of 1Password boasts over 50 new features, some of the highlights include:

Password Anywhere which lets you securely use a web version of 1Password, storing your keys on an encrypted flash drive.
A Software license organizer, so you can keep all of those pesky software licenses out of your email and in something secure
The ability to edit your password items right from your browser
Tagging to help you keep your passwords organized

All in all, a great looking release with some really cool new features. Do yourself a favor, pickup this software. It will keep your passwords safe and keep you from having to remember them all.

by Joe on November 10, 2009 Leave a Comment

Free WiFi in Airports – Protect your Macbook

If you are one of the millions of people traveling through airports this holiday season, you are going to get the opportunity to surf the net for free thanks to partnership deals between WiFi providers and Google.

Before you jump on the internet though, you want to make sure your Macbook is protected from others trying to steal your stuff. Follow the instructions in this older post to get your Macbook Firewall configured.