This week we’re back to our series of “My First Mac” primers, designed to help ease the transition for those who have recently “escaped” from Windows bondage, and serve as reassurance for those who are still making their escape plans. We’ve talked briefly about security (the key word there is “briefly”) and now it’s time to get to the business of becoming familiar with your new Mac.

Let’s look around the Mac desktop. In the upper right corner you’ll find an icon labeled “Macintosh HD”. This icon represents your hard drive, which holds, of course, everything on your Mac. You can change the name to something more personal, and change it at will without affecting any of your files.
If you double-click on your hard drive icon, a “Finder” window opens. The Finder is actually a program within the Mac operating system that runs all the time, whose charge is to give you access to, manage, and even view all the files on your Mac. As painful as it may be to think back to your Windows days, think of the Finder as a more powerful merging of the “My Computer” window and the “Windows Explorer” program.

Every Finder window has a “sidebar” on the left side, which comes pre-configured to give you one-click access to your hard drive and Applications, Documents, Photos, and Movies folders. You can add files, folders, or applications you frequently use to the sidebar by dragging them into the sidebar yourself. Not to worry – only a clickable link is created – the original files, folders, and applications remain in their original and appropriate locations.

Finder windows offer three “views”, selectable by buttons on the top of the window. The “icon” view shows your files by their (you guessed it) icons. While pleasing to the eye, it’s the least efficient way to get around. The “list” view gives you an ordered listing of files, with expandable folders, which defaults to alphabetical sorting but can be customized to show files by size, date created, etc. The “columns” view presents your files in a list that expands horizontally through the hierarchical structure. When you click once on, say, an image or movie or audio file, you get an instant preview. You can even listen to an audio file or watch a movie within the column view without having to open a music or video player.

Each Finder window also sports a “Search” field. Simply start typing what you’re looking for, and Apple’s powerful Spotlight technology finds everything on your hard drive that “matches” your search. Note that I didn’t say “type the name of the file you’re looking for” into the Search window. Spotlight looks inside documents and files for content. Here’s an example. I want to find the MS Word documents containing articles I’ve written containing references to Apple’s “Aperture” digital photography application. Spotlight can find those articles even though the word “Aperture” doesn’t appear in any of the file names.

Let’s move on. At the top of your Desktop is the Mac’s menu bar. Unlike Windows, the Mac’s menu bar is constantly visible. The contents of the menu bar, and the functions it makes accessible, change with the application you’re using. If you have no other applications open, you’ll see the word “Finder” next to the little blue apple at the upper left corner of your display, and the menu items will control Finder functions.

When you open another application, like the Safari web browser for example, you’ll see the word “Safari” next to the little blue apple and the menu items will change to those specific to Safari functions.

Next time: an appointment for your first visit to the Dock.