Top Ten Tips For Every New Mac User

Article by Lantern (5,801 pts ) , published Jun 28, 2009

If you are new to Mac, I would recommend these useful tips that can really help you become comfortable with the Mac platform.

Screen Capture

Screen capture is something that is a need of every computer user. Windows lets you capture the screen with the Print Screen button but it is not capable of capturing a part of the screen of your choice. Now let us see how we can capture the screen in Mac. You press Cmd+Shift+4 and a crosshair pointer will appear. This lets you select a region on screen with just a click and drag. The captured area will be saved as Picture1.png on your desktop. This will be the exact screen capture you wanted, so no need to do any editing.

Installing Applications

Many people get confused when they switch to Mac as to how to install an application. New Mac users often struggle to get it at first but actually it is very simple and easy. There are a few methods to install an application but the most common is with a disk image/.dmg file. For example you have an application called myApplication.dmg, double-click on it. This will mount the disk image and an icon on your desktop will appear. You need to double-click on the icon to view its contents. Once you have double-clicked on it, you will see the application icon in a new window. Now, drag and drop this icon into your Application folder. Done! Your application is installed and ready to be run.

Closing Stubborn Applications

Everyone encounters unresponsive applications and if you have come from Windows, you probably have used the Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination to open Task Manager for force quitting such applications. The Mac equivalent of this shortcut to open up the system tasks profiler is Cmd+Options+Esc and Windows+Alt+Esc on a PC keyboard. Once the window opens, just select the frozen application from the list and click on the Force Quit button.

Keybaord Shortcuts

Using keyboard shortcuts saves you time and makes your tasks complete much faster. These are a few handy keyboard shortcuts that you can start using today:

Cmnd+M Minimizes the Finder

Cmnd+H Hides current application

Cmnd+K Connects to server

Cmnd+I Opens Get Info window for selected item

Cmnd+Shift+Del Empties Trash

Cmnd+N New Finder window

Cmnd+Q Quits active application

Cmnd+Shift+N Creates a new folder.

Cmnd+O Opens selected item

Cmnd+Shift+A Opens the applications folder

Cmnd+F Find

Cmnd+Option+W Closes all Finder folders

Cmnd+X Cut

Cmnd+C Copy

Cmnd+Z Undo

Cmnd+V Paste

Cmnd+A Select All

Cmnd+Del Deletes item(s)

Cmnd+Tab – Rotate through and toggle to open applications

Cmnd+E Ejects volume, server or media

Cmnd+? Mac Help

Screen Zooming

Mac comes with a great feature that lets you zoom in the screen. To use the feature, just hold down the Control key and scroll your mouse up. You will see your screen growing in and if you want to zoom out then scroll the wheel down. This feature works on Mac Notebooks as well, to achieve this, scroll the trackpad with two fingers.

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