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You can always get the effect of a right
click by holding down Ctrl and clicking the single button.
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technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and
commentaries, continuously available online since
1983
T h e R o a
d L e s s T r a v e l e
d
How a modern Mac differs from a Windows PC, Part
1
Jan. 1, 2003
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard
When I switched to an Apple Macintosh
running OS X, the new Unix operating system for the Mac, I
had to learn a lot of new things. Most of them were small
changes, such as where the Close button is located on each
window.
But some changes were harder to get used
to. To help others in the same situation, I've put
together a guide to some of the differences between a
modern Mac and a modern Windows PC. This guide applies only
to Mac OS X computers. (The older Macintosh operating
system, called Mac OS, has been discontinued.)
This week I'll cover some of the
basics. Next week I'll write about the desktop, window
operations and the OS X taskbar, called "the
Dock."
KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
Macintosh computers use a slightly
different keyboard from the ones on Windows PCs. The Mac
keyboard has more function keys (F13, F14 and F15) and it
has a CD eject key at the upper right. It also has a key
that mutes the Mac's stereo sound and a pair of keys
for raising and lowering the volume. Standard Windows
keyboards don't have those keys, but enhanced PC
keyboards often do. (And, yes, PC keyboards sometimes work
on a Mac and Mac keyboards sometimes work on PCs, as long
as you connect both of them using USB and you don't
mind a few glitches.)
Macs come with an unusual mouse. It has
no visible buttons. To make a click you have to press down
on the front of the mouse where a button ought to be. (The
entire mouse sort of rotates downward.) You can't use
the Mac mouse wrong, since no matter how you press down on
the front of mouse it you get a click. It's also an
optical mouse, using a red light beam, so it has no mouse
ball to get fuzzed up or rollers to get dirty.
You'll probably like the way this
works, but most people who have used a two-button mouse in
Windows miss the second button on a Mac. Don't despair.
Macs can use any USB mouse made for Windows; you simply
plug it in and it works. Even the scroll wheel works.
If you like the Mac mouse too much to
give it up but still miss the right button, you can always
get the effect of a right click by holding down Ctrl and
clicking the single button ... er, the front of the
mouse.
But the Mac's built-in mouse-control
software doesn't let the mouse move very quickly.
Windows, on the other hand, let's you turn your mouse
pointer into a speedy rocket. You can fix this Mac
deficiency by adding a mouse accelerator program. (I'll
tell you about my favorite Mac OS X utility programs in
coming weeks.)
STARTUP AND SHUTDOWN
Pressing the power button on a Mac
starts up the computer just as it does on a Windows PC.
Once the Mac is running, pressing the power button briefly
puts the Mac to sleep. If your Mac is not responding,
holding the button in for at least seven seconds forcibly
shuts it down. Don't use the forced shutdown unless
there's no other way to turn the computer off.
When your Mac is asleep, the power
button remains lit. Touching the power button wakes it up.
You can also bring it back awake by pressing one of the
Shift keys on the keyboard.
As soon as you turn on your Macintosh,
it sounds a friendly musical chord. This is sure to impress
your Windows friends because Windows computers can't
make any musical sounds until they are booted up. If you
hear the chord, your Mac's hardware is healthy and
everything should be OK.
There are two safe ways to turn off your
Mac using the mouse and keyboard. You can click the Apple
menu at the upper left of the screen and then click
"Shutdown" or you can hold Ctrl-Shift-Command
while pressing the Eject key.
Next: Connecting things to a Mac, and
how the Dock works.
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