HOME
TOPICS
ABOUT ME
M AIL

 
One tip: Get rid of Apple's silly mouse.
  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
5 secrets to using Mac OS X well


Sept. 3, 2003


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   Are there secrets to using a modern Mac effectively? Yes, there are. I'll let you in on five secrets this week.
   The Big Enchilada of Mac OS X secrets is an easy one to remember. The others are a bit more esoteric. Here they are:
   1. Keep your OS X Mac busy.
   Mac OS X is a Unix-derived operating system with very broad shoulders. When it's working hard, Mac OS X doesn't run out of energy and fall down dead like some versions of Windows do, and it has no problem doing dozens of tasks at the same time.
   For example, after reading your latest e-mail messages, you don't have to close the mail program; minimize it instead. And learn how to use the tabbed windows in Safari, Apple's industry-leading Web browser, and use tabs to open all the Web pages your heart desires. If you're working on a project in Microsoft Excel, you don't have to quit the program to do something else. Just minimize it to the Dock and get back to it later.
   Likewise, feel free to use iTunes for audio entertainment any time you want a lift; it will play CDs or any of your MP3 or Apple music store AAC files without affecting anything else your Mac is doing. I've even done what no Windows user could ever dare, playing iTunes MP3s while making DVD videos and reading my e-mail. (In case you wondered, Windows is, indeed, a multitasking operating system. It can crash while doing any other operation.)
   2. Get rid of Apple's silly mouse.
   Get a good two-button wheel mouse. The right button opens a context menu in just about every operation in OS X and in the programs that run under OS X. Computing is vastly simplified when you can click the secondary button and choose an option without touching the keyboard. And once you get used to scrolling with the wheel, everything else seems old fashioned. (Earth to Apple: Wake up!)
   3. Learn to love the Dock.
   I hated the Dock at first. A lot of new OS X users feel that way. Icons squish to one side or the other, items seem hard to find and there's just no sense to the way things are organized.
   Humbug. There's a very sensible organization. Documents you've minimized are at the right (or the bottom, if you have a vertical dock); programs are in the main part of the dock. If you launched a program from its Dock icon, that same icon represents the program when it's running. If you launched it another way, it gets a new entry, a new icon, in other words, in the main part of the dock.
   4. Learn to love Microsoft.
   I realize I'm asking what you might not be able to give, so hear me out. Four of the very best programs for OS X are Microsoft Word X, Microsoft Excel X, Microsoft Entourage X and Microsoft PowerPoint X. (Did you see the word "Microsoft" in that sentence a few times?) They are super slick, very powerful and able to leap tall documents in a single bound.
   They're also huge bargains when you buy them together in the Microsoft Office X suite. Use Microsoft's student discount to get Office X for less than $200. (That's a steal.) Did you say you're not a student? Get this: Officially, Microsoft doesn't care. If you know a student or have a student in your family, you qualify. (Microsoft does not ask you to verify your student status, and a company spokesman says that's intentional.)
   5. Think like Steve Jobs.
   Ol' Steve is the big guy at Apple, and he's always thinking of ways to make Macs better. You can think of ways to make YOUR Mac better. When you're shopping for computer gear, check Apple's Web site first to make sure you're able to get items that work properly with Mac OS X. (Some scanners, for example, simply won't work right with modern Macs.)
   Later this year I'll share five more OS X secrets.