Basic Introduction to Mac

Never used a Mac before? Here are some things you should know first

On top there's the white Menu Bar. In its left corner the blue Apple logo, home of the Apple Menu. At it's right the Spotlight Icon, and your Hard disk is located just below on the desktop itself.
At the bottom of your desktop there's a transparent thing filled with icons. This is called The Dock.

Removable disks
Any cd, dvd or cd-rom you put the drive, will appear on the Desktop. Other external disks, like USB flash-cards or external hard drives, act exactly the same.
If you want to eject a disk, modern Mac-keyboards have a special eject-key on the upper right:

You can use that eject-key, but you can also use your mouse to drag the disk to the Trash. It will automatically change into an 'eject' symbol: 

The Trash is a tool to get rid of data ànd disks too.

Apple Menu
You'll find the options for Shut Down, Restart and Sleep*** in the Menu down the blue Apple logo. Click the logo and the so called 'Apple Menu' flips open.
Note: it's not necessary to keep pressing your mouse button all the way.  

SWITCH TIPS
Using discs in the Mac and in Windows
In the MS Windows operating system it is custom to name the disc drives by the letters of the alphabet. With this, it doesn't matter whether there's a disc in it or not.
For example, E: CD-ROM, F: DVD-burner, A: disc-drive.
On the Mac, a disc only appears when it's really in the drive and discs have names chosen by their owners (the default name for our hard drive is 'Macintosh HD').

The Mac and it's keyboard
Windows users may have noticed that an Apple keyboard is slightly different compared to a Windows keyboard:

- A Windows keyboard (the black one) uses Control, Windows, Option.
- The white Apple keyboard: at the left and right of the Space Bar you can find Control-key (Ctrl), Option-key(Alt) en Command-key (Apple).
Note: In case you decide to use a Windows keyboard with your Mac, the Option-keys will probably act as the Command keys.

Numlock key
A Numlock key doesn't exist on an Apple keyboard. You can work with the key-pad right along, without using a Numlock key first, except on a MacBook, you'll need to use the Fn key.

Delete key
The Mac doesn't have a delete key as Windows uses. You can use Backspace instead.

Fn key on laptops
On MacBooks, iBooks and Powerbooks, use the Fn key at the lower left of your keyboard to increase the keyboard lay-out with numeric keyboard and so on