How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther

Mac OS X is an operating system, which controls all the operations you carry out on your Mac, but which also comes with many bundled applications. Here’s a list of what you get with Mac OS X and what the different programs do. (I don’t include here other applications bundled with specific Mac models that are not a part of Mac OS X.)

• Address Book This program manages your contacts and integrates with Mail and other programs. See Chapter 15.

• Calculator This is a powerful calculator with advanced mathematical functions, as well as memory, and can also convert dozens of values, such as areas, lengths, weights, and even currencies by updating its exchange rates over the Internet.

• Chess If you play chess, you’ll find this program to be quite a challenge.

• DVD Player This program controls your DVD playback if you have a built-in DVD drive in your Mac.

• Font Book This program lets you install and manage fonts.

• iCal Apple’s calendar program that lets you manage your appointments and tasks. See Chapter 15.

• iChat Apple’s instant messaging program, which lets you carry out text, audio, and video chats. See Chapter 10.

• iDVD If you have a Super Drive, which can write DVDs, you’ll have this program, which lets you author your own DVDs. See Chapter 18.

• Image Capture This program lets you import images from digital cameras and scanners.

• iMovie Apple’s powerful video editing software. See Chapter 18.

• Internet Connect This tool lets you control Internet connections with certain network interfaces. See Chapter 10.

• Internet Explorer Microsoft’s web browser for Mac OS X.

• iPhoto Apple’s digital photo software for importing, managing, organizing, and editing your photos. See Chapter 17.

• iSync This tool lets you synchronize your personal information between several Macs, or with Palm PDAs and some cell phones.

• iTunes Apple’s digital music program, which lets you create, listen to, and burn your own digital music files. You can also use iTunes to purchase music from the iTunes Music Store. See Chapter 16.

• Mail Apple’s e-mail program. See Chapter 10.

• Preview Apple’s tool for viewing images and PDF files.

• QuickTime Player This program lets you view video files in QuickTime format, and some other formats, on your Mac.

• Safari Apple’s web browser. See Chapter 10.

• Sherlock Apple’s web services tool. See Chapter 10.

• Stickies Apple’s program for creating and managing sticky notes.

• System Preferences This interface organizes all your Mac’s preference panes. See Chapter 9.

• TextEdit This simple text editor lets you create and read text files in plain text, RTF, and Word format.

Your Mac also includes a number of utilities, which are found in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. Here are a few of them:

• Activity Monitor This tool lets you see your Mac’s activity: its processor, which programs are running, its network activity, and much more.

• Disk Utility This tool lets you manage your hard disk and create and manage disk images. See Chapter 22.

• Installer Whenever you install Apple software, or most third-party software, this application handles the installation process. See later in this chapter for more on installing software. You’ll never need to launch this application manually, but you will use it for installing most software.

• Printer Setup Utility This tool lets you install and manage printers. See Chapter 14.

• Stuffit Expander This program lets you expand compressed archives. See Chapter 5.

• Terminal You can use Terminal to access the Mac OS X command line.

There are other utilities in your Utilities folder, but most users won’t need to work with them. If you want to find out about any of these programs, check your Mac’s online help.

Many Mac users have switched recently from Windows, and whether they can use Microsoft Office is one of the first questions they ask when they consider buying a Mac. Whether or not you think it's a good thing, Microsoft Office is the de facto standard for productivity software. Word and Excel are the most widely used word processor and spreadsheet programs in businesses and homes around the world, and PowerPoint is the most ubiquitous presentation software (although Apple's Keynote is a more intuitive program, and, frankly, makes better- looking presentations).

Many Windows users have pre-installed (or bundled) versions of Microsoft Office, which generally contain Word, Excel, Outlook, and Publisher. The Professional version contains these programs plus PowerPoint and Access. Microsoft also offers four different retail versions of Office, which contain four or five programs, plus a developer version that has additional tools.

If you purchase Microsoft Office v. X, the Mac OS X version of the suite, you'll quickly notice how similar its programs are to their Windows counterparts. While some functions are different, most are the same, and the Macintosh versions even have some functions that have not yet made it into the Windows versions. These programs are not just copies of the Windows programs, but were written for the Mac, taking into account the specificities of Mac OS X and its Aqua interface.

To ensure compatibility, the formats for these applications' files are exactly the same as their Windows cousins. You can create and save files on the Mac and send them to Windows users, and you can work on files Windows users send you.

The Mac version of Microsoft Office includes four programs: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage. Windows users are not familiar with Entourage, which is a powerful e-mail, contact, and calendar program, roughly equivalent to Outlook. However, the Macintosh version of Office does not offer Access, or any equivalent, nor does it offer Publisher. The Mac offers many comparable solutions to replace these programs. FileMaker Pro (www.filemaker.com) is a powerful cross-platform database solution, and for page layout, Adobe InDesign (www.adobe.com) and Quark XPress (www.quark.com) are industry standards.