Things You'll Need:
- desire for ease of use
- money for a mac
- basic computer knowledge
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Step 1
Decide on a mac that suits you. The most common choices are the macbooks, imacs, and macbook pros. I suggest the middle tier macbook or imac unless you'll be using your mac for professional style audio recording or graphic editing, and even at that the more expensive models aren't all that necessary.
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Step 2
Once you've received the mac of your choice it's time to get down and dirty with your new shiny machine. The first thing you'll notice is the simplicity of OS X. It's important to remember not to over thing a task. No more redundantly clicking start to shut down, simply hit the power button. Keep your desktop organized by placing your most used apps in the doc. Also make use of spotlight! you can initiate a spotlight search by clicking on the magnifying glass in upper left-hand corner of the screen, or hit command+spacebar. start typing the first few letters of a filename or a file and it will be found instantly, simple hit return and launch the application.
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Step 3
Get used to your menu bar. Unlike windows, there is not a menu bar for each open wiindow, there is one bar that is affixed to the top of your screen. The menu bar changes to represent the menu options of the active window. This can be confusing at first, but in the long run it keeps things organized. Also make use of spaces and expose you can access these options and play around with them from the spaces application thats in your doc.
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Step 4
Now that you've whet your appetite with the beautiful OS X it's time to learn how to make your mac your own. The first thing your gonna wanna do is install your favorite applications from the internet, such as games or web browsers or IM programs. Keep in mind that ichat is the best way to use aim on your mac, and it's pre-installed also safari is the speediest web browser i've found for OS X.
When you download a program from the internet it is saved to your desktop as a .dmg which acts like a disk. when you open the disk a window pops open with the contents of the "disk" these usually include the program and a couple of readme doccuments. you then simply drag the program from that open window into your applications folder. And just like that the application is installed. Amazing huh?
Now that you know the basics, you should be able to play around with your new expensive computer and figure out how to just about anything.
Have fun!
