Lesson 1: Replacement for your programs - the whole idea

You've bought a new Mac and said to all your friends that you switched from Windows. You have heard before, that things are done a little bit differently on a Mac, and everything "just works", but surprisingly, you productivity is suffering from the switch, just because you can't find things quickly because they are not where you search for them... That's fine. Just because Mac is different. You should really think different, that old advertising campaign did not lie. Thinking differently is not a bad thing, but you should spend some of your precious time to learn thinking differently.

Well, the first thing you need to understand is that there are very few exact replacements for your favourite Windows programs. Those exact replacements are not really _replacements_, they are just the same applications ported to Mac OS X platform. Like Mozilla Firefox, or OpenOffice, or Opera. If you came to Mac world thanks to Halo effect of your iPod, then you must have already been using iTunes on Windows. But that's it, the vast majority of Mac software is different, and - that is important - designed with other rules and ideas in mind. Before you make a small step towards understanding these new design principles, you will feel yourself uncomfortable while using your new computer...

Problems can start from Start Menu - the most addictive Windows feature that alone made Windows 95 so much better than Windows 3.11. This is not that dead simple in Mac OS X to launch whatever program from Dock - obvious analog of Taskbar for switchers. First you open Finder clicking on leftmost icon in Dock, there select Applications and then navigate through long list of items or program icons... Not that exciting? Yes, if you continue to launch programs in Windows way.

Actually, this is just one showcase of "Defaults matter" principle. Briefly, this principle says that in most cases, we need just one something, be it one program to handle file of some type, or one route to the nearest supermarket. Thanksfully, in Mac OS there are two ways to quickly approach your applications. At first, the icons in the dock are actually shortcuts to applications (this is like Quick Launch on Windows). Second, Apple Menu (click the blue apple sign that resides in the left in menubar regardless what program is active) provides handy Recent Items submenu, which is basically Recent Documents you know from Windows Start Menu _plus_ recent applications you have been running. And you can still put shortcuts on a desktop. If you absolutely hate opening Finder window to launch application which is not in Dock, Recent Items or on a desktop, you can still avoid doing it, clicking the blue icon in the right corner of menu bar. This is a Spotlight, integrated search application that will look for applications as well as for documents. Enter first letters of application's name, and you will see it in the list of Spotlight search results...

The same logic can be applied to all other techniques you are so used to use. Think differently and don't look for a complete replacement of things. The more Windows people come to Mac, the more "replacement" programs will appear, but not necessarily the old way of doing things is the most efficient one. Think about it.