Mac n00b / Switcher Tip: Mac Windows
One of the basic interface difference that someone new to Mac will notice (but not always fully understand) is the difference between the way Wintendo [some readers complained about my use of Windoze; so I've rethought my terminology*] handles windows compared to the way Mac does.
The most notable difference is that Window's Explorer and most Windows programs have their window control buttons in the upper right hand corner of the windows,
whereas the Finder (the Mac equivalent to Windows Explorer) and most Mac programs keep these buttons in the upper left hand corner of the windows. The function of these three buttons vary slightly as well. Find out more after the jump.
The x, as you all know closes the window. Easy right? Well, one of the fundamental interface differences that I see new Mac users overlook is that closing an application window on the Mac side of things doesn't close the application as it does in Windows. If you are in Microsoft Word on Windows and click the
x on the only open window, Word closes. If you do the same on Mac and click on the desktop, Word stays open in the background, actively eating up precious memory you could be using for other programs (OS X does a fairly good job of managing memory to prevent this situation from causing much slow down, but several programs out there still have memory leaks that can cause problems; in my experience Word has been one of those programs). The only indication that Word is still open is its presence in the Dock and the slowed performance of your Mac. I often see new Mac users with a nice handful of applications open and a Mac running a bit slow, but who think they only have one app open, because there is only one window left open. To quit applications in Mac OS, make sure you hit the Apple Key / Command Key + Q (for quit).
The other subtle difference between the two sets of window controls is the way that the minimize and maximize buttons work. On a PC running Windows, hitting the minimize button sends the window to the task bar next to the Start menu. Hitting Maximize fills the screen with the window. On the Mac, hitting - sends the window with a flashy animation over to the Dock. Pretty similar to the Windows side of things. However, hitting
+ doesn't always fill the screen with the window. Instead, it switches the window between its largest and smallest open settings. So if you have resized a window to fill the screen, you can hit
+ to toggle back to the default window size. A better example of this may be iTunes' behavior,
where hitting + switches between the two different iTunes interfaces, the expanded full library window view and the small player view.
That's it. Very basic, but often overlooked.
* ;-) Joking. Will use proper terminology from here on out. Promise!