Your first steps in Mac OS X
June 6th, 2009
In the first part of my series describing what hardware you need to become a developer for Apple’s iPhone platform i’ve already highlighted some aspects which will make your first steps on the Mac OS X platform feel like you’ve had both your legs broken and you’re just learning to walk again, building up your muscles and all. Incidentally, and physically, i’ve gone through that painful process in 2008 due to a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament (some important muscle in the knee). Now i am repeating a similar, although mostly mental process by getting accostumed to the Mac OS X platform. For this reason i’m writing this post on my Mac mini, and as always i’m struggling to find the keys on my “keyboard of the gods” for the angle brackets: < > …. Ha, GOTCHA!
So without further blabla, let’s go to the next part of the series:
- Investing in the Hardware
- Getting used to Mac OS X (old habits die hard)
- Becoming an Apple Developer
- Learning to code in Objective-C using Xcode
- Getting the right Game Engine
I’m assuming you’ve just booted your Mac for the first time and went through the initial system preferences setup process. You’re now on the desktop wondering what to do first. You’ll immmediately notice the bar of icons at the bottom, this is called the dock. It harbors the applications that Apple deems important to users but you can modify that quite easily. From the icon’s names you’ll be able to decipher what the program does. For example, “Finder” is Apple’s equivalent to Microsoft’s “Windows Explorer”.
As you run some of these programs you’ll notice they don’t have a menu bar. Well, actually they do but they all share the same menu bar which is always located at the top of the screen. The menu options available change depending on which application is in the foreground. It may seem confusing at first but you’ll quickly rely on the top screen menu. The applications itself carry only the most often used functions in their window frame: drag the title to move the window, drag the lower-right corner to resize the window (for some reason you can’t resize windows by just dragging any frame border) and use the traffic light buttons to close, minimize and maximize the window.
One word about “closing” applications. If you click the red (X) button you might think that this closes the application but on Mac OS X it only hides the application. Click on the application’s icon in the dock once again to unhide it. Minimizing via the yellow (-) button minimizes it to the dock as an additional icon. Now how the heck do you really quit an application on Mac OS X? Simple, you either go through the menu by clicking on the application’s name (next to the Apple symbol) and choose quit, or you right click the icon on the dock and choose quit. At first it will be confusing not to know which application is still running and which is truely closed but there’s actually an indicator for that on the dock as well. Underneath each icon you’ll see a little white light shining as long as that application is still running. And speaking of the red (X) – sometimes it turns into a dot. This is an indicator that the document has changed but isn’t saved, similar to how the asterisk * symbol is usually suffixed to modified but unsaved document name’s on Windows.
One of the first things we programmers like to do with a new system is to toy with the system preferences. We may even have to before we do anything else just to set up our monitor(s) properly. Now where the hell do i get to the Control Panel equivalent on Mac OS X? Here it’s called System Preferences and you can find it either via the dock or by clicking on the Apple symbol in the menu and choosing System Preferences. The Preferences screen should seem familiar, although there’s two things that may seem odd: for one, once you click an icon, it shows the preferences but hides all other icons. To get back to the other preferences you can just click on the back button or on “Show All”, no need to close preferences to re-open it. Secondly, once you have made a change, how do you apply that? Simple: you don’t. All preference screens you’ll see on Mac OS X won’t have an apply command because each change is applied immediately, and if it has a visible effect it will become active right away – otherwise you’ll be asked to log off or reboot which is, especially compared to Windows, rarely the case.
So for a start this should be enough to get you going. You’ll still be a foreigner to this system for the first few days, and if you’re anything like me you’ll be even shouting at it, wrangling the screen and waving your fist to the god’s swearing how they had to make this all so different. Many things can become a showstopper and leave you frustrated. That’s why i do recommend to look back each day and remember what you’ve learned, or even mastered. Even though you’ll be banging your head frequently, running into walls, you’ll learn a lot as well. This is just your brain telling you it doesn’t want to learn, it wants things to be like it is used to because it’s so darn lazy. It’s not a good feeling not to feel productive but at least you can imagine what it feels like, at least mentally, what it’s like to be disabled (i mean physically now). Did you ever injure one of your hands or arms, so you couldn’t even do the simplest things anymore, like taking a shower, getting dressed or opening a can of worms (that’s gagh for you non-trekkers)? Think of it that way: you’re getting better each day!
And to ease your transition a little more, here’s a quick addendum of things you should know because you’ll be wanting to know that very soon:
General hint: drag & drop is a major feature of Mac OS X. It has more support and is more accepted than on Windows, so certain things will just work like you would expect them to – if you weren’t so used to drag & drop frequently not working at all, or as intended. Try to drag & drop often and see for yourself – in many cases it just works. Even for adding additional projects, libraries and source code to your Xcode project. There’s often no need to dig deep inside the build configuration.
General hint: download and install your favorite applications. For example, Firefox and Opera instead of trying to get used to Safari. It will make it easier for you to make the transition just because you’ll have something familiar to use in this new environment. Unless you were still browsing exclusively with Internet Explorer. You weren’t, right?
General hint: be careful when using TextEdit for text editing. It saves new documents as RTF by default. Personally i found Smultron working well for my text editing needs. Plus it’s developed by some person named Borg – as a weak-minded individual i couldn’t resist. But it might have something to do with the keyword “free” as well.
How do i make the Mouse Back/Forward browser buttons work?
Install the driver for your Mouse. My Logitech mouse has a Mac OS X driver which enables the system to make use of the additional buttons. The same goes for Keyboards as well, my Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000 works just as well as an Apple keyboard with the exception of some strange remappings of keys, eg. the angle brackets key is swapped with the tilde key. Grrrr. But i’ll get used to it.
Where do i find additional applications?
Open the Finder. In the left frame look for “Places” and then select Applications. You can start them from there or drag them onto the dock if you need that application more often.
How do i install applications?
Most come in the form of a single .DMG file. This is sort of like a disc image, just double-click it and it will be mounted as a “drive” which opens a Finder window. The application’s icon then only needs to be dragged and dropped onto the “Applications” place in the Finder to install it. Yes, that’s how you install applications on Mac OS X. Some do have the classic setup wizard though. Others will want you to sudo your commands in the terminal – in that case hope for good instructions, or else take it to google.
How do i make the Home/End keys work like in Windows?
Yeah, that was a big one for me. Home/End moves the view to the end of the document, WTF?!?
Luckily i wasn’t the first one to be frustrated by this behavior, and here are some resources to help you get the behavior that you want:
Simple Mac OS X key bindings for Windows switchers if you need the quick-fix
Costumizing Cocoa Key Bindings, with extensive resources
Another Key Bindings site with additional help
Default Mac OS X System Key Bindings, if you’d rather learn them instead of tampering with them
Sadly, it doesn’t work in all applications. Opera for example.
