New to the MacOS ecosystem

[The Hammer]

Why? It's a month after final release and it already works fine. I don't see any bug at this point. That's a good practice to always upgrade your system to the newest version because of security. If you don't use any niche software you shouldn't have any problems. Waiting to next system version with upgrading to the actual it's just crazy (and not recommended). You are doing harm to the user you recommend it. He is the user with clean installation so there isn't any reason to not upgrade.

Don't get me wrong I install all recommended updates and security patches as they are issued.

 

[jamietshaw]

I have often had to ask Windows users to use a Mac for some particular task at work and I find people get tripped up on tiny differences. They think that if something doesn't happen in exactly the same way as it does on Windows, it’s wrong. It’s not necessarily wrong, it’s just a difference. Yes, some things are a bit better on Windows and some things are better on a Mac and if there is a difference, try to go with it rather than trying to fight it.

One of the biggest struggles I see people have is with the concept of a window, so here’s a few tips.

1. If you need to get to your desktop or just some window behind another, don’t start minimising all your windows. That’s just as inefficient as it is in Windows. Use the Mission Control key on your keyboard (F3) to show all windows then click on the window you want. Or use some other method to switch between windows (see tip 3)
2. The green button in the top left of a window is not exactly the same Windows’ “Maximise” button. It usually makes the window fully full screen (like if on Windows the taskbar were to disappear when you maximised a window). If you hold the mouse down you can make the window half-screen and then select another window to fill the other half. You can also Alt-click it to set the window to the smallest sensible size, e.g. in Word it will set the width of the window to be as wide as the page you are viewing. I think of it as “make the window the most economical size for me” command (although some apps aren’t sure what this should be so they fill the width of your screen!)
3. Cmd-Tab allows you to switch between apps, not every single window. This is actually the same as Windows’ Alt-Tab used to do before Microsoft blurred the lines between app and an app window. If you want to switch between windows within an app – maybe you have three Word documents open, for example – press Cmd-~
4. Cmd-H hides all the windows of the current app. You can also Alt-Cmd-click on an icon in the Dock to with to that app and hide all other apps – this can be pretty useful if you have lots of stuff open and need to focus. That shortcut also works when you click on a window of another app.
5. In applications with multiple windows, closing the last window does not close the app itself. After all, you might be intending to open a new document after closing some existing ones so why would you want to quit the app and then have to restart it? (Windows tends to close the app unless you use keyboard shortcuts, e.g. press Ctrl+W to close each Word document you have open and you’ll be left with an empty shell of Word. FYI similar shortcut for closing Windows on Mac: Cmd+W)

Finally, embrace drag and drop if you haven’t already. It’s there in Windows (perhaps to a slightly lesser extent) but I frequently see people doing far more inefficient ways of moving, copying or opening files.