Macintosh Computers Come With Many Great Applications Pre-Loaded

Macintosh computers come complete with almost everything you need built into the computer. Let's take a minute to check out just what comes with a Mac right "out of the box". With the built in software included, you can edit movies, pictures and music, as well as manage your email, calendars and contacts. In fact, so much is included pre-loaded with the computer that you probably won't have to buy a lot of additional programs later on. Let's go over what you'll see on your dock at the bottom of the screen when you turn your computer on.

First thing you'll notice is the Finder. The Finder is the windowing system for the computer, however, you'll notice it most with the translucent bar at the top of your screen. The Finder lets you quit applications, as well as access preferences, the file, edit, etc. menus.

The next application you'll see on your dock is Dashboard. Dashboard allows you to access Widgets. You can access Dashboard by clicking on the icon in the Dock or pressing F12 on your keyboard. You can add and delete widgets by clicking on the "+" sign at the lesser left hand side of your screen as well as download new widgets on apple.

Mail is the next application you'll see, it's the basic mail application. You'll be prompted to input your email account's information into the application when you launch it for the first time. Mail also allows you to keep notes and make To Do lists along with the usual, compose, send and automatically receive email from your account.

Next you'll see Safari. Safari is one of the Mac's premier web browsers. Safari is considered to be one of the fastest browsers out there, and allows you to keep RSS feeds in order, make RSS feeds of selected parts of a web page as well as having excellent integration with the operating system.

Address Book is the next app you'll see. Address Book lets you input all of your information for contacts for anyone you know, including phone numbers, web pages and, of course, addresses. You'll find this application also has excellent integration with other applications on your system and is more useful in other applications more than on it's own.

Next up you'll have iCal. iCal has become the standard for calendaring applications on the internet. iCal lets you easily manage your upcoming events and easily syncs with your iPod, iPhone, the web and other computers you may have. Preview is another application that is fairly desecrate within your computing experiences. Preview is what opens whenever you open a PDF document or an image. You probably won't open this from the Dock very often, but it is most likely crucial to normal computing.

Next up we have the iLife suite. The iLife suite is probably the most interesting part of your new Mac. iLife includes iMovie, Garage Band, iPhoto and iDVD. iPhoto is a photo management application, whenever you hook up a camera, iPhoto is what you'll see. iMovie is a video editing application, if you ever have a camcorder that is digital and you hook it up to your computer, this is what you'll see, as well as if you ever want to manipulate video. Garage Band is a music creation and editing app. Garage Band comes with many built in instruments, loops and many useful features that you can use for your music creation. iDVD is just what it sounds like, it lets you take videos and convert them and dress them up so you can simply insert a DVD and have it burn so you can play it on any DVD player.

iTunes is probably the most well known application on both the Mac and Windows computers. iTunes is the largest music store in the world as well as an excellent music management application, if you have a music file, iTunes can probably play it. Next you'll see Spaces. Spaces can be used to form virtual desktops, which can help you split up where your applications are on your Mac and help free you from screen clutter. Spaces can be accessed by pressing the icon on your Dock, pressing F8 or assigning a hot corner in System Preferences.

Time Machine is the second to last application on your Dock. Time Machine is a backup application. Time Machine will backup anything you ask it to to an external hard drive that you attach to your computer via USB or Firewire. The last, and arguably the most useful application you'll see is the System Preferences. System Preferences lets you set up your computer exactly how you like and lets you configure any of the built in features of Mac OS X. Remember, all of these apps come standard with any Apple computer, weather it's a Mac Book or a Mac Pro or anything in between - no need to buy all those additional programs or applications like on a PC.