Apple Menu

Clicking the Apple icon in the top-left corner opens the Apple menu (Figure 8.3). The figure shows the choices available and takes us a bit deeper into the Dock item, showing some of the options (you can display additional Dock items by choosing Dock Preferences).

Figure 8.3. The Apple menu is an important part of Mac OS X functionality. It is always in the upper-left corner of the screen.

The Apple menu offers these choices:

• About This Mac. Selecting this option opens the About This Mac dialog. If you click the More Info button in this dialog, you open the System Profiler application, which provides technical information about your Mac.

• Software Update. This option is very important as it leads you to updates for your operating system and Apple-branded software. Software Update can, and should, be set to run automatically. You can do this from the Software Update System Preferences pane.

• Mac OS X Software. This option takes you to the Apple Web site and a listing of available Mac OS X software.

• System Preferences. Choosing this option is equivalent to choosing the Control Panel on a Windows machine. I will show the preferences to you in a moment.

• Dock. The submenu (Figure 8.3) gives you access to Dock settings, as discussed previously.

• Location. This option sets your Mac to connect to different networks in different places. You probably will never use this option unless you take your Mac mini to the officebut even then, the system is usually able to connect itself to the network without user intervention.

• Recent Items. This option provides an easy way to access the applications, documents, and servers you've been using lately.

• Force Quit. Choose this option if an application hangs (yes, it sometimes happens) and you need to shut it down forcibly.

• Sleep, Restart, Shut Down, Log Out. These choices do what the names suggest.