Mac OS X Applications


Mac OS 9 never came with many additional applications: you got a web browser, a few utilities, and maybe a game or two, but where Mac OS X shines is in the many applications included with the operating system.

If you work with the Internet—and almost everyone does these days—you need two basic applications: a web browser and an e-mail program. Apple’s Safari is the fastest web browser for Mac OS X and is simple to use. Mail, Apple’s e-mail program, is a powerful, flexible e-mail program that lets you manage multiple accounts and has a built-in spam filter (Apple calls it junk) to sort incoming mail and weed out the messages you don’t want.

Apple’s iChat lets you chat with your friends, family, and colleagues in three ways: traditional text chats, audio chats (using your Mac’s built-in microphone and speakers, or an external microphone and headset), and video chats, if you have a supported camera, such as Apple’s iSight.

Mac OS X also offers a group of applications to manage your personal information, appointments, and contacts. iCal, the powerful calendar application (see Chapter 15), lets you create as many calendars as you want and even share them with other users (if you have a .Mac account).

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Address Book, which you can use to manage your contacts (see Chapter 15), integrates fully with Mail and iCal, so you can access your contact information from these applications.

In recent years, Apple has developed its digital hub concept, which is based around the idea that computer users want to work with digital files: music, photos, and movies. Apple’s programs designed to work with these files are among the best available on any platform and Mac OS X offers, out of the box, a full set of applications for working with digital media:

  • iTunes, for creating MP3 files from your CDs, listening to digital music files, listening to Internet radio stations, and purchasing songs from Apple’s iTunes Music Store.

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  • iPhoto, which lets you import, organize, and retouch your digital photos, and create slide shows, export your photos to your web site, or burn CDs with your photos.

  • iMovie, the easiest way to import and edit digital video.

  • iDVD, which lets you author and burn DVDs using your own movies and pictures, if you have a SuperDrive in your Mac.

Mac OS X comes with many more applications and utilities—from Stickies to Chess, from tools to access the Unix command line to disk and network utilities. You learn about many of them throughout this book.




How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
ISBN: 007225355X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 171

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