2. Find, Launch, and Quit an Application  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 1 Install an Application from Disc or Download
 SEE ALSO 3 Add an Application to the Dock
In Mac OS X, applications reside primarily in the Applications folder. The most basic way to launch an application is to navigate to that folder and double-click its icon. | 1. | Open a Finder Window Click the Finder icon at the far left end of the Dock, or press  while in the Finder to open a new Finder window.  TIP You can tell what application you're currently in by the boldfaced menu name to the right of the Apple icon in the menu bar at the top-left of the screen. If you aren't in the Finder, click anywhere on the Desktop to switch to the Finder. 2. Find, Launch, and Quit an Application  | | 2. | Go to the Applications Folder The lower-left pane of the Finder window contains a shortcut icon to the Applications folder. Click this icon to open the Applications folder. Alternatively, select Applications from the Finder's Go menu, or press Shift+  . (With this key command, you don't even have to open a Finder window first.) | | 3. | Scroll to the Application You Want Depending on the view mode you're in, the applications in the folder will be arranged differentlygenerally alphabetically , but Icon view and List view allow the applications to be sorted by many other criteria. Use the scroll bars to search through the window until you find the application you're looking for. TIP If you know the application's name, try using the Search bar at the top of the Finder window. Click Computer in the resulting Spotlight view to ensure you're searching all local disks. | | 4. | Double-Click the Application Icon When you double-click the application in the Finder, the application icon appears in the Dock, bouncing up and down. It will keep bouncing until the application has completed launching; after that, a black triangle underneath the icon shows that the application is running. TIP Almost every application has preferences you can set. Preferences (which under Windows are often variously called Options or Settings ) control the application's behavior, appearance, and interaction with the rest of your system. By convention for consistency, every Mac application's preferences are accessible from the bold-titled application menu. The keyboard shortcut to reach Preferences is typically  (comma). | | 5. | Work with the Application When the application has launched completely, you can begin to use it. With most applications, you can choose File, Open from the menu bar to select an existing document with which you want to continue working or editing. To open a new document in most applications, choose File, New , or press . | | 6. | Quit the Application In Mac OS X, just because all the application's windows have been closed does not mean the application is no longer running. (This may surprise Windows users, as a Windows application whose main window has been closed is typically understood to have been completely quit.) An application can be running with no windows open; it's still taking up memory and system resources. If you want to quit an application, you must explicitly tell it to quit. Under the bold application menu, no matter what application you're running, the last option is always Quit . Switch to the application you want to quit, open the application menu, and select Quit . You may be prompted to save changes in whatever document windows you have open. The standard key combination for the Quit command is  TIP After you launch an application or open a document, it is entered automatically into the Recent Items submenu of the Apple menu. You can access these recently opened items quickly from that menu without having to navigate to their disk locations again. | | 7. | Force Quit Sometimes, an application might misbehave, crash, freeze, or otherwise become unresponsive . Mac OS X is robust enough that if this happens, you can generally switch to another application and continue using the rest of the system; but to stop the misbehaving application and get it to stop using system resources, you might have to force it to quit. This method immediately terminates the application without saving any changes in memory; it's sort of messy, but it gets the job done. Press  or select Force Quit from the Apple menu. The Force Quit Applications dialog box appears, showing a list of all currently running applications. Select the one you want to quit and click the Force Quit button. The misbehaving application is immediately terminated . | TIP If your Mac becomes unresponsive or extremely slow, and you don't know which application or process is causing it, a handy tool is the Activity Monitor , located in the Utilities folder (if you're able to get to it). It shows all currently active processes, and if you sort them on the % CPU column, you can determine whether one process has gone haywire by taking up all the processor's attention. Select it and click Quit Process to end it; your system's performance should return to normal.
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keystroke creating a new folder, not a new Finder window. In the Mac OS X tradition, though, 
to create a new folder. 