Mac Kindergarten

In the default configuration, the Dock at the bottom of the screen is quite big. This is good, if you have a hard time seeing and don’t want to reach for those glasses all the time.

However, it also takes up some screen space. So we will make it a bit smaller and we will show you, that there is still an option for all those out there, who would really need glasses (but what’s a “would really need” worth, eh?)

First, access the System Preferences through the Apple menu.

In System Preferences, select Dock to get the options for customizing your Dock.

You see, you can adjust the size or the position of your Dock (note, that the 3D effect goes away, if you have your Dock on the sides).

Magnification is interesting, you can have a small Dock, but as soon as you move your mouse over an icon, it gets magnified, so you can see all those beautiful icons in their full glory.

You can also completely hide the Dock, so it only shows up, when you move your mouse to the Dock area, so you have all the screen space you can get for the open windows (and have the Dock ready when you need it).

The best thing is, to just play around with the settings and find a setup that fits your needs. With or without glasses.

Here we go. Welcome to Mac OS X Leopard!

This is pretty much how Mac OS X Leopard looks like after you finished the inital boot of your Mac.

(click thumbnail to enlargen image)

You see the two main things the Desktop.

The menu bar at the top. It always stays there - not matter which program you have open. See the apple-icon to the very left in the menu bar. Click on it to access things like information about your Mac, System Preferences and also to shut down or restart your Mac. On the very right side of the menu bar you see different icons, such as the time, a little speaker (for volume control) and a magnifying glas.

This is Spotlight, which is used to search for all kinds of things on your Mac - files, folders, emails, dictionary entries, etc. We will cover Spotlight later. Of course you can play around with it. Just click on the icon to open the search box and enter something; e.g. “Leopard” (without the quotation marks). Just give it a try.

The dock at the bottom of the screen. It is used to launch programs and to indicate running programs (you see a blue light-spot below the icon). See also the folders on the right hand side (next to the trash bin). If you click on them, they open up in a nice way. Give it a try now. These two items - menubar and dock is what we will refer to in the future.