MacNoob

Short answer: AIN’T One!

Yessir, Mac doesn’t do drive letters. Instead of C:, I’ve got something called “Macintosh HD” sitting at the top-right of my desktop. This must be the default name of the system hard disk, because I don’t remember naming it. Double-clicking this guy opens Finder, the Mac equivalent of Windows Explorer. Finder is pretty obvious, especially in Leopard, if you have ever used iTunes. Devices and shortcuts are organized in the left column, and the contents of these items are displayed in the main Finder window when you click one of them. Buttons across the top of the Finder window are for navigating and changing the view. This is where you select icon, list, column and the over-hyped “Cover Flow” view. You can add your own personal touch by adding different buttons from the <View><Customize Toolbar…> menu.

One of the things that drives me nuts about OS X is it’s complete disregard for working in a networked environment. There is no “Map Network Drive” like in Windows so I find I have to search through all the devices OS X finds in the “Shared” section of the Finder window and browse through them to find the right network share I want to connect to. You have to do this every time you log in to the OS. It’s not too bad when I’m at home and there’s only a few choices, but when I’m at the office a couple hundred “Shared” devices show up and it gets to be a real pain. I’ve found a way around this, but it involved monkeying with the locations settings and you can really hose your network capability if you click the wrong thing. I also found a free app to do it for me called “Mobilizer”. The point is, it’s obvious Apple doesn’t place the same level of importance on networking that Microsoft does, else it wouldn’t be so labor-intensive. If there are any Mac cultists reading this (for the life of me I can’t imagine why), I’d appreciate any help you could offer. When I connect to a networked drive, I’d like the OS to assume I want to connect to it again the next time I log in! A small point, but one of my early gripes about my Mac.