Apple makes absolutely gorgeous hardware. Perhaps it is this near perfection in design that makes it harder to bear the quirks you encounter when you start using your Mac. From your trackpad to your windows, here are 4 tips for a better Mac experience.
4 Tips for a Better Mac Experience
Fix your Trackpad
The MacBook trackpad is the perfect example to showcase the contrast in execution between hardware and software. To the touch, it is so smooth and agreeable under the fingers, it bears no equal. Scroll or click and you are left with a surprisingly disorienting experience.
Tip 1 Learn to Right Click
The fact that the University of Chicago has a dedicated knowledge base article on how to right-click on your Mac (none exist for Microsoft Windows), should alert Apple they have a problem here. No one should have to go to a Genius Bar to learn how to right-click. Like many of the issues we will learn to fix today, this may be one of the original sins of Apple dating back to the early days of their rivalry with Windows.
How to Right Click on a Mac
To right-click on the trackpad of your Mac, go to System Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click, and change the drop-down under Secondary Click (the Apple euphemism) to Click in the bottom right corner. There you have it, a proper right-click.
Tip 2 Reverse the Natural Scroll
I will not get into a long debate about which direction your fingers should be going to make the page go up and down. In case you get confused and want to follow the way of your mouse wheel, go to System Preferences > Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom and uncheck Scroll direction: natural.
Clean your Windows
You noticed that the window controls are on the left here (they are on the right in both Windows and Linux) but how in the world can you maximize or for that matter close a window?
Tip 3 Maximize a Window in Mac (Without Going Full-Screen)
You want your window to go big, and suddenly your menu and your dock disappear. Does it have to be that way? Not necessarily. If you hold Option when you click the green jelly button, the window size should grow bigger and adapt to the content. However, I spend a lot of time on Windows where the window management is flawless. Not only can I maximize without thinking, I can also snap windows left and right and split my screen view to better multi-task.
To maximize, resize and snap windows on my Mac, I use a free app called ShiftIt. Once installed, you have access to quick menu from your menu bar that will allow to take complete control over your Mac windows.
Maximize a Window on Mac with ShitIt
Note: you will have go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General > Allow apps and System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility in order to let ShiftIt take control of your windows
Tip 4 Quit a Program
You’ve learned not to trust the green button and lo and behold, the red button does not work. You click it because you are quite obviously done with your app but said app still remains open in the background as you can see from the little light under its icon in your dock.
Closed but not Quitted
Why? Because the default behavior of the red jelly button is Close and not Quit. So if you are in Word for example, clicking the red button would only close the document you are working on, and not the whole program. How do you quit a program: press Command + Q on your keyboard.
Are there more annoyances you want us to fix? Let us know in the comments below.