First impact with Mac OS X: The status bar

The previous chapter dealt with the issues related to desktop and dock. The third element that characterizes the screen presented to the user, after the ignition is the status bar at the top of the screen.

Let's say that the status bar can be formed by two essentially distinct elements located on the left and right of the screen. Let's analyze them.

The left side of the status bar, right after turning on the computer, will feature the voices suegenti:

In turn, this part of the status bar, can be decomposed into two distinct elements: the Apple menu and application menu currently in use. More precisely, the apple menu is always present in the status bar regardless of the applications currently running, while the menu that identifies the application in use will change every time you use another application. To be clear if you are writing a document, the status bar will appear on the menu to the text editor and if you move, for example on a web browser to perform a Google search, the status bar will change with the menu for the browser Web.

By default, immediately after ignition, shows the Finder menu application that can be defined as one of the most important part of Mac OS X (we will discuss thoroughly the Finder and its short-characteristics). Moreover, as we can see the dock watching the Finder appears to be the only application running.

We are now going to analyze in detail the contents of the apple menu.

As we can see from the screenshot above the apple menu items are different, we analyze the most important ones (those omitted are easy to intuition as the operation performed is best summed up by the voice menu):

About This Mac

loads a new screen where there are a variety of information about the system currently in use VEGABAR and hardware on your computer. An example of this window on the Mac from which I am writing this guide is as follows:

As you can see in scheramta are two buttons: one for a software update to the page you request more information about your computer hardware.

Software Update

loads a new screen where you can perform software updates to the operating system currently in use and all Apple branded applications such as iWork (nothing but the counterpart to Apple's suite of Microsoft Office). We will show you how efffettuare update later in this guide, since the update requires an internet connection and we have not provided the reader with the basics in order to configure your network.

App Store

automatically will execute the application on the Mac App Store identified by this icon.

System Preferences and Dock

The first item loads a screen that allows access to the personalization of your computer such as changing the background, audio and more. The system preferences are analyzed in great detail in the continuation of this guide. The voice Dock basically allows you to make the same customizations, the dock itself, seen in the previous chapter.

The second part of the status bar, the part on the right, looks like the screenshot below:

As we can see this part of the bar consists of some elements (they are listed from left to right): Bluetooth, Airport, audio, battery status (if you do not have a laptop of course this element is not present), time and spotlight.

As for Bluetooth, Airport and spotlight will discuss these elements separately and in greater depth.

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