Paul Tow

If you’re new to the Mac, welcome. I hope you enjoy it, and I’d like to point you to some resources to help you get started. Apple, of course, provides some help itself. The Mac comes with a useful but often forgotten Help menu. Apple provides a support site, AppleCare phone number, and genius bars at their retail stores where you can go to ask questions. Then, of course, there’s Google. Let’s move beyond those, though.

Even in the age of the Internet, there’s nothing quite like a book to give you a nice starting point. David Pogue has written some excellent books, such as Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard edition and Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual. Reading either of those from start to finish would get you off to a great start.

Popular Mac magazines include MacWorld and Mac|Life, but frankly I’ve come to prefer the Internet because it’s so much more up-to-date.  Don McAllister has a video tutorial podcast named ScreenCastsOnline, which has both free and paid lessons. Victor Cajiao has a free audio podcast called Typical Mac User. For Mac news, there’s Adam Christianson’s MacCast and the TWiT network’s MacBreak Weekly. As for regular websites, you can try TUAW and Mac Forums.

The best places for finding software are IUseThis, MacUpdate, and VersionTracker. Each are directories of Mac software from all over the web, but IUseThis puts an interesting twist on that. People can register on IUseThis and tell it what software they actually use. Not just have, but actually use. IUseThis then ranks all apps based on number of users or recent spikes in interest. It’s a great way to discover new apps, and I’ve only scratched the surface. It’s worth pointing out that many of the best Mac apps are either freeware or inexpensive shareware.

Hopefully this helps. If you’ve got any further suggestions, please share them in the comments. Also, notice the “Share” link below for passing this on to someone you know.