Mac: From Zero to Almost Hero

I’ve been using a Mac for over 7 years now and every month I learn something new about it – how to solve a problem, an app I haven’t heard of before, or even how to type a specific symbol on the keyboard when I need it. And even while creating this course, although I knew what I wanted to talk about from the start, I stumbled upon several new things to me, and I want to share these insights with you, so that you get a head start and don’t have to gain this knowledge over the years like I did.

Many of my friends use macOS and whenever they ask me about, say, how I zoom in on a specific part of the screen or what that little Spotlight-like thing is (Alfred), I forget for a second that I didn’t know about these things a couple of years ago and that now it comes to me as second nature but not to them, so it is sometimes hard to explain even the seemingly simplest of concepts. But while designing this course, I took a step back and thought about all these things that I now do automatically and that would have helped me tremendously when I first started using a Mac, I asked around to see what other beginner users find difficult or annoying, and, on the other hand, what some more experienced users find useful and not entirely obvious at the first glance. I compiled these thoughts into this course, in which I want to give you an overview of macOS, teach you the basics of using a Mac, if you’re new to the system, and also show you the tips and tricks, solutions to most frequent problems, and insights into using a Mac, I’ve gathered over the years.

This 2-hour course is divided into five main sections, excluding introduction and conclusion:

• “First Steps”, where you’ll find out how to move around your operating system, use Finder, and work with Spaces
• “System Preferences”, where I’ll guide you through the ins and outs of this convoluted but absolutely essential app
• “The Essentials”, where I’ll tell you something about the apps you already have, where to find more, and how to run apps from the internet or that are designed for Windows
• “NTFS What?”, where you’ll learn how to connect your Windows drives and work with media, such as movies or pdf documents
• “Power Tools”, where I’ll show you a few apps I hold very close to my heart and which let you greatly speed up your workflow

By the end of this course, you will have a very good overview of the entire system, you will know where to look when trying to solve a specific problem, be it a problem with your hard drive or just getting rid of the annoying large cursor which pops up when you move your mouse too fast. This course will in no way make you an expert on macOS, but no course will! To become an expert in anything, you need to put in your time and effort, and watching videos won’t ever be enough. But what this course can make you is an “almost hero”, or an “almost expert”, and this simply means that you’ll be well on your way to becoming a real “hero” or an “expert”, whichever sounds better to you.

To picture what this means, imagine a long list of features and keyboard shortcuts for an application like Adobe Photoshop. Knowing about these features and how to access them using your keyboard doesn’t make you an expert, that just makes you a well-informed user, who can choose which of these features interest them the most and focus on them. Knowing these features, knowing how to use them, and using them actively makes you an expert, but that’s exactly where you come into play. So let this course be something of an introduction of all these features for macOS, pointing out the ones which are more important and useful than others, and you decide, which are going to be of value to you and which you’re going to discard, and be on your way to becoming a real expert.

But I think that’s about enough of introduction and I’ll rather now let the course speak for itself. So browse through the curriculum to see a detailed overview of what you’re going to learn and get started!