“The Unofficial Apple Weblog has posted a short story on the top five mistakes made by new Mac users. It includes closing an application window, thinking it has quit, downloading software and then running it from the disk image (runs slowly, can’t eject disk image), Windows .EXE files littered around the desktop after they’ve tried to download software and install it,” Dan Warne blogs for The Warne Account.
“The comments attached to the article are entertaining, and pick up many other common mistakes,” Warne writes.
The top ten from Warne’s list:
1. Closing an application window, thinking it has quit.
2. Downloading an app and running it from the disk image.
3. Creating endless untitled folders
4. Using Safari’s Google search to get to a website
5. Confusing the concept of wallpaper with screensaver
6. Double-clicking a window thinking it will maximise it, but instead sending it to the dock
7. Not understanding the usefulness of column view and leaving everything in icon view
8. Not using any keyboard shortcuts
9. Thinking that now they’ve got rid of Windows they won’t have problems of _any_ sort on their Mac
10. Renaming desktop icons to random characters because they don’t understand the difference between the enter and the return key on Mac. (Enter puts an icon into rename mode).
Full article (Google cache) here.
We’re not sure why or how #4 is a “mistake,” unless Warne means mistakenly typing URLs into Safari’s Google search box (which actually still gives you usable results).
As per Warne’s #27:
Confusing “delete” with “backspace” (because Apple has two keys named “delete” on the keyboard, one of which does forward delete and the other backward delete. Way to go, usability geniuses).
Apple MacBooks and MacBook Pros have a single “delete” key; “fn” + “delete” = forward delete. In his quest to get in a jab at Apple, Warne conveniently forgets to mention that on full-sized Mac keyboards (click for image), Apple’s “other” delete key also has a right facing arrow with an “X” in it which delineates it from the “delete” key.