I ditched my old 2-button mouse in favor of a Mac wireless Bluetooth mouse. Mo' money, but no mo' buttons. Just push the front of the thing with any finger on any side. I forget what that second button did, remind me.

Yeah, exactly. Not to beat a dead horse, but the reason why the mouse is set to one button by default is that OS X is designed not to need more than one button. If you have a second button available, it will perform contextual shortcuts, but there's never any function that requires you to have two buttons, so Apple defaults to the one-button model that's always been a lot easier for computer novices to deal with. (We geeks often lose sight of how mysterious a multi-button mouse is—you'd be surprised how many people have no idea what the right button in Windows does, or understands why the mouse has multiple buttons.)

It's a strange decision if you're an expert, or a recent switcher from Windows, or (especially) both. But that's still not Apple's primary market.

Enjoy the ride Stephen. I don’t know what it’s like to switch from Windows to Mac, having started with Mac and learned Windows later, but if you have an open mind and a curious soul I can only envy you the journey, it’s all good. Welcome to the other side of the looking glass, friend. It’s a bold move you’ve taken and I salute you for it.

Check out maczot.com. They have a different piece of Mac software at a deep discount every day. Sometimes they run mystery bundles, you don't know what you've bought until the end of the day. I've picked up several helpful apps like AppZapper (Helps clean up orphaned files when you uninstall an app) and iClip (gives you a clip board with multiple items).

If someone hasn't recommended it already, try Quicksilver. It lets you launch applications, new emails, websites, by using the keyboard. (e.g. to launch iPhoto, I hit ctrl-space and type "iPhoto" and hit return). It's a nice timesaver and can do a lot more than just that. It's free also.

NetNewsWire is a great RSS aggregator and you can buy it bundled with the MarsEdit blog editor. Check out VooDoo pad as well, it's a personal wiki application.

Ok, commercials over. These are just some of the apps I've found useful after switching from Windows to OS X at home.

I'd call it feeding your new-found, unquenchable desire for tech gadgets... (except that now you don't need to buy antivirus software on top of it all.) but... call it what you will.

Secondly... after reviewing a few posts... I'll recommend Quicksilver also. Quicksilver is my MOST USED app on my entire system. Add any folders you keep your important files in to the QS 'catalogue' and then you can launch all your most-used files just by just typing in the first few letters of its filename.

Get acquainted with the Option key. Many weird and wonderful things there.

Hold down the option key when you shut down from the BlueAppleMenu — bypasses the logout window.

Want a bullet? — Option-8
Want a triple-m dash? — Shift-Option-Hyphen

Another vote for Quicksilver. But as I said in the other thread, it has a steep learning curve for every function except launching applications. It can do all sorts of extremely cool things - read the tutorials at the developer site to get an idea. Then just live with it and get used to it and try out functions whenever you feel like tinkering. It took me several months to feel comfortable with it, but it has so much potential.

But I live for the day when "Quicksilver for Dummies" comes out, with documentation on every function.

About the Mac keyboard shortcuts: Go to Help in the menubar, fire it up, click on the index link, go to K, then Keyboard shortcuts.

Also: System preferences -> mouse/Keyboard -> Keyboard shortcuts. You can set your own for many functions.

And most of the time the control key + clicking the mouse = right mouse button.

Another vote for Quicksilver here. And you might also consider giving USB Overdrive a whirl, too -- more options for mouse control, or joystick control if you're into that sort of thing.

But the really important thing here: get this. Trust me; you'll love it.
 

Speaking of cool things, try holding shift whilst minimising a window or calling expose or similar things. Not particularly useful, but cool.

Yehudit: "Quicksilver ... has a steep learning curve for every function except launching applications."

[pedant] A steep learning curve is a good thing. It means you're gaining something you want (in this case, mastery of a program) at a relatively small cost in time. [/pedant]

what people mean by steep learning curve is hyperbolic. you keep bashing your head against the wall until one day you magically get it. You get many drop outs and lots of frustration due to the flat space.

Steep curves are great. Hyperbolics are good, as long as they're relatively short and don't have too long a period of futility. Skiing has a fairly flat learning curve, so that it takes along time to get good. Snowboarding has an asymptotic curve, so that after 2-3 days of falling all the time you're useful and can enjoy it.

as for macs: pshaw, looks good, and functions relatively well if steve believes your needs are worthy. there's too large a reality distortion field there and very few needs are served.

The Boy can pay for college himself because that way, he'll take it seriously.

More toys for daddy! :)

www.versiontracker.com baby. Mac-centric shareware site that has Windows software too.

And if you want the true Mac sub-culture experience and you need a decent word processor, go to www.nisus.com. Nisus Writer Express is a lean, mean, neat and fast little word processor with unique features that uses rtf, a cross platform standard document type, as it's native file format but it is capable of opening, editing and saving Microsoft Word documents from either platform.

You can download a fully functioning demo that expires after 30 days to try it out.

Good move to the Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse (I have a single button mouse, as I have since becomming a Mac guy).

Two words of advice: Rechargable batteries.