The Little Mac Book, Tiger Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Close vs. Quit

At first it seems a bit confusingwhat's the big deal, quitting or closing. Either way, you're finished, right? Wrong.

Essentially, this is what happens: Say you open an application like your word processorthat is comparable to putting a typewriter on your office desk. Then you start a new documentthat is comparable to putting a piece of paper in the typewriter.

When you choose "Close" from the File menu, that is comparable to taking the piece of paper (the document) out of the typewriter. The typewriter, though (the application), is still on the desk! On a computer, both the desk and the "typewriter" are rather invisible so you might think the typewriter (the application) is gone.

But the typewriterthe word processorstays on the desk (in the computer's memory, called RAM) until you physically put the word processor away. When you choose "Quit" from the File menu, that is comparable to putting the typewriter away.

Now, since you're using Mac OS X, you don't have to worry too much about memory because OS X takes care of managing it pretty well. You can leave lots of applications open for days at a time, but you should still save those documents!

If you plan to edit movies or huge photos, you'll need more memory than what comes with a Mac (more memory can be added at any time). But if all you're doing is word processing and sending email and surfing the web, the amount that comes with the machine is probably fine for a long time.

If you want to know how much memory your Mac has, go to the Apple menu and choose "About This Mac."

Single-click the little button in the upper-left to put it away.

Note

A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes, and a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes, and a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, and it takes 1 byte to make a standard character on the screen, like the letter "A."

And because I know you're dyin' to know, 1 byte is made of 8 bits.

And that's as small as it gets.

Unsaved changes

If a document window has a dot in the middle of the red button, that means it has unsaved changes, meaning you made changes to the document since the last time you saved it (if ever). Perhaps you wrote more, fixed a typo, or changed the typeface. If you don't save those changes before you close, you'll get a message warning you, as shown on page 108.

When the red Close button has a dot in it, that means you have made changes to it that aren't saved yet.

Exercise 1:
Because Rule Number One on the Mac is "Save Often, Sweetie," (SOS) let's just make sure the document you're working on is saved.