Multitasking & the Dock
Mac OS uses a form of multitasking, which makes it possible for more than one application to be open at the same time. Only one application, however, can be active . You must make an application active to work with it. Other open applications continue running in the background.Mac OS X uses preemptive multitasking , a type of multitasking in which the operating system can interrupt a currently running task to run another task, as needed.Chapters 2 through 6 .The active application is the one whose name appears at the top of the application menuthe menu to the right of the Apple menuon the menu bar (Figure 3 ). The application menu is covered a little later in this chapter.
Figure 3. The name of the active application appears at the top of the application menu.

To learn what applications are running
Look at the Dock. A tiny triangle appears beneath each application that is running (Figure 1 ).
Figure 1. A tiny triangle appears beneath each open application. Click an icon to make its application active.

To switch from one open application to another
In the Dock (Figure 1 ), click the icon for the application you want to activate.Or
1. | Hold down ![]() ![]() Figure 2. When you hold down |
2. | While holding down ![]() ![]() |
The windows for the application you selected come to the front and the application name appears on the Application menu (Chapter 4 .