OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing Manual

Chapter 11. The Other Free Programs

Right out of the box, OS X comes with a healthy assortment of about 50 freebies: programs for sending email, writing documents, doing math, even playing games. Some have been around for years. Others, though, have been given extreme makeovers in Mountain Lion. They’re designed not only to show off some of OS X’s most dramatic technologies, but also to let you get real work done without having to invest in additional software.

Your Free OS X Programs

A broad assortment of programs sit in the Applications folder in the main hard drive window, and another couple dozen less frequently used apps await in the Applications→Utilities folder.

This chapter guides you through every item in your new software library, one program at a time. (Of course, your Applications list may vary. Apple might have blessed your particular Mac model with some bonus programs, or you may have downloaded or installed some on your own.)

Tip

A reminder: You can jump straight to the Applications folder in the Finder by pressing Shift-⌘-A (the shortcut for Go→Applications), or by clicking the Applications folder icon in the Sidebar. You might consider adding the Application folder’s icon to the Dock, too, so you can access it no matter what program you’re in. Shift-⌘-U (or Go→Utilities) takes you, of course, to the Utilities folder.

Address Book

The old Address Book program has been renamed Contacts, and it’s described in Chapter 18.

App Store

See the beginning of Chapter 5 for full details ...