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Dragging any item to the Dock creates a launch icon for that item. Add as many as you like; the Dock shrinks to keep all icons in view.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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How a modern Mac differs from a Windows PC, Part 3: The spam blocker is built in


Jan. 22, 2003


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   In the last few weeks I've been describing basic functions of modern Macs and how they differ from those on Windows PCs. This week: The OS X spam blocker and other functions.
   
   PROGRAM AND FOLDER WINDOWS
   Buttons for closing, hiding and maximizing windows are at the upper left of each window in modern Macs, instead of at the upper right as in Windows. The buttons are translucent, glowing when your pointer hovers over them. You can close a window without bringing it to the foreground first, a nice touch.
   Closing a program window does not shut down the program it belongs to. You have to close the program separately. Two useful keyboard substitutes (or "hotkeys") are Cmd-W (close window) and Cmd-Q (close program).
   The green maximize button makes a window only as large as it needs to be to show the entire contents. This is not the same action as the maximize button in Windows, which simply makes the window as large as possible.
   OS X remembers the size, shape and other parameters of all windows. They reopen in the exact state they were when you closed them.
   
   THE MISSING START MENU
   OS X Macs don't have a full Start Menu the way Windows does, but you can add one easily. (I'll tell how in a future column.) There's a basic Apple menu at the top left for getting into preferences and doing a few other things. Apple wants everyone to use the icons in the Dock as launchers instead of using a separate menu.
   You can click on any of the visible Dock icons to run programs or open folders. If the program you want to run is not represented by a Dock icon, click on the Applications icon in the Dock and hold the button down. A pop-up menu showing all your main programs will appear.
   Dragging any item to the Dock creates a launch icon for that item. Add as many as you like; the Dock shrinks to keep all icons in view.
   
   MAIL
   Apple's new Mail program has best spam blocker I have seen. Combine that with the fact that Mail is very good on its own and you have enough of a reason to switch to a modern Mac.
   A few weeks after you start enjoying automatic spam filtering, the e-mail software pops up a message asking if you'd like the Mail software to start moving spam out of the mailbox automatically. (Up to that point, unwanted commercial e-mail letters had merely been marked as spam.) I can't imagine refusing such an option.
   Mail maked as spam isn't deleted -- it's still there, waiting for you to check it at your leisure -- yet the captured spam and spam look-alike messages are safely hidden out of the way. You need only click on a folder to see them or to do a mass delete.
   You can also click a button to tell Apple's Mail program to skip the spam check on all letters from certain senders. But if somebody you know insists on forwarding copies of every known bad joke three times a day, you can just as easily consign those messages to the spam trap by telling Mail to short-circuit all e-mails from that sender.
   (All buyers of new Macs get the version of Mail I'm referring to. If you already have a Mac with OS X but wonder if I've gone bonkers because Mail doesn't work the way I described, you're probably using an earlier version of OS X. You have to upgrade to OS X 10.2 or later to get spam filtering.)