Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

Some Groundwork

Throughout the book, a handful of ideas and processes come up again and again. They’re explained here so you don’t have to read them 500 more times.

Digging Around in Programs

You may have noticed that most Mac OS X programs aren’t marred by 50,000 support files strewn across your hard drive. To open Internet Explorer, you merely have to double-click a single Internet Explorer icon. There’s no need to initially open an Internet Explorer folder. This, inarguably, is a far superior arrangement than the ones found in Mac OS 9 or Windows, where many programs must remain in special folders, surrounded by libraries, dictionaries, foreign language components, and other support files and folders.

So where did all those support files go?

Most Mac OS X programs come in the form of packages or bundles, which are actually folders that behave like single files. A Mac OS X program may look like a single, double-clickable application icon, yet to the Mac, it’s actually a folder that contains both the application and all of its support files, which are hidden for your convenience. (In fact, even documents can be packages, including iDVD project files and certain TextEdit documents.)

This book will repeatedly direct you to peek inside these cleverly disguised folders. And no, you can’t do that by double-clicking them. Instead, follow the routine shown in Figure P-2.

Once you’re inside, look around as much as you like, but don’t move or remove any of the files you find there—unless a hint ...