Chapter 1 How Can I Use My Desktop Space Efficiently?
The MacBook Pro’s Desktop is the area displayed on its screen. Like a physical desktop, you place things (in this case, icons and windows) on it to focus your attention on them and use their content. As you work, your Desktop naturally becomes cluttered with windows for applications, documents, and system tools. Keeping control of all these windows helps you make the most of your Desktop space. With all the great Desktop management tools that the Mac’s OS X operating system offers, it’s much easier to keep your MacBook Pro’s Desktop neat and tidy than it is a physical desktop.
Setting the Finder Desktop’s Icon Preferences
By default on a new MacBook Pro or in a new installation of OS X on a MacBook, icons for the MacBook Pro’s hard drive, external hard drives, DVDs, CDs, and servers do not appear on the Desktop. This keeps the entire space on the Desktop clear for your files and folders. (If you upgraded to a new version of OS X or used the Migration Assistant to transfer the contents of another Mac to your MacBook Pro, the drive icons that display are whatever was previously set.)
To access drives, whether or not they appear on the Desktop, open a Finder window (choose File→New Finder Window or press 
+N in the Finder, or double-click ...
