OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Installing Applications in OS X

Straight out of the box, your Mac has a compelling suite of core applications already installed, including the Safari web browser, Mail e-mail client, Contacts contacts manager, Calendar calendar, Messages instant messenger, TextEdit word processor, Time Machine backup tool, and iTunes media manager and player.

Note

New Macs also include Apple's iLife suite (which includes the iPhoto photo management and editing tool, iMovie video-editing tool, and GarageBand music creation and editing tool), although when you upgrade OS X, the iLife versions on your Mac aren't updated along with the operating system.

But chances are good that you'll want other applications to handle other tasks. And you may prefer to use an application other than Apple's, or in addition to Apple's; for example, you may want to use the Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome browser instead of or in addition to Apple's Safari. So you're likely to buy additional applications.

The applications in OS X are typically stored in one of two folders: Applications or Utilities. You can jump to the Applications folder by choosing Go⇒Applications or pressing Shift++A, and you can jump to the Utilities folder by choosing Go⇒Utilities or pressing Shift++U. The Utilities folder resides in the Applications ...