Aqua
The inviting, beautiful graphical user interface (GUI) to Mac OS X is called Aqua. One of Apple’s slogans is to "Think Different", a slogan that really applies to Aqua. When one sees the Aqua interface for the first time, they’ll notice the smooth look, vibrant colors, and clean icons. Aqua  is appealing as it implements very cool visual effects such as transparency, reflections, and shadows all designed to help the end user see how things are working in OS X. Aqua’s interface controls are more sophisticated than any other operating system thanks to the Quartz Compositor, the advanced graphics processing technology. Quartz Compositor was extended in OS X 10.2 Jaguar to what was termed Quartz Extreme.  In OS X 10.4 Tiger, Apple released Quartz Extreme 2D, a more advanced graphics engine.  Both Quartz Extreme 2D and Quartz Extreme use OpenGL in conjunction with graphics cards to render windows as textures through the Aqua interface.  This allows graphics to be processed faster and takes processing load off of the CPU.  Your CPU can then concentrate on processing tasks associated with applications and the OS itself.  You can read a more advanced write-up of Quartz Extreme 2D on Apple’s web site

Although Windows switchers will have to devote time to learning Mac OS X, the process will be streamlined because the OS X environment will be relatively familiar. You’ll find a desktop, windows, folders, menus, keyboard shortcuts, and navigating around the system will be straight forward. In fact, most switchers will appreciate the ease of use and simplicity of OS X. Aqua include s the following "major" components that all work together to help the end navigate, stay organized, and work productively:

• Desktop
• Finder
• Dock
• Menu Bar
  

The Dock is used to allow you the end user to easily access the most frequently used applications, folders, and minimized windows.  With the default blue OS X theme, Windows have red, yellow, and green droplet-like buttons in the upper-left corner.  Red closes the window, yellow minimizes the window to the dock, green minimizes and maximizes the window size.  Just put the mouse over the buttons and you’ll see symbols.  Hover over red and you’ll see an ‘x’, hover over yellow to see a ‘-‘, hover over green to see a ‘+’ 

 

• Click on the desktop background and then press Command + up arrow

The Finder is the GUI based application that Macintosh users use to navigate and work with the file system. Finder allows the user to access almost anything on the system such as hard drives, folders, files, CD/DVD drives, and applications. You’re able to view, access, and locate just about anything on your Mac. You can move things around, copy files and folders, perform searches, and delete things you no longer need. Windows users often perform these tasks with Windows Explorer.

The left pane of a Finder window is called the Sidebar.  It is divided into two panes.  The upper pane lists hard drives, your .Mac iDisk, media such as CD’s and DVD’s, and removable volumes such iPods and USB drives.  The lower pane can be customized to suit a user’s needs and preferences.  As you can see, the example shows that Disk Utility application and the utilities folder have been added to the lower pane

You place icons of folders, files, programs, and anything else you want by simply dragging the icon to the lower pane.  You can then position it by moving it up or down.  One in the lower pane, the icon acts as shortcuts to allow you to quickly access the item.  You can remove an item from the sidebar by dragging it out and you’ll see it vanish with a puff of smoke.  Note that this only removes the item from the Sidebar, it doesn’t remove it from your Mac's hard drive.

There are three ways to view things in Finder, by icon, by list, and by path. The Finder has been supplemented by Spotlight in OS X 10.4 Tiger with features such as Smart Folders.  Smart Folders can be used to save Spotlight searches allowing you to group related items together instead of having to know where they are physically located on disk.  They can contain documents from your Home Folder and external drives.  Smart Folders update automatically in real time based on the criteria for the folder.  Smart Folders can be placed in the lower pane of Finder for easy access.  Follow these steps to create a Smart Folder:

 

On the top, you’ll see the names of the various windows of the application.  For example, if you had multiple windows of Safari running, you’d get a name for each one of those windows.  If you were to click on one of the names, you would jump to that open window.  On the bottom you’ll see three choices, Show in Finder, Hide, and Quit.  Show in Finder will highlight the application, folder, or document in the folder it resides on Disk.  This is a quick way to navigate to a folder if you can’t quite remember where it resides or if you need to find relevant information about the application.  Hide and Quit are self explanatory.

Hide Others would hide other applications, not the one you have clicked on.  Force Quit is used when a program becomes unresponsive, hangs, or freezes. A responsive program can be exited with Force Quit but be aware that any unsaved changes in that application will be lost.

You can further define the behavior of the dock via the Apple Menu, in the System Preferences screen, or by Control-clicking on the Dock and then selecting Dock Preferences. You can control the size of the Dock, its scrolling behavior, its position on the screen, its minimizing behavior, allow it to auto hide, and add or remove icons. The Dock is divided into two unequal halves, partitioned by a vertical bar. The left side is for application icons whereas the right side is for documents, folders, and the Trash icon. You can easily rearrange the position of items in the Dock. All you do is click and drag the icon to the desired location. Note however that applications must stay on the left.  You can remove items from the Dock just as you can from the Sidebar.  Removed items vanish with a puff of smoke. The Trash is used as a temporary folder for deleted items.

The Trash is located on the right hand side of Dock. The Windows counterpart is the Recycle Bin. There are several ways to send items to the Trash. You can drag and drop files or folders into the Trash, you can use keyboard shortcuts, or you can use the Menu Bar. To view the items in the Trash, you click once on the Trash icon. You can permanently delete items from the Trash by selecting Empty Trash or Secure Empty Trash from the Finder Menu Bar. Once you delete items from the Trash, they’re removed and can’t be recovered.