no user serviceable parts inside

On Friday I bought myself a new laptop. I'd been quietly iCurious for a while and then vocally so for the last few weeks, so I bought myself a Macbook Pro. The last time I used an Apple for any length of time was over ten years ago (and the first time about 25 years ago!), and it seems like I haven't remembered much from that experience.

Everything seems so foreign that suddenly I feel like a complete newbie. Different GUI, a mouse with bits missing, and an even stranger keyboard. I guess I should try to remember this feeling.

The first thing I wanted to do was learn more about the hardware I had - hard drive, memory, video memory, USB hub details, etc. I looked around in the applications folder but I couldn't see anything obvious that would describe the hardware. I started up a bash shell to look for something like the /proc directory I'm used to in Linux, but couldn't find anything so I was only able to answer the basic questions (e.g. df -k to check the drive size). Eventually I found what I wanted: the System Profiler application. As it turns out, this application gets started when you click the More Info... button in the About This Mac dialog that is accessible from the apple menu at the top left corner of the screen. I didn't click that button first, though, and I don't think I even noticed it. The distraction of all the new stuff seemed to affect my ability to see what was right in front of me. That's worth remembering too, for the next time I see someone using one of my applications for the first time.