apple's mac os is very similar to windows linux and other operating systems in a number of ways one of these is the way that mac os uses file types this is an extension that is put onto the end of a file name that commonly denotes what that particular file is used for for example if you're using microsoft word then you've probably seen a docx extension if you have compressed files they may be compressed with zip and you have a dotzip extension in mac os we have a number of important extensions you need to know about one of them is the dmg extension this is an apple disc image this is very similar in functionality to an iso image but it is specifically made to work on a mac os device if you were to mount that dmg file it would look as a drive inside of your apple finder another important file type in mac os is the pkg file type this is an installer package and it's used to distribute software instead of running setup.exe like you would in microsoft windows you install an application that has a pkg extension and it runs through an installer script on your mac os desktop and in mac os we don't have .exe files we instead have app files a stands for the application bundle this is a little bit different than an executable because an app file contains many different files inside of it it is indeed a bundle and you can view this bundle of files by right mouse clicking in the finder and choosing view package contents so although you're doubleclicking on this app file to start an application it's really accessing a number of different files that are held within this application bundle from the end user's perspective they never see this bundle of files all they see is the app file and they can doubleclick that file to start their application mac os also has an app store this is a centralized repository of applications updates and a way to centralize all of these patches under one application if you're wondering if there are updates to a particular application or you'd like to know if application updates have already been installed you can start the app store application and click on the updates option to see what the most recent updates are this can be set up to automatically install these updates so you never have to think about it your applications are automatically updated when they're made available to the app store or you can choose to install these manually so you can go through this list and manually choose what applications you would like to update and when you would like to update those and if you'd like to get a much larger list of all of the applications that are installed and their latest status you can click the user id and name down on the bottom left of the app store applications in mac os usually don't have an uninstall application to remove an application you simply delete the app file it goes into your trash and the application is uninstalled this is one of the benefits of having an application bundle to get rid of all of the files associated with that application you simply delete the entire bundle however there may be times when you have an application that does have a formal uninstall program you simply start the uninstall program and it will go through the process of formally uninstalling the app from your mac os machine for example this logitech gaming software app includes an uninstaller.app and you can run that program to remove everything associated with the logitech gaming application just as windows has special folders for holding user documents or storing program files we also have special folders within mac os one of these special folders is the applications folder and as the name implies this is the folder that contains all of the applications that you've installed this is very similar to the program files folder that you might see within windows so it's one place to go in your finder that says applications and it lists out every app that you can access in mac os and of course these are application bundles so if you want to uninstall an application you simply highlight it in the applications folder hit the delete key and it is uninstalled from your system and just as we have a users folder in windows we also have a users folder in mac os this is where all of our user documents are stored and there will usually be multiple folders within the user folder one for each user that logs into that system i pin my user folder on my left side favorites list and you can see here there is a professor folder that has a little house next to it that is my home directory and it's found under slash users/professor there are some folders in mac os that are used by multiple people who have access to this system one of these is the slash library folder this is a library folder that is just off the root of the mac os file system these are support files such as scripts fonts and other files that may be used by multiple applications and by multiple users on the system each user also has their own library folder we usually designate this as a tillday/ library this means it's your home directory and within your own home directory is a library folder if you went into users professor you would also find a users professor library for example these are files that normally a user would not need access to and by default this folder is hidden within the finder you can still directly access this folder of course so if you need to do any troubleshooting you can always go directly to the tillday/ library folder and of course we need somewhere to store all of the important operating system files for mac os and in this operating system we store them under /system this is very similar to the files that we might store under a back/ windows directory on your windows computer if you own an apple device then you're probably already aware of the apple id this is an identification that you use to log into your apple device that designates that device as belonging to you you would normally use that apple id with all of the apple devices you own so when you purchase an app on one device that appears on all of the other devices that you're using if you're using an apple device for business then you don't want to use your personal apple id instead you would use a managed apple id this is something that's managed by the company through an application called the apple business manager this also integrates with active directory so you may be able to use the same username and password you use for your windows infrastructure to integrate into your apple infrastructure this also allows connectivity with an mdm or a mobile device manager so that you can manage all of these devices from one central point and of course the person managing all of these devices for the organization can use apple business manager to move apps assign permissions and coordinate the access of data among all of these different devices backups are an important task that can often resolve a number of different problems you might run into and there is a backup application included with the mac os operating system called time machine time machine provides automatic hourly backups to a centralized time machine server and since this backup is occurring behind the scenes you can use time machine to go back in time to find exactly the file you're looking for time machine also creates daily backups for the past month and you can get weekly backups for all previous months before that of course there's only so much space on a backup volume and time machine will begin to delete the oldest documents as you begin running out of space on your time machine volume although there are some anti-malware features built into the mac os operating system there's no single application you can use to check anti virus or anti-malware features however there are many different third parties that create security software for anti virus or anti-malware that you can install on mac os and although the vast majority of malicious software is written specifically for windows there is still dangerous software that can be installed on a mac os operating system you of course still need to use best practices for security regardless of what operating system that you're using and if you are using thirdparty software it might be a good idea to increase the frequency of updates to make sure that you are always able to identify the latest malware mac os also includes an automated process for updating the operating system itself this software update feature can be found under your system settings in the general section and it's under software updates this is different than the updates you have in the app store which are really focused on individual applications this part of the software update features inside of your system settings is designed for updates of the operating system itself you also have control over what type of updates are installed for example you can choose to download new updates the moment they're available you can install mac os updates or choose not to install updates to the core operating system this is also where you can tell the app store to install application updates automatically and there's also a section for installing security responses and system files and we'll talk about those in just a moment you also have the option for installing beta updates these are updates to the operating system that have not been released yet by apple and are generally in a testing phase this feature is not turned on by default and you want to be very careful about turning on beta updates because some of these updates are not fully tested and could cause problems with your operating system many of the patches that we have for our operating systems are things that we can install normally every month these may not be high priority updates but may be important to keep the operating system running at peak efficiency but occasionally there may be a security issue that needs to be patched immediately and the mac os operating system includes a way to do this through the rapid security response or rsr you'll find the option to disable rapid security response under the options included in the automatic update section this last option for installing security responses and system files is turned on by default this is also a feature available in ios and ipad os so if you're using an apple iphone or an ipad then you have this option also available in those operating systems this allows apple to push out these updates immediately if there is a critical security issue and if they have sent out an update they will modify the number associated with the operating system version and if you happen to have a letter next to the os version that means that it has received a rapid security response update