Slide 1 of 51 · Onboarding · Windows switchers

Windows → macOS without losing your muscle memory

A class for engineers, admins and power users who know computers cold — but not this one. We map what you already do to how the Mac does it, configure the machine so it stops fighting you, and leave you with a reference deck you will actually come back to.

Slide 2 of 51 · What we're covering

The map, section by section

Slides badged Do this now are hands-on — laptops open. Slides badged Screenshot this slide are lookup tables: we skim them today, you keep them afterwards.

Slide 3 of 51 · Part one

The mental model, and where things live

Almost every macOS complaint from a Windows user traces back to one of three assumptions that quietly stopped being true — and to not yet knowing where anything is.

Slide 4 of 51 · Part 1 · Mental model

Six things that are genuinely different

The app owns the menu bar

There is one menu bar, at the top of the screen, and it belongs to whichever app is focused. Windows has no equivalent. Look up, not into the window.

Apps outlive their windows

Closing the last window (⌘W) does not quit the app. ⌘Q quits. A dot under the Dock icon means still running.

Command, not Control

⌘ took over the shortcut role. Ctrl is now for right-click emulation and system/window navigation.

You navigate by place, not by taskbar

There is no taskbar to hunt through. You put work on separate desktops — Spaces — and move between them with ⌃← / ⌃→. ⌃↑ shows every window at once. You learn where a window is instead of searching for it.

The OS is a certified Unix

A real BSD userland, zsh by default, POSIX paths, no registry. Your Linux instincts transfer far better than your Windows ones.

Scrolling is inverted, and the trackpad is an input device

Natural scrolling is on by default — content follows your fingers, the opposite of Windows. Turn it off for the mouse, leave it on for the trackpad. Two gestures to learn today: two-finger click = right-click, three-finger swipe up = every window at once.

Slide 5 of 51 · Part 1 · Where things live

The screen, annotated

Six places. Learn these and “where is that on a Mac?” stops being a question — the answer is almost always the menu bar, the Dock, or ⌘Space.

Slide 6 of 51 · Part 1 · Where things live

Where every setting actually lives

Slide 7 of 51 · Part 1 · Mental model

App ≠ window — the lifecycle rules

This single misunderstanding causes most of the "why do I have 40 things open" confusion in week one.

Slide 8 of 51 · Part 1 · Where things live

Installing & removing apps — there is no wizard

Uninstalling is the mirror image: drag the .app to the Trash — there is no Programs and Features. Leftovers sit in ~/Library; brew uninstall --cask clears them properly, AppCleaner catches the rest.

Slide 9 of 51 · Part 1 · What changes

What actually changes, day to day

The differences people remember after a month are almost never the shortcuts. They are these — and every one of them is a reason the machine gets out of your way.

Slide 10 of 51 · Part two

The keyboard

Time spent here saves you hours later. Everything else in this class assumes these keys are in your fingers.

Slide 11 of 51 · Part 2 · Keyboard

The Mac keyboard, annotated

Four modifiers instead of three, one key that did not exist on your PC, and three keys that are missing. If a Windows shortcut used Ctrl, try ⌘ first — you will be right about nine times in ten. Everything on the next slide is a consequence of this picture.

Slide 12 of 51 · Part 2 · Keyboard

Shortcut translation — the four that matter, then the rest

Slide 13 of 51 · Part three

Finder, files and Spotlight

Finder is not a worse Explorer. It is a differently-shaped Explorer with three features Explorer never had — and four defaults you must change in the first ninety seconds.

Slide 14 of 51 · Part 3 · Files

Finder, annotated

Finder ships deliberately bare. Turn on the path bar, the status bar, the sidebar entries and folder-scoped search and it stops feeling like a downgrade from Explorer — that is four checkboxes, ninety seconds.

Slide 15 of 51 · Part 3 · Files

Finder vs Explorer — what to adopt, what to watch for

Quick Look — select anything, press Space

A full preview with no app launch: PDFs, Office documents, images, video, audio, code, zip contents, even 3D models. Space again closes it. Arrow keys move to the next file while it stays open, so you can flick through a folder in seconds. Nothing on Windows comes close, and it is the single habit that makes Finder feel faster than Explorer.

Four of them — pick yours

List (⌘2) is Explorer’s Details: sortable columns, sizes, dates — most switchers stay here. Icon (⌘1), Column (⌘3) for deep trees, Gallery (⌘4) for media. Set the one you like, then View → Show View Options → Use as Defaults so every folder opens that way.

Copy vs move

There is no Ctrl+X for files. ⌘C then ⌘V copies. ⌘C then ⌘⌥V moves — same result as cut/paste. Dragging moves within the same disk but copies across disks; hold ⌘ while dragging to force a move, ⌥ to force a copy.

There is no address bar

Turn on View → Show Path Bar for breadcrumbs at the bottom. ⌘⇧G opens Go to Folder — type a path, ~ and tab-completion both work. Drag any folder into Terminal to paste its full path.

Slide 16 of 51 · Part 3 · Files

Spotlight is the Start menu, the calculator and the launcher

⌘Space then type. Never hunt the Applications folder again — and stop reaching for the mouse to open anything.

Apps & files

Type three letters, press Return. ⌘Return reveals the item in Finder instead of opening it.

Calculator & units

1080*1.21, 42 GBP in EUR, 180 lb in kg, 12 Aug + 90 days. Answers inline, ⌘C copies.

Content search

Searches file contents, not just names. Use kind:pdf, created:this week, author: to narrow.

Actions, clipboard, Quick Keys

Tahoe rebuilt Spotlight: run app actions (send a message, start a timer) without opening the app, browse clipboard history, and use auto-suggested Quick Keys — two letters for a frequent action.

Raycast (recommended)

Same ⌘Space muscle memory, plus clipboard history, window management, snippets, script commands and an extension store. Free.

Preview panel = full path

Hover a Spotlight result and press ⌘ to see its full path in the footer — the fastest 'where is this thing' check on the system.

Slide 17 of 51 · Part four

Printing, PDF and capture

The most requested part of this class, and the one with the most hidden depth. Every app on this machine can produce a PDF, and the whole print stack is CUPS underneath.

Slide 18 of 51 · Part 4 · Printing

The print dialog, annotated

Advanced tip worth the whole slide: give Save as PDF a real shortcut. System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts → + → All Applications, menu title exactly Save as PDF… (with the real ellipsis), assign ⌃⌘P. Now every app on the machine prints to PDF in two chords.

Slide 19 of 51 · Part 4 · Printing

Printers & Scanners — add one, and see what it is doing

System Settings → Printers & Scanners

1. ⌘Space, type printers, Return. 2. Click Add Printer, Scanner or Fax… 3. Default tab. AirPrint and Bonjour printers on your network list themselves. Select one, wait for Use: to fill in, click Add. Usually that is the whole job. 4. IP tab when nothing appears — the corporate case. Address = hostname or IP, Protocol = IPP (fall back to LPD), Queue = blank unless IT gave you one. 5. Windows tab for SMB queues: smb://printserver/queue and your domain login.

The four nobody shows you

Default printer and default paper size are at the bottom of the pane. Set both now, or every print dialog guesses. Options & Supplies → Options is where you tick the duplexer and extra trays. Until you do, macOS will not offer two-sided at all — easily the most common “my Mac cannot duplex” ticket. Nothing works? Right-click the printer list → Reset printing system…. It clears every printer and job and fixes almost everything. Scanning is the Scan tab in the same pane, or Image Capture.

Status, jobs and toner — all GUI

Printer Queue… (button in the pane, or the printer’s Dock icon while printing) — pause, resume, reorder and delete jobs. This is the window you got on Windows by double-clicking the tray icon. Options & Supplies → Supplies shows ink and toner levels. Print a test page from the queue window’s Printer menu. The printer’s own web page — type its IP into a browser. Most network printers expose full status, counters and config there, and it beats anything on the Mac.

Slide 20 of 51 · Part 4 · PDF

Preview — the Acrobat licence you do not need to buy

You just made a PDF. Preview is what you do with it — and it covers most of what people pay Acrobat Pro for. It opens with Space from Finder, too.

Merge & reorder pages

Open one PDF, View → Thumbnails, then drag another PDF straight into the sidebar. Drag thumbnails to reorder, ⌫ to delete, ⌘L/⌘R to rotate.

Extract without splitting tools

Drag any page thumbnail out of the sidebar onto the Desktop and you get a new PDF of just that page. Select several first with ⌘-click.

Annotate & sign, properly

Tools → Annotate. Capture your signature once — trackpad, camera or iPhone — and it is available in every document forever. This retires printing, signing and re-scanning.

Redaction that actually redacts

Tools → Redact removes the underlying text, unlike a black rectangle drawn on top. Then File → Export to flatten it before you send it.

Encrypt and compress

File → Export → tick Encrypt for a password. Same dialog, Quartz Filter → Reduce File Size, when a 40 MB scan will not fit through mail.

A surprisingly good image editor

Crop (⌘K), Instant Alpha, Adjust Colour, and Export to change format. Live Text means you can select and copy the words out of a screenshot.

Slide 21 of 51 · Part 4 · Capture

Screen capture — far past the Snipping Tool

Where screenshots land

By default they pile up on the Desktop. Press ⌘⇧5, click Options, and pick a folder under Save to — Pictures, or a Screenshots folder you make. The same menu holds the 5- and 10-second timers and whether the pointer is included.

That floating thumbnail

After each capture a thumbnail floats in the corner. Click it to annotate in Markup straight away, or drag it directly into Slack, Teams or Mail — the file never has to exist. Swipe it right to dismiss.

QuickTime Player

In /Applications. New Screen Recording for video, New Movie Recording to record a connected iPhone, New Audio Recording for voice. Needs Screen Recording in Privacy & Security first, then relaunch it.

Slide 22 of 51 · Part five

Mission Control, Spaces and windows

The headline feature of this class. Windows gave you a taskbar; macOS gives you a spatial window manager. It is genuinely better once configured.

Slide 23 of 51 · Part 5 · Mission Control

Mission Control — every window, every Space, one keystroke

⌃↑ (or a three-finger swipe up on the trackpad) explodes every window in the current Space into a non-overlapping grid, and puts your Spaces in a strip along the top. Click a window to jump to it; drag a window onto a Space thumbnail to move it there. Esc or swipe down to leave.

Slide 24 of 51 · Part 5 · Spaces

Build two or three Spaces — do it now

The five moves

1. Add a Space. ⌃↑ for Mission Control, move the pointer to the top edge to reveal the strip, click + on the right. Do it twice. 2. Move between them. ⌃← / ⌃→, or a three-finger sideways swipe. 3. Jump directly. ⌃1 / ⌃2 / ⌃3 — you must enable these first under Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Mission Control. 4. Move a window in. In Mission Control, drag the window onto a Space thumbnail. Or drag the window to the screen edge and hold. 5. Reorder / remove. Drag thumbnails to reorder; hover one and click × to delete — its windows fall back to the Space on the left, nothing is lost.

Three rules

Turn off auto-rearrange. Desktop & Dock → uncheck “Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use”. Otherwise Space 2 keeps moving and your spatial memory never forms. This is the single most important setting on this slide. Pin your apps. Right-click a Dock icon → Options → Assign To → This Desktop. Outlook always lands on 1, your editor on 2. Now the layout survives a restart. Two is fine. If three feels like too much, run work and distraction. Two Spaces and one keystroke already beat a taskbar with twenty windows on it.

Slide 25 of 51 · Part 5 · Windows

Window management — the honest assessment

Rectangle

Free, open source. Restores ⌃⌥←/→-style snapping with halves, quarters, thirds and cycling. The single highest-value app for an ex-Windows user.

AltTab

A real Alt+Tab: window-level thumbnails across all Spaces, in most-recently-used order. Bind it to ⌥Tab and keep ⌘Tab for apps.

Raycast / Amethyst

Raycast bundles window management with its launcher. Amethyst gives you a real tiling WM if you came from i3 rather than from Windows.

Slide 26 of 51 · Part six

Your mouse and trackpad

Learn five trackpad gestures even if you live on a mouse — then fix the mouse. A Windows-tuned Logitech on a Mac feels sluggish, scrolls backwards and wastes four buttons; a little setup fixes all three.

Slide 27 of 51 · Part 6 · Input

Trackpad gestures — because you will use one eventually

Even if you live on a mouse, learn these five. They are the fastest path to Mission Control and Spaces, and they inform how we map the mouse next.

Slide 28 of 51 · Part 6 · Your mouse

Why your mouse feels wrong — and the two apps that fix it

Straight from the vendor — no terminal

1. Download Logi Options+ from logitech.com/software/options.html and run the installer. Same for LinearMouse from its own site. 2. Grant both Accessibility and Input Monitoring in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Without both, remapping silently does nothing at all — no error, no warning. 3. Pick your device → Mouse tab → click any button on the picture to reassign it. 4. Sign in to Options+ to back the profile up. You will not want to redo this.

Per-app profiles

Options+ switches mappings automatically when you change app: • Browser — thumb wheel becomes tab left/right • Excel — thumb wheel becomes native horizontal scroll • Teams / Zoom — a dedicated mute button If a mapping refuses to fire, it is almost always the permissions step: toggle the app off and on under Input Monitoring, then log out and back in.

Slide 29 of 51 · Part 6 · Logitech mouse

Seven inputs, not two

Most people arrive from Windows using three of these. The two wheels and the gesture button are where the Mac-specific value is — they map cleanly onto Mission Control and Spaces, which is exactly the navigation you have no keyboard habit for yet.

Slide 30 of 51 · Part 6 · Logitech mouse

Recommended mapping

Slide 31 of 51 · Part seven

Terminal, Unix and security

The part where being technical finally pays off: underneath the chrome, this is a certified Unix, and your Linux knowledge transfers almost intact.

Slide 32 of 51 · Part 7 · Tooling

Windows → macOS equivalents

Slide 33 of 51 · Part 7 · Dev environment

Day-one shell setup

# 1. Command line tools (compilers, git, make) — ~2 GB, do this first
xcode-select --install

# 2. Homebrew. On Apple Silicon it lives in /opt/homebrew, NOT /usr/local
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> ~/.zprofile
source ~/.zprofile

# 3. The essentials, plus GNU tools so your Linux muscle memory works
brew install git gh jq wget htop tree ripgrep fd bat coreutils gnu-sed gawk findutils

# 4. GUI apps, scripted — no download-and-drag needed
brew install --cask rectangle raycast iterm2 alt-tab logi-options-plus linearmouse \
                    visual-studio-code google-chrome maccy karabiner-elements

# 5. Touch ID for sudo — survives OS updates, unlike editing /etc/pam.d/sudo
sudo cp /etc/pam.d/sudo_local.template /etc/pam.d/sudo_local
sudo sed -i '' 's/^#auth/auth/' /etc/pam.d/sudo_local

# 6. SSH key + keychain integration
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "$(whoami)@$(scutil --get ComputerName)"
ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
printf 'Host *\n  UseKeychain yes\n  AddKeysToAgent yes\n' >> ~/.ssh/config

Files that matter: ~/.zprofile for login-shell PATH, ~/.zshrc for interactive config. There is no .bashrc in play unless you switch shells. Per-directory environments still come from direnv, asdf or mise.

Slide 34 of 51 · Part 7 · Shell

Profiles, rc files — and where variables live

No System Properties dialog and no setx — zsh reads four files, in a set order.

GUI apps never read your shell files

Apps launched from the Dock or Spotlight get none of your ~/.zshrc exports — which is why “it works in my terminal but not in the IDE”. Fix: launchctl setenv MY_VAR value, or start the app from the shell.

Slide 35 of 51 · Part 7 · Shell

Variables, and putting the folder in your prompt

A bare assignment lives and dies in the shell you typed it in. export is what hands it to everything that shell launches.

# A bare assignment is visible to THIS shell only
GREETING=hello
zsh -c 'echo $GREETING'      # nothing — the child cannot see it

# export promotes it into the environment children inherit
export GREETING=hello
zsh -c 'echo $GREETING'      # hello

# Three ways to look at what you have
set | less                   # every shell variable and function
env | sort                   # only the exported ones
printenv PATH                # just one, by name
echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'     # PATH, one entry per line
zsh -xl 2>&1 | head -50      # trace which files load, in order

Put the folder in your prompt

macOS already shows it: /etc/zshrc sets PS1="%n@%m %1~ %# " — user@host, folder, prompt. Override it in ~/.zshrc:

PROMPT='%F{blue}%~%f %# '

%~ path with ~ · %1~ last folder only · %/ absolute · %F{c}…%f colour · RPROMPT for the right-hand edge. Preview any prompt string before committing to it: print -P '%~'.

Slide 36 of 51 · Part 7 · Command line

Finding large files — what is eating my disk

### WHAT IS EATING MY DISK
df -h                                    # free space per volume
du -sh ~/*                               # size of each top-level item in home
du -h -d 1 ~ | sort -h                   # same, sorted smallest → largest
du -sh ~/Library/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -20   # the usual culprit

# Every file over 500 MB under home (BSD find takes k/M/G suffixes)
find ~ -type f -size +500M -exec ls -lh {} + 2>/dev/null | sort -k5 -h

# Robust against spaces in filenames, human-sorted
find ~ -type f -size +1G -print0 2>/dev/null | xargs -0 du -h | sort -h

# Top 20 biggest files anywhere on the boot volume
sudo find / -xdev -type f -size +200M 2>/dev/null | xargs -I{} du -h "{}" | sort -h | tail -20

# Interactive, and far nicer:  brew install ncdu
ncdu ~ --exclude ~/Library/CloudStorage

Slide 37 of 51 · Part 7 · Command line

What is running, and how to stop it

# Find it before you kill it — -f matches the whole command line
pgrep -fl node                    # list what matches, and read it
pkill -f "node.*dev-server"     # then kill by that pattern

# The UI processes are safe to restart — they come straight back
killall Finder                    # Finder gone weird
killall Dock                      # Dock or Mission Control gone weird

# What is hogging the machine
ps aux | sort -nrk 3 | head       # top CPU (-nrk 4 for memory)
top -o cpu -n 15                  # or: brew install htop
pmset -g assertions                # what is stopping it sleeping

Activity Monitor is Task Manager

⌘⌥Esc is only the force-quit box. The real tool is Activity Monitor with CPU / Memory / Energy / Disk / Network tabs. Double-click a process → Sample shows exactly where it is stuck. For almost everything, use this rather than the shell.

Always pgrep before pkill

-f matches the entire command line, so a loose pattern can take down more than you meant. Run pgrep -fl with the same pattern first and read the list it prints.

killall Finder fixes a lot

Finder showing stale files, the Dock stuck, Mission Control misbehaving — killall Finder or killall Dock restarts just that piece in about a second. Nothing is lost and no reboot is needed.

Slide 38 of 51 · Part 7 · Command line

find — locating files when Finder will not do

# The shape is always:  find <where>  <what to test>  <what to do>
find ~/Projects -name "*.log"            # by name, case-sensitive
find . -iname "readme*"                  # -i = ignore case
find . -type f -name "*.ts" -not -path "*/node_modules/*"
find . -type d -name build               # directories only
find . -maxdepth 2 -name "*.pdf"          # stop it recursing forever
find . -mtime -7                         # touched in the last 7 days
find . -size +100M                       # larger than 100 MB (k / M / G)
find . -empty -type f                    # zero-byte leftovers

# ...then act on it: -exec runs a command, {} is each file found
find . -name "*.tmp" -delete
find . -name "*.png" -exec sips -Z 800 {} \;     # \; = run once per file
find . -name "*.txt" -exec grep -l TODO {} +     # +  = batch many per run
find . -name "*.log" -mtime +30 -exec rm -v {} +  # one rm, many files
find . -name "*.jpg" -print0 | xargs -0 ls -lh  # survives spaces

BSD, not GNU

No -printf, and argument order genuinely matters — -delete placed before your tests will delete more than you meant. brew install findutils gives you gfind with Linux semantics.

Silence the noise

Append 2>/dev/null. Searching under ~ hits permission-denied walls inside ~/Library no matter who you are, and the errors bury your results.

The indexed alternative

mdfind -name budget queries Spotlight’s index and returns instantly; mdfind "kMDItemKind == 'PDF'" for metadata. It misses anything excluded in Spotlight Privacy. brew install fd for fd -e pdf budget.

Slide 39 of 51 · Part 7 · Command line

grep — searching inside files, and inside pipes

grep -rn "TODO" .                   # -r recurse, -n line numbers
grep -rni "timeout" logs/            # -i ignore case
grep -rn --include="*.py" "def main" .
grep -rn --exclude-dir=node_modules "apiKey" .
grep -w "id" schema.sql             # whole word — not "uuid"
grep -c "ERROR" app.log              # just count them
grep -l "TODO" *.md                  # just name the files
grep -v "DEBUG" app.log              # invert: everything except
grep -B2 -A5 "Exception" app.log     # context before / after
grep -E "warn|error|fatal" app.log   # extended regex (old egrep)

# where it really earns its keep — on the end of a pipe
ps aux | grep -i chrome              # Task Manager, but greppable
history | grep ssh                   # what was that command last week?
log show --last 1h | grep -i bluetooth # Event Viewer, searchable
grep -rn "apiKey" . | pbcopy         # results straight to the clipboard

grep vs Spotlight

Spotlight searches an index of documents it decided to index. grep reads the actual bytes, right now — source, logs, dotfiles, config, and everything Spotlight was told to skip. Code and logs: always grep.

ripgrep is strictly better

brew install ripgrep. rg TODO recurses by default, skips .gitignored files and binaries, colourises, and runs several times faster. rg -t py, rg -i, rg -C3.

Claude Code runs on these exact commands

An agent looks like magic and is mostly six primitives: its Grep tool is ripgrep, Glob is find, Read / Write / Edit are file I/O, and Bash runs the rest. Everything above that — subagents, web, workflows — is orchestration. What you just learned is what it is doing.

Slide 40 of 51 · Part 7 · Dev environment

Unix gotchas that will burn a day if nobody tells you

sed -i ''

macOS ships BSD userland. sed -i needs an explicit empty backup arg, date flags differ, readlink -f is missing. Install coreutils gnu-sed and prefix with g (gsed), or put gnubin paths first in your PATH.

Case-insensitive by default

APFS is case-insensitive, case-preserving. README.md and readme.md collide — a real source of CI-passes-locally-fails-in-Linux bugs. You can create a case-sensitive volume for source trees.

.DS_Store & resource forks

Finder litters directories with .DS_Store. Add it to your global gitignore. Archives created on a Mac carry ._ AppleDouble files — use zip -x '.*' or COPYFILE_DISABLE=1 tar.

LF, like Linux

Good news: no CRLF drama. But files you carry over from Windows will have CRLF — set core.autocrlf=input and run dos2unix on legacy scripts.

/Users/you, and spaces are common

~ is /Users/<name>. Paths like /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app contain spaces — quote everything. /Volumes/ is where mounted disks appear.

Port 5000 / 7000 are taken

AirPlay Receiver binds 5000 and 7000. Either turn it off in General → AirDrop & Handoff or move your dev server. Ports below 1024 still need root.

Slide 41 of 51 · Part 7 · Security model

The security model — four things that will block you

Slide 42 of 51 · Part 7 · Safety net

Backups, versions — and getting your files off the PC

FileVault protects the disk if the laptop is stolen. It does nothing at all if you delete the wrong folder. These are the four things that actually get your work back.

Time Machine

System Settings → General → Time Machine. Any external disk or SMB share. Hourly for a day, daily for a month, weekly beyond that, until the disk fills — then it rotates. Set it once and forget it.

Local snapshots

Even with no disk attached, APFS keeps hourly snapshots on the internal drive for 24 hours. tmutil listlocalsnapshots /. That is what saves you between backups — and why an installer can roll itself back.

Two different rescues

Menu bar → Enter Time Machine to scrub one folder back through time and pull out a single file. For a dead machine: boot to Recovery and restore the whole system onto a new Mac.

iCloud Drive

It can sync your Desktop and Documents, which is convenient and is not a backup: delete a file here and it is deleted everywhere. Treat it as availability, never as your only copy.

Versions & autosave

Native apps keep a full version history: File → Revert To → Browse All Versions gives you a Time-Machine-style scrubber inside Pages, Numbers, TextEdit, Preview and Keynote.

Migration Assistant

Yes, it moves you off the PC. Install Windows Migration Assistant on the Windows box, put both on the same network, and it brings across documents, mail, contacts and calendars. Do it before you customise anything.

Slide 43 of 51 · Part 7 · In the enterprise

The corporate stack on a Mac

Slide 44 of 51 · Part eight

The apps you already use — and your iPhone

Claude Code, Microsoft 365, Chrome and Safari all run here — but the chords move, and a few things get meaningfully better. Then the half of the machine with no Windows equivalent at all: the phone in your pocket.

Slide 45 of 51 · Part 8 · Claude Code

Claude Code on macOS — install, run, and fix the keyboard

# Install — native installer (no Node needed), or npm if you already have it
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code      # alternative

# Run it from the project root — same as on Windows
cd ~/projects/thing && claude
claude --continue          # pick up the last session in this directory
claude -p "summarise the diff"   # one-shot, pipeable, good in scripts

Slide 46 of 51 · Part 8 · The apps you use

Office and browsers — the keys that move

The files are identical and round-trip perfectly. Only the fingers change — and a couple of permissions catch everyone on day one.

Slide 47 of 51 · Part 8 · Continuity

Mac + iPhone — what you get for free

Slide 48 of 51 · Part 8 · Continuity

Turning it on — and the corporate caveat

All four, or nothing works

Same Apple Account on both devices, two-factor on, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on (even when tethered by cable), and Handoff enabled: Mac → General → AirDrop & Handoff; iPhone → General → AirPlay & Continuity.

Nothing appears? Toggle it

Turn Bluetooth off and on, or sign out and back into iCloud on the Mac. Continuity discovery is genuinely flaky on first pairing and then rock solid afterwards.

MDM can switch these off

AirDrop, iPhone Mirroring, Universal Clipboard and iCloud sync are all controllable by Configuration Profile. On a managed Mac, check with IT before you build a workflow on them.

A shared clipboard crosses a boundary

Universal Clipboard and Handoff move work content onto a personal phone. Know your policy before you copy anything sensitive — this is a real compliance question, not a theoretical one.

Things you will actually do weekly

AirDrop a build to the phone · Safari Develop → iPhone to debug mobile web · QuickTime → New Movie Recording to screen-record the phone · iPhone Mirroring to test an app without picking it up.

One do-not-disturb, everywhere

Focus modes sync across Mac, iPhone, iPad and Watch. Set a Meeting or Deep Work Focus once and every screen you own goes quiet together.

Slide 49 of 51 · Wrap-up

When it fights you — and what to do about it

Slide 50 of 51 · Wrap-up

The setup checklist — work down it, in any order

System Settings

□ Mouse → uncheck Natural scrolling □ Trackpad → enable App Exposé □ Accessibility → Pointer → three-finger drag □ Keyboard → Shortcuts → Mission Control → enable Switch to Desktop 1–9 □ Desktop & Dock → uncheck auto-rearrange Spaces □ Remap Caps Lock to Control or Escape □ Turn on FileVault, escrow the key □ Set up Time Machine on any external disk □ Create three Spaces, pin your comms app to Space 1 □ ⌥-click the Wi-Fi, volume and Displays icons once — see what they hide

Finder, printing & capture

□ Finder → View → Show Path Bar and Show Status Bar □ Finder Settings → Sidebar → add Macintosh HD and your Home □ Finder Settings → Advanced → Search the Current Folder □ Pick your view (List for most people) → Use as Defaults □ Try Quick Look — select a PDF and press Space □ Printers & Scanners → add your printer, set the default and paper size □ Options & Supplies → Options → enable the duplexer □ ⌘P → PDF → Save as PDF — once, in any app □ ⌘⇧5 → Options → change where screenshots save □ Install one app from a .dmg — drag, then eject

Mouse, apps & shell

□ Download Logi Options+ and LinearMouse from their websites □ Grant both Accessibility + Input Monitoring, then relaunch them □ Logi Options+ → wheel click = ⌃↑, thumb wheel = ⌃←/→ □ Back / Forward = ⌘[ / ⌘]; add one per-app profile □ LinearMouse → acceleration 0, smooth scrolling on □ Install Rectangle and AltTab for window snapping and a real Alt-Tab □ xcode-select --install, then install Homebrew □ Run one find and one grep -rn against a real folder □ Touch ID for sudo; SSH key into the Keychain □ Grant Teams Screen Recording; iPhone Text Message Forwarding

Slide 51 of 51 · Thanks

Three keystrokes if you remember nothing else

Everything else in this deck is a lookup table. Keep the file — the shortcut, Finder, capture, Mission Control, mouse-mapping, CLI and equivalents tables are the ones people come back to. Press Esc for the overview grid.