Filed under: Mac 101
Mac 101: The Menu Bar
Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.In the Mac operating system, the term "menu bar" refers to the the horizontal bar at the top of the screen that generally has a little picture of an apple on the left end, the time of day on the right and words like "File", "Edit", "Format" and so on in-between. Found it? Good, because understanding how this bar works is essential to getting the best out of your Mac.
In this bar, there are two constants: one is the apple, on the far left, and the other is Spotlight on the far right. Clicking the Apple logo on the left gives you access to all the vital functions of your computer, like Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down, as well as the "About This Mac" window and the option to check for software updates.
Save for the apple, the left side of this bar will change depending on which application you have selected. For you switchers, it's similar to the bar that is found at the top of each window in Windows, but cuts down on the space each window occupies by having all applications use the same menu bar. The drop down menus perform the same functions as Windows' menus, but like Windows, will be different depending on which application you currently have selected.
iTunes has an update for the new iPod Classic and the new Nanos, and while the update doesn't have a description at all, 
Sure, those little icon utility menus on the right side of the screen -- displays, sound, Airport, etc. -- are handy, but do I really need the Displays icon there for a desktop screen that never changes size, or the Modem icon when I've got broadband? While you can 
I'm not a huge fan of color in the menu bar, but that probably stems from the fact that I'm not a huge fan of color in the rest of my operating environment (and why I use the graphite visual style). However, it seems that there are a good many people want their OS to look like it was made by Fischer Price, and that's where 
A 
Macintalk has posted a how-to on enabling a really slick Constellation menu plugin for Quicksilver β49. Granted, this menu is quite a bit of eye candy, but if you follow Macintalk's post all the way through and assign this menu to a hotkey, it then becomes a bit of really handy eye candy.
CamiScript, the script menu plugin for Camino, has been updated to version 4.0. This isn't quite a landmark release that enables Camino to fly around your room or tell you the future (besides, some day, the latter will be Google's job), but this new version does bring one big handy new feature: the ability to disable/enable the Extras menu.
Hot on the heels of 
I'm not sure when it turned, but Service Scrubber has become a Universal Binary. We've 
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