From left to right:

• Finder
• LaunchPad (For those not familliar with Mac OS X Lion, LaunchPad fills your screen with what looks like an iOS home screen, complete with jiggling apps if you hold down on them with a long click.)
• Mission Control (According to Apple: “Mission Control brings together Exposé, Dashboard, Spaces, and full-screen apps to give you one place to see and navigate everything running on your Mac.”  They’re right, it does exactly that.  I didn’t know how else to explain it, but I use it all the time, and it’s indispensable on a 13.3″ MacBook Pro.
• App Store (Does what it says on the tin.  It’s exactly like the App Store on iOS or in iTunes, but it’s for Mac applications.  I like it.)
• Dashboard (I don’t use this, but Apple says it “provides access to several fun and functional, mini applications called widgets.”  In actuality it’s about as useful as Windows Sidebar, though it predates it.
• Google Chrome (my browser of choice, a plus is that it syncs browsing experience between Shenandoah and Yangtze-Kiang)
• FaceTime (I don’t often use FaceTime on my iPad or iPhone, and when I do it’s mostly to help Ty get his computer working if he can’t call me and screen share on Skype.  I used it on the Mac once after I got my iPhone 4S, but haven’t opened it since, at least not on purpose.)
• Address Book (It’s an address book.  It syncs with iCloud.  I now have the phone number for the local pizza place on my Mac. Neat.)
• iCal (I wish Windows had a calendar program so easy to use.  Outlook’s calendar seems to want to do to much and alternatives like Sunbird stink.  On Windows I stick to logging into iCloud.com or Google Calendar, but on my Mac it’s iCal all the way.)
• Preview (Opens everything from Adobe to… well, not to .zip, so that doesn’t work.  I mostly use it to open .pdfs or images.)
• iTunes (Used to hold my music collection and digital copies of movies or TV shows.  Also used to browse and buy apps.  These days all backups are done through iCloud on my devices, and all downloads are automatic through iTunes Match, so I rarely use it to sync to my iPad or iPhone.)
• Photo Booth (I actually play around with this application (I hate to say “app” when referring to a program on a computer versus an iOS app, but sometimes it slips out.) when waiting for something to install or download on my Mac.  The built-in features are fun, but I’ve noticed I never use it on my iPad, only the Mac.)
• iPhoto (Used to sync photos via iCloud’s Photo Stream to my Mac from my iPhone/iPad/PC, also used to edit photos and post them to Flickr sometimes.)
• iMovie (I’ve yet to open this application.  I don’t find myself taking many movies with my iPhone or iPad, though I did take one of some construction going on outside of my work once.  If I ever decide to edit it, this’ll be where I go, as I’ve used it in the past on store-display Macs.)
• GarageBand (The #1 reason I bought a Mac other than for the aesthetics and because it had been a dream of mine since childhood.  I love GarageBand and waste a lot of time in it.  I’ve also started taking the built-in piano lessons and hook up my keyboard with a USB-MIDI adapter.)
• iA Writer (I wish they made a version for Windows, it’s a simple get-out-of-the-way writing app that was so good I reviewed it a little while ago.  I also own this on my iPad, and they sync via iCloud.)
• System Preferences
• Twitter (Yeah, Twitter has an official app for Mac OS X.  It’s awesome and lightweight, so I love it.  Why don’t they have one for Windows, again?)
• Evernote (Indispensable.  I use Evernote to keep track of my purchases and wages from work and to jot notes for later, though Reminders.app in iOS has largely replaced that last purpose.  I access it frequently from both Mac and PC as well as iOS on my iPhone, hardly ever on the iPad though.)
• Skype (I use this to talk to my friends online, mostly Ben and Ty.  On the Mac that’s usually while we’re all building or painting Warhammer 40,000 models while doing a video chat.)
• Activity Monitor (For those who don’t know it’s just like Task Manager in Windows or ps, htop and kill in *NIX)
• DoublePane (This wonderful app brings something to Mac OS X that Apple should steal from Windows 7.  If you drag a window in Windows 7 to either side of the screen–or hit Win Key + Directional Arrow–depending on which one it is, different things happen.  To the left it’ll snap to and fill the left half of the screen.  Opposite for the right, down minimizes and up maximizes.  I love it.)
• Amazon Kindle (When I’m in the midst of a good book I tend to read it on every device I can get my hands on.  The last book I read I read about 25% of it on my Kindle while at work, 25% on my iPhone, 15% on my iPad, 20% on my MacBook Pro and 15% on Yangtze-Kiang.  I couldn’t virtually put it down.)
• Word:Mac 2011 (I actually have all of Office:Mac 2011 except Outlook installed on Shenandoah, but I don’t use more than Word.  Mostly used for school assignments.)
• Applications Folder (Holds Applications not on my Dock.)
• Windows 7 Applications Folder (Holds applications installed in my Parallels Desktop installation of Windows 7.  Parallels isn’t on my Dock because I hate accidentally opening it.)
• Documents Folder
• Downloads Stack
• Trash

[Bonus!] What’s in my Mac OS X Menu Bar?

Tonnes and tonnes of things have happened since my last post–Ben came to visit, he Ty and I had an awesome amount of fun for 5 straight days, mostly consisting of playing Warhammer 40k, I contracted a cold which took a week to get over, I attended my first two classes at Capilano University, and I’ve taken a few photos here and there.

So why am I not posting them?  Just a tad burnt out is all.  I had 12 days off of work, then went back to work and started school all at the same time, and decided it was probably best to get all of my schoolwork for the next two weeks out of the way in a two day period.  (I’m in Mixed Mode courses, one week is an in person lecture format with assignments, the following week is purely online assignments only, then that pattern repeats.)

That said, I still really feel like writing and posting something (even though I’m not in the mood for chronicling the past few weeks) so while looking at all the pretty icons on my taskbar on Yangtze-Kiang, I decided that might make a cool post idea.

So without further ado, here’s the taskbar, and I’ll  explain each icon:

From left to right (top row):

• Windows Start Menu icon
• Google Chrome (my browser of choice, a plus is that it syncs browsing experience between Shenandoah and Yangtze-Kiang)
• Mozilla Firefox (secondary browser, don’t really use for much other than downloading YouTube videos.)
• Safari (I mostly use Safari when viewing Apple-related websites or when downloading QuickTime-format movie trailers from Apple.  I also use it to download stubborn hidden .flvs on certain sites.)
• VLC Media Player (Mostly for ripped DVDs, also to listen to music when it’s either not in my iTunes Library or if I don’t want it scrobbled.)
• iTunes (Used to hold my music collection and digital copies of movies or TV shows.  Also used to browse and buy apps.  These days all backups are done through iCloud on my devices, and all downloads are automatic through iTunes Match, so I rarely use it to sync to my iPad or iPhone.)
• Skype (I use this to talk to my friends online, mostly Ben and Ty.  I also use it when we play games to communicate rather than use Ventrilo or its ilk.)
• Windows Explorer
• X-Chat (I haven’t used this much since before I even got Yangtze-Kiang, so I don’t really know why it’s on my Taskbar.  I used to use it heavily between 2001 and 2009, but most of the  chatrooms I frequented fell apart.  I now talk to all the people I used to communicate with through IRC on either Twitter, Facebook or Google+.  I paid for a licence for it ages ago, so I kind of  refuse to get rid of it.)
• Steam (Holds a vast game library.  Vast.)
• Origin (Holds my Electronic Arts game library.  Not so vast, but important.)
• Google Picasa (I rarely use this these days since most of my photos are either on my iPhone or DSLR.  If photos are on the iPhone I edit them on device in SnapSeed or Photos.app, and DSLR photos usually get edited the same way on my iPad or in Photoshop.)
• Flickr Uploadr (I use this to upload all my photos to Flickr, rather than use their website.  On the Mac I use iPhoto, on iOS the official Flickr app.)
• Command Prompt (Various purposes, use your imagination.)
• FileZilla (My FTP client of choice, I use it to manage files on my own server that this blog is hosted on, or on the one we host our site at work on.)

From left to right (bottom row):

• Photoshop CS4 (Don’t actually own this, I keep reinstalling the trial version.   Next time it runs out (27 days) I’ll upgrade to the latest.  Once I get my student ID from Capilano within a month I’m going to purchase the latest version at the Academic price. Yay!)
• Microsoft Excel 2010 (Mostly used when building Magic decks–weird, yes, but it works for me–or when working on stuff for work.)
• Microsoft Word 2010 (Used exclusively for schoolwork.  I also own Word ’97, 2000, and 2007, but couldn’t resist updating to the 2010 version at Academic pricing.  I also bought Office:Mac 2011 recently.)
• Army Builder (A fantastic application I use to build army lists for use in Warhammer 40,000.  Can’t wait for the Mac version to be released as I keep Shenandoah in my hobby room when not in my school bag.)
• Magic Online (I haven’t opened this in ages, and would take it off of my taskbar if it wouldn’t ruin my spacing.  I’m used to where everything is.  I spent something like $5 in it once, and haven’t really gone back since.)
• Evernote (Indispensable.  I use Evernote to keep track of my purchases and wages from work and to jot notes for later, though Reminders.app in iOS has largely replaced that last purpose.  I access it frequently from both Mac and PC as well as iOS on my iPhone, hardly ever on the iPad though.)
• VMWare Player (I have a virtual  machine I use as a sandbox when I’m not comfortable using a new program–which is almost every program for me, I’m very paranoid–I’ve also used it to run Linux in the past since I missed it.
• Amazon Kindle (When I’m in the midst of a good book I tend to read it on every device I can get my hands on.  The last book I read I read about 25% of it on my Kindle while at work, 25% on my iPhone, 15% on my iPad, 20% on my MacBook Pro and 15% on Yangtze-Kiang.  I couldn’t virtually put it down.)
• MetroTwit (Easily the best Twitter client for Windows.  The Metro visual style is beautiful, but I’m still not sold on Windows 8. Every time I open this application I feel a bit better about the prospect of upgrading though.)

In the task tray (bonus!):

• Hidden are: nVidia Control Panel, iCloud Control Panel, Epson Event Manager and Logitech Set Point.  Those are rarely used since they do their own thing automatically.
• Dropbox (I used to only really use it to keep my army lists for Warhammer 40,000 available on Mac and PC, and then eventually on the iPad.  Since I’ve started going to school again, I now keep all my schoolwork backed up and synced to Dropbox so I can open files in Word 2010, Word:Mac 2011 or various apps on my iPhone/iPad.  Thinking of buying Pages for iOS just to access the files.)
• AVG Internet Security 2012 (I’ve used AVG for years, and while sometimes it can be annoying when it thinks the Blizzard Updater is a virus, its heuristic scanner just can’t be beat.)
• Secunia PSI (I should honestly write a post discussing/reviewing just this program, it’s that fantastic.  I like to think I keep my system up to date, and when I first installed Secunia PSI back on Weatherlight that was in fact the case.  What I love about PSI is that every few day sit scans your system to make sure everything is up to date.  If Adobe Reader, Flash, Chrome, Windows itself or really any other program is out of date or has a security flaw in it, this program will tell you to update it.  Also it’s free.  I’m in love.)
• The last three icons are built into Windows.

So there you go.  Perhaps I’ll post one for my Mac OS X Dock next… this was actually a lot of fun!  I can’t help but wonder if anyone will ultimately bother reading any of this though.  (If you did, post a comment!)