Even if you never learned some of these highly-useful shortcuts you’re about to learn, no doubt after the initial shock of “The Switch” wears off you’ve realized that using a Mac is much easier & more intuitive than your old Windows Computer. There’s no reason it can’t be even more useful & exciting. Using quick tools to do things such as take screenshots of what’s on your computer to share things with other people (like I do for the pics on this website), or even quick copy & paste commands. So let’s get some quick tips out of the way. But first, some things you should know:
- When you see the “+” symbol between keys (such as Shift+1), that means those keys are to be pressed at the same time.
- Pressing keys “at the same time” doesn’t mean you have to try and dart your fingers through some contortionist gymnastics to press every key at the exact same time; no, instead you can just hold all the keys until you actually get around to pressing the last one. It’s just that they do all have to be depressed during the same moment as the last key press.
- For example, as given in the first bullet, Shift+1 – you can press & hold shift, then press 1 while shift is already depressed to get a “!”. The timing isn’t that important.
Special Symbols
There’s a multitude of special symbols that can be inserted rather easily on the Mac. For those wondering how to get the squiggly line above the “n” like in piñata and could never figure it out on Windows… I don’t blame you! I still don’t think I know how. It’s much easier to do on the Mac, and I’m here to help, or at least that’s what I tell myself. So without further adieu, here’s a quickie list
- The “ ˜ “ symbol, as seen over characters like “ñ” is created using the “Option” Key, next to the ⌘ Key. Press that key & the letter N, and you’ll see the squiggly line appear, and it will be highlighted. Now just press any character that accepts the symbol over it and it shall appear (not every character can have the “squiggly line” symbol above it. Check with your local Spaniard to see which are capable).
- Also in the Spaniard category is the “ ´” symbol. You’ll often see this over characters like “é”. How do you do this one? If thought it would be really easy and similar to the above, bravo; you’re catching on! You use the “Option” key again, and press the letter “e” to create the mark, then type the letter you want under it. Simple! And again, consult your local Spaniard to get a complete list of acceptable characters; you’ll get no help in that department from me!
- Need Change? Here’s how: Press Option+4 to get change, like this - ¢.
- Need to copyright that bright idea? Option+G will get your idea ©.
- What about TradeMarks? Option+2 to the rescue with the ™ symbol.
- But did you register that mark? How about Option+R to get it set with ®.
- What if you like to tell people how hot it is outside? Option+0 gets you the degrees, folks – º.
More about “Modifier Keys”
The 3 keys to the left of the Spacebar (and one duplicated on the right) are collectively referred to as “Modifier Keys.” You may have guessed why, but I’ll say it anyways – they work to modify the behavior of other keys when pressed. They even work in tandem, and work with the Shift Key as well, to get other things done.
These buttons a lot of the time work across software. For instance, if you don’t have a two-button mouse (which you do if you bought your Mac after Summer of 2006), you can hold the “CTRL” key as you click the mouse button to act as a typical “right-click.” There’s a whole slew of usefulness that can be unlocked by using these keys. In fact, here’s a helpful tip: Say you are typing some stuff in a word processor, and you’re copying it from some other file you have open that’s sorta blocked behind some other window. You can grab the offending window and drag it out of the way, all while keeping your word processor the frontmost application. You simply hold the ⌘ key while you click on the title bar of the window you want to move; the system allows you to move & manipulate it without making it “active” and bringing it to the front.
And here’s another helpful tip. At the top of every window or file you have open, you will see an icon. This is a link to that file! So if you have a picture open in preview, you can actually drag that icon to a place to make a copy to there (note this only works if the file is unmodified or all changes have been ‘saved’). Or you can click on the icon 
while holding the ⌘ key to display a hierarchical structure displaying the “path” to that item. This is useful to see where the item is located. This same trick works in Safari windows to show you the “path” to the currently viewed page, so you can back-track very quickly.End
That is all for this installment; These are only SOME of the useful shortcuts available to you. They’re not all hidden, either. If you take a quick browse through your system preferences, you can find some others that are also helpful.
One last thing I wanted to point out was in relation to the “Special Characters” above. I can’t always remember them all off-hand myself, so I use a special trick eluded to in this article. By activating the Keyboard Viewer
in the International System Preferences Pane, you’ll get the "Flag" symbol in the upper right portion of your menu bar. Click on it and select the keyboard viewer to get this helpful floating keyboard, which will show you what you’re going to get with certain key combinations. It’s very useful, and one of the things I recommend enabling to make computing that much easier. 
Easy is usually fun, and computing can definitely be both. Take it from me, the non-techie who loves working on his computer.