I got my new iMac recently. The migration from my MacBook Pro was unbelievably smooth. Everything, including the applications, Users and even Browser History and general Settings and preferences were restored. It was as if, my MacBook Pro screen got simply bigger.

There was a big exception, though. I didn’t have a trackpad like my MacBook Pro. Apple decided to give me a Magic Mouse in the box. After 3 years of using the slick gestures with the entire screen under the control of my finger’s movement, using an old fashioned mouse with not that smooth movements and noise of clicks, and thorough jerky wrists movements were highly intolerable. I got myself a new Magic Trackpad within a week. And of course, now things are better than bliss. With the trackpad sitting next to my Keyboard, the silent taps and gestures have brought back speed and style to my work. 

There are two tips I wanted to share in this post. The first tip is something I’ve recently figured out.

I always avoided using full-screen version, cause I didn’t know how to access the dock easily while working on a full-screen app. But working with apps gone full screen is not just fun, it has got a lot of advantages. You can sort of "new desktops" created for full-screen apps, and you can scroll through these apps with four finger swipes on your trackpad.  

Instead of scrolling to the bottom of the screen which is what you do normally to bring up the dock*, to bring up the dock, in the full-screen mode, you’ve to scroll down to screen bottom, till your cursor becomes invisible and then scroll down some more. That will bring up your dock while in full-screen mode. (I’ve noticed that, if I scroll with too much speed, this doesn’t work. So make sure you scroll at a normal pace, and your gesture is not confused with the flick.) 

Something which I also find convenient and thus preferable is that in full-screen mode, the application behaves like an additional desktop space, so apart from CMD+Tab, you can scroll through the applications with four finger swipe on your trackpad. 

You can configure up your Dashboard with handy apps like calculator, weather forecast and/or time for some of the cities important to you etc. Now, scrolling with speed to the bottom left** corner will take you to the dashboard. And scrolling to this hot corner again will take you back to the app you were working on. (It’s like toggling to and from the dashboard.) 

While my finger muscle memory still goes to the bottom of the keyboard (where the MacBook pro’s trackpad was) instead of right-hand side of it, where I’ve made my Magic Trackpad sit, and while I’m still missing the larger keyboard of my MacBook Pro (Also, I didn’t like one bit that this keyboard doesn’t have a separate num pad), I’m still loving the iMac experience, and expect things to further improve from here.

*That’s where I’ve configured my dock to be, you can also put your dock in left or right of the screen

**Again, you can choose the corner for your dashboard and few other things (like desktop sleep, mission control etc.) in Settings --> Mission Control --> Hot Corners