In August we had a one-on-one session with a new Mac user to set up his recently acquired MacBook Air.
He had reported some trouble running Skype, so we took a look and found three copies of Skype on his machine, one on the Mac desktop and a Skype and Skype 2 in his Applications folder. We deleted the two extra copies and left one in the Applications folder. Then I explained how the dock worked, where the icons are shortcuts to applications (or folders on the far right). I showed him how to remove unneeded icons by dragging them to the desktop where they disappear in a puff of smoke, and how to add an icon by dragging an application from the Applications folder to the dock, being careful to stay to the left of the faint divider near the right side of the dock. His desktop icons were oddly sized and arranged, so I showed him how to right-click (Control + click) on the desktop and use Show View Options.
We also needed to set him up with an Apple ID, which he thought might be his Gmail address, but wasn’t sure of the password. We went into System Preferences, available from the Apple menu or the dock, and went into the iCloud preference. He entered his Gmail address and clicked on the “Forgot Password?” link. Apple sent him an e-mail with a link to reset his password. After entering the new password, it gave him a message that he couldn’t reuse a recently used password, which made him realize that he actually knew his password and didn’t need to reset it. So he exited the password reset and went ahead and logged into the iCloud preference with his now discovered Apple ID and password.
The Mac App Store icon in the dock had a red “badge” with a 1, indicating there was some kind of software update, so he opened it and entered his Apple ID and password to validate his ownership of the iLife and iWork applications that come to every new Mac owner. Now he was able to receive the updates to those applications as well as to the Mac OS system itself.