That’s really the only reason I use Notepad and it’ll probably be the only reason you use TextEdit on your Mac. It ships with all Macs and it’s a basic text editor that lets you work with plain text too. If you use Notepad in Windows, then you’ll be happy to know there is an equivalent in Mac known as TextEdit. Though not exactly the same, you can manage all the settings for your Mac from System Preferences. You can manage pretty much everything from here including backups, encryption, default programs, audio, fonts, Java, Flash, languages, mouse and keyboard settings, user accounts, firewall settings, and lots more. The Control Panel is the place to go in Windows to control how Windows operates. Windows Control Panel – Mac System Preferences You can also click on Finder and then Preferences and configure what items show on the sidebar, which you can’t do in Windows either. Secondly, it shows you more useful stuff in the sidebar than Windows like shared servers, other computers, connected devices, etc. For one thing, it allows you to have multiple tabs open in the same Finder window, making it easy to drag and drop files to a different location without having to open multiple Finder windows.

Windows Explorer is pretty good, but I actually like the Mac Finder more. To get all the applications as an icon on your Dock, open Finder and drag Applications from the sidebar and drop it onto the Dock.