Hey Friar,
I think I know you from Gizmodo and other Gawker sites.
Congrats on your new Mac.
Try to learn a few essential shortcuts and you will be amazed at how much you can do quickly.
Command-Space - One of the most useful shortcuts of all. This opens the spotlight search at the top right of the screen. Once its open start typing and results will start popping up automatically. This is a great way to open apps, files, Safari bookmarks (although I would just get Chrome or Firefox), and other such things. I use it all the time.
Spaces - As you have probably discovered, swiping four fingers up and down will let you organize or clear your windows easily. Spaces lets you organize even more, and will be very useful for you with a 13-in screen. Enable it in your System Preferences and choose how many spaces you want, I recommend sticking with the basic 4. Then choose a shortcut (usually one of the F# keys, but keep in mind that they activate the symbol on them by default, you have to hold Fn-F# for it to actually register unless you switch the default to F# standard and Fn for the symbols) for opening spaces and switching spaces (I use Command-Arrow). Spaces gives you multiple desktops to work from, and you can even set applications to open by default in a specific space. I keep browsers in Space 1, Finder windows in Space 2, iTunes in Space 3, and things like Photoshop or Illustrator in Space 4.
Command-Tab - This lets you quickly cycle through your open apps. Very useful.
Dashboard - This is one of your function keys (look at the symbols) usually, and opens an overlay showing various widgets. I say keep it sparse to save memory, but there are some great widgets if you need. I keep a calculator, system stats (iStat Pro is awesome), weather, and sticky notes in there.
System Preferences - Go through EVERY SINGLE ICON and you will learn a lot. You can turn on a lot of things that are off by default, customize your dock, change your right-click settings (two finger tap, right click on trackpad, etc.) and a lot of other things.
Apps
VLC - To open video files that Quicktime can't handle.
Firefox/Chrome - Duh, unless you really like Safari which has some perks.
From the app store:
Caffeine - An awesome little icon that sits in your menubar and lets you set the Mac not to go to sleep. Perfect for watching movies or when you want to let something run for a while.
Alfred - A super-powered replacement for spotlight search. That works faster and has a lot more options (google search, calculator, etc).
Backups - Set up Time Machine with any spare external harddrive, or a Time Capsule if you have one. The first backup will take a while, but all further backups are incremental and can be a lifesaver if you delete something by accident or whatever. Keep in mind external harddrives will have to be formatted in HFS+ to work.
Google search "Mac essential apps" and other stuff like that. Lifehacker and other places will have great set up guides for what you need/want.
I hope that helps!
