Every Macintosh has a hard drive that stores data; you can also attach additional storage drives to your Macintosh, such as an external hard drive or a USB flash drive. Since any type of storage drive (hard drive, USB flash drive, and others) can store thousands (maybe even millions) of files, most drives use folders to divide stored contents into manageable pieces.
Folders provide separate compartments used for storing related files and folders in one place. To help you stay organized, the hard disk on every Macintosh already contains separate folders for storing related files, as shown in Figure 7-1.
Your Macintosh hard disk is first divided into four folders:
Applications Contains all programs installed on your Macintosh
Library Contains files used by other programs
Users Contains a folder for each account created on the Macintosh; at least one Home folder is included inside the Users folder, and it is named after the person in charge of the account (in this case, bokatz)
System Contains all the files used by the Mac OS X operating system
Inside the Users folder, you'll find a separate folder for each account created on the Macintosh; this is called the Home folder. Inside the Home folder, you'll find additional folders:
Desktop Contains any files and folders placed on the Desktop
Documents Contains all files and folders created and saved in other programs, such as word processor programs, spreadsheet programs, presentation programs, and so on
Downloads Contains all files and folders downloaded from the Internet, such as programs you've purchased from a website or file attachments that other people have sent to you by email
Library Contains files that define how programs (stored in the Applications folder) work for this particular account
The Library folder allows two different user accounts to access the same program, but the program can look and behave differently for each user. The Library folder also contains the Fonts folder, which stores all the fonts available on your Macintosh. Movies Contains digital video files, such as those created by iMovie
Music Contains digital audio files, such as those stored by iTunes
Pictures Contains digital photograph files, such as those stored by iPhoto
Public Contains the Drop Box folder, where users working on other computers on a network can drop off files for you to retrieve
Sites Contains all files and folders used to create web pages to display on a website; if you don't create any web pages, this folder will be empty