From Windows to OS X

Home Folder

Windows: User Profile

OS X: Home Folder

In Windows, when you save a file to your desktop it’s saved in the following location C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Desktop. As a matter of fact, there are multiple folders under your user folder such as My Documents, My Pictures, Application Data and so forth. In Windows, this folder is referred to as your User Profile. Your user profile or as it’s called in OS X, your Home Folder is located in the following location: /Users/UserName (as viewed via the Terminal) or in the graphic (GUI) form:

As you can see, your Home Folder contains some very useful folders such as Documents, Music and Pictures. Those folders are where applications such as iTunes and iPhoto store their data and you also have folders for Documents and the folder for the Desktop itself.