The Mac application menu is at the top of the screen

I noticed that on the Mac when I don't instantly understand how to do something, it often takes me a lot of time to figure out how to do it at all. I think this might be because I don't see the menu bar as part of the application. You see, on a Mac the menu bar of the current application is at the top of the screen. As a long time Windows user, I'm used to it being at the the top of the application window. And apparently it takes me some time to make the transition.

On the one hand the inability to immediately find the application menu is annoying. Why can't those Mac designers just stick to long established standards? On the other hand it is just something 'll have to get used to. But on yet another hand (feeling like a three-handed monster here) it forces the application designers to make sure most common actions are available from the actual client area of the application. And that's a good thing (tm).

iTunes, Garage Band, even a simple application like Photo Booth have the most often used operations somewhere in the main application window. Whether it is the "Import CD" button in iTunes (yup, I'm still busy ripping my CD collection) or something as simple as the small "x" buttons to remove photos from Photo Booth, they are all really close to where the functional "meat" of the application is. And I can already feel that once I get used to finding the right action close by, I might actually hate having to reach out to the application menu so often on other applications.