macbook pro keyboard

on my iPhone and iPad, when i type they automatically capitalize words and put periods after hitting space bar twice, etc. how do i get my macbook pro to do the same?

Without a third-party app, I don't think you can. The reason your iPhone and iPad have this ability is to simplify life for people who have to type using the on-screen touch-based keyboard. People with "real" keyboards are just expected to know how to capitalize and punctuate.

You can turn on "Check Spelling While Typing" and "Correct Spelling Automatically" in most native Mac programs, but this is on a per-program basis. Though I confess I don't find myself doing a lot of typing in any but four programs: Safari, Mail and my two preferred word processing programs.