Mac OS X Snow Leopard For Dummies

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Introducing Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Basics 7

Chapter 1 Mac OS X Snow Leopard 101 (Prerequisites: None) 9

Gnawing to the Core of OS X 10

A Safety Net for the Absolute Beginner (Or Any User) 12

Turning the dang thing on 12

What you should see on startup 12

Shutting down properly 16

A few things you should definitely Not do with your Mac 17

Point-and-click boot camp 18

Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu 19

Chapter 2 The Desktop and Windows and Menus (Oh My)! 23

Touring the Finder and Its Desktop 24

Anatomy of a Window 26

Top o' the window to ya! 28

A scroll new world 29

(Hyper) Active windows 30

Dialog Dealie-Boppers 31

Working with Windows 33

Opening and closing windows 33

Resizing windows 34

Resizing window panes 34

Moving windows 34

Shuffling windows 35

Menu Basics 37

The ever-changing menu bar 37

Contextual menus: They're sooo sensitive 38

Recognizing disabled options 40

Navigating submenus 40

Underneath the Apple menu tree 41

Using keyboard shortcut commands 42

Chapter 3 Have It Your Way 45

Introducing System Preferences 45

Putting a Picture on the Desktop 48

Setting Up a Screen Saver 50

Putting Widgets on the Dashboard 52

Giving Buttons, Menus, and Windows a Makeover 56

Spaced Out! Defining Screen Spaces 59

Adjusting the Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad, and Other Hardware 63

Styling Your Sound 71

Changing sound effects 71

Choosing output options 72

Choosing input options 72

Chapter 4 What's Up, Dock? 73

A Quick Introduction to Using the Dock 73

The default icons of the Dock 74

Trash talkin' 77

Opening application menus in the Dock 78

ReadingDock-icon body language 80

Opening files from the Dock 81

Customizing the Dock 81

Adding Dock icons 82

Removing an icon from the Dock 84

Resizing the Dock 84

What Should you put in YOUR Dock? 85

Setting your Dock preferences 86

Chapter 5 The Finder and Its Icons 91

Introducing the Finder and Your Desktop 91

Getting to Know the Finder Menu 94

Navigating the Finder: Up, Down, and Backward 96

Belly up to the toolbar 96

Moving through folders fast in Column view 99

Perusing in Icon view 101

Listless? Try touring folders in List view 102

You gotta go with the flow 104

Like a road Map: The current folder's pop-up menu 104

Going places with the Go menu 106

Customizing the Finder Window 107

Adding folders to the Sidebar 108

Setting Finder preferences 108

On using View Options 111

Customizing the Finder with Folder Actions 116

Knowing They Finder Icons 117

Aliases: Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread 119

Creating aliases 120

Deleting aliases 121

Hunting down an alias's parent 122

Digging for Icon Data in the Info Window 122

Part II Snow Leopard Taming (Or "Organization for Smart People") 127

Chapter 6 Organizing and Managing Files and Folders 129

Understanding the Mac OS X Folder Structure 130

Understanding nested folders 131

From the top: The Computer folder 132

Peeking into the Applications folder 133

Finding fonts (and more) in the public Library folder 133

Let it be: The System folder 134

The usability of the Users folder 134

There's no place like Home 135

Your personal Library card 137

Saving Your Document Before It's Too Late 138

Stepping through a basic Save 139

Looks like Save, acts like Save-why's it called Saved As? 144

Open Sez Me 146

With a Quick Look 148

With drag-and-drop 149

When your Mac can't open a file 149

With the application of your choice 151

Organizing Your Stuff in Folders 152

Files versus folders 152

Organizing your stuff with subfolders 153

Creating new folders 156

Navigating with spring-loaded folders 156

Smart Folders 157

Shuffling Around Files and Folders 160

Comprehending the Clipboard 160

Copying files and folders 161

Pasting from the Clipboard 162

Moving files and folders 163

Selecting multiple icons 164

Playing the icon name game: Renaming icons 166

Compressing files 167

Getting rid of icons 167

Finding Your Stuff, Fast 168

The Search box in Finder Windows 168

Using the Spotlight menu 170

Chapter 7 Dealing with Disks 173

Comprehending Disks 173

Some disks need to be formatted first 174

Moving and copying disk icons 175

Surprise: Your PC Disks Work, Too! 176

Burning CDs and DVDs 176

Burning on the fly 178

Creating a Burn Folder 181

Getting Disks out of Your Mac 182

Chapter 8 Organizing Your Life 185

Keeping Track with iCal 186

Navigating iCal views 186

Creating calendars 187

Grouping calendars 188

Deleting a calendar or group 189

In any event 190

To do or not to do 192

Are You Available? 193

Stickies 193

iSync 194

Part III Do Unto Snow Leopard: Getting Things Done 197

Chapter 9 Internet-Working 199

Getting Connected to the Internet 200

Setting up Your modem 200

Your Internet services provider and you 201

Plugging in your Internet connection settings 202

Starting a MobileMe account 203

Browsing the Web with Safari 204

Navigating with the toolbar buttons 206

Bookmarking your favorite pages 207

Using the terrific Top Sites page 209

Simplifying surfing with RSS feeds 210

Searching with Google 212

Checking out Help Center 214

Communicating via iChat 214

Chit-chatting with iChat 214

Chatting with audio and video 216

Remote Screen Sharing 217

Chapter 10 E-Mail Made Easy 221

Keeping Contacts Handy with Address Book 221

Adding contacts 222

Importing contacts from other programs 224

Creating a basic group 224

Setting up a Smart Group (based on contact criteria) 226

Sending e-mail to a contact or group 227

Sending and Receiving E-Mail with Mail 228

Setting up Mail 228

Composing a new message 229

A quick overview of the toolbar 231

Working with stationery 232

Checking your mail 234

Dealing with span 234

Changing your preferences 235

Mail rules rule 236

Mailboxes smart and plain 237

Sign here, please 239

Take a (Quick) look and (Slide) show me some photos 241

Chapter 11 The Musical Mac 243

Introducing iTunes 243

Working with Media 246

Adding songs 246

Adding movies and videos 248

Adding podcasts 249

Listening to Internet radio 250

All About Playlists 251

Creating a regular playlist 252

Working with smart playlists 253

Burning a playlist to CD 254

Looking at two specific playlists 254

Backing Up Your iTunes Media 257

Chapter 12 The Multimedia Mac 259

Watching Movies with DVD Player 259

Playing Movies and Music in Quick Time Player 262

Viewing and Converting Images and PDFs in Preview 263

Entertaining with Front Row 264

Importing Media 266

Chapter 13 Words and Letters 271

Processing Words with TextEdit 271

Creating and composing a document 272

Working with text 273

Adding graphics to documents 275

Font Mania 277

Installing new fonts 278

Types of fonts 278

Managing your fonts with Font Book 279

Part IV Making This Snow Leopard Your Very Own 281

Chapter 14 Publish or Perish: The Fail-Safe Guide to Printing 283

Before Diving In 283

Ready: Connecting and Adding Your Printer 284

Connecting your printer 284

Setting up a printer for the first time 285

One last thing: Printer sharing 288

Set: Setting Up Your Document with Page Setup 289

Print: Printing with the Print Sheet 290

Printing a document 291

Choosing among different printers 292

Choosing custom settings 292

Saving custom settings 295

Preview and PDF Options 295

Just the Fax 297

Chapter 15 Sharing Your Mac and Linking It 299

Introducing Networks and File Sharing 300

Portrait of home-office networking 301

Three ways to build a network 302

Setting Up File Sharing 304

Access and Permissions: Who Can Do What 305

Users and groups and guests 306

Creating users 308

Mac OS X knows best: Folders shared by default 315

Sharing a folder or disk by setting permissions 316

Useful settings for permissions 320

Unsharing a folder 322

Connecting to a Shared Disk or Folder on a Remote Mac 323

Changing Your Password 326

Changing your account password on your Mac 327

Changing the password of any account but your own on your Mac 327

Changing the password for your account on someone else's Mac 328

Five More Types of Sharing 329

Printer Sharing 329

Internet Sharing 329

Web Sharing 330

Bluetooth Sharing 331

Screen Sharing 333

Chapter 16 Features for the Way You Work 335

Talking and Listening to Your Mac 335

Talking to Your Mac 336

Listening to Your Mac read for you 340

Automatic Automation 342

AppleScript 343

Automator 344

A Few More Useful Goodies 347

Universal Access 347

Energy Saver 350

Bluetooth 351

Ink 351

Automatic Login (Accounts System Preferences pane) 352

Boot Camp 352

Part V The Care and Feeding of Your Snow Leopard 355

Chapter 17 Safety First: Backups and Other Security Issues 357

Backing Up Is (Not) Hard to Do 358

Backing up with Snow Leopard's excellent Time Machine 358

Backing up by using the manual, brute-force method 361

Backing up by using commercial backup software 362

Why You Need Two Sets of Backups 363

Non-Backup Security Concerns 364

All about viruses 364

Firewall: Yea or nay? 366

Install recommended software updates 368

Protecting Your Data from Prying Eyes 369

Blocking or limiting connections 369

Locking down files with File Vault 369

Setting other options for security 370

Chapter 18 Utility Chest 373

Calculator 373

Activity Monitor 374

AirPort Utility 376

Audio MIDI Setup 376

ColorSync Utility 376

DigitalColor Meter 377

Disk Utility 377

First Aid 378

Erase 378

Partition 378

RAID 378

Restore 379

Grab 380

Grapher 380

Java Preferences 381

Keychain Access 381

Migration Assistant 382

System Profiler 383

Terminal 383

Chapter 19 Troubleshooting Mac OS X 385

The OI' "My Mac Won't Boot" Blues 385

The ultimate startup disk: The Mac OS X installation DVD 386

Booting from a DVD-ROM 388

Question Mark and the Mysterians 390

Step 1 Run First Aid 391

Step 2 Safe Boot into Safe Mode 393

Step 3 Zapping the PRAM 394

Step 4 Reinstalling Max OS X 395

Step 5 Take your Mac in for repair 395

If Your Max Crashes at Startup 396

Part VI The Part of Tens 397

Chapter 20 Almost Ten Ways to Speed Up Your Mac Experience 399

Chapter 21 Ten Ways to Make Your Mac Better by Throwing Money at It 407

Chapter 22 Ten (Or So) Great Web Sites for Mac Freaks 413

Appendix: Installing or Reinstalling Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Only If You Have To) 421

Index 427