Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

About This Book

By way of a printed guide to Mac OS X, Apple provides only a flimsy "getting started" booklet. To find your way around, you're expected to use Apple's online help system. And as you'll quickly discover, these help pages are tersely written, offer very little technical depth, lack useful examples, and provide no tutorials whatsoever. You can't even mark your place, underline, or read it in the bathroom.

The purpose of this book, then, is to serve as the manual that should have accompanied Mac OS X—version 10.4 in particular.

Mac OS X: The Missing Manual is designed to accommodate readers at every technical level. The primary discussions are written for advanced-beginner or intermediate Mac users. But if you're a first-time Mac user, miniature sidebar articles called Up to Speed provide the introductory information you need to understand the topic at hand. If you're an advanced Mac user, on the other hand, keep your eye out for similar shaded boxes called Power Users' Clinic. They offer more technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts for the more experienced Mac fan.

You won't find a single page that hasn't changed since the last edition. Not only are the new Tiger features covered in depth, but the standard Mac features are described here with more tips and tricks, clever uses for old ideas, and greater context borne of the passage of time.

There's one more thing you'll notice: This book is about 100 pages thicker than the last edition. That's a matter of some soul-searching for a computer-book author. Of course, a thinner book, or at least a thinner-looking one, would be preferable; plenty of readers are intimidated by a book that towers over the Tokyo White Pages.

On the other hand, Apple keeps adding features, and never takes them away. So if this book is to remain true to its goal—serving as the best possible source of information about every aspect of Mac OS X—this book must put on weight.

You can guess which argument won out. Look at the bright side: Now you get more exercise every time you pick the thing up.

About the Outline

Mac OS X: The Missing Manual is divided into six parts, each containing several chapters:

• Part 1, The Mac OS X Desktop, covers everything you see on the screen when you turn on a Mac OS X computer: the Dock, the Sidebar, Spotlight, Dashboard, Exposé, icons, windows, menus, scroll bars, the Trash, aliases, the

  

  menu, and so on.

  Part 2, Applications in Mac OS X, is dedicated to the proposition that an operating system is little more than a launch pad for programs—the actual applications you use in your everyday work, such as email programs, Web browsers, word processors, graphics suites, and so on. These chapters describe how to work with applications in Mac OS X: how to launch them, switch among them, swap data between them, use them to create and open files, and control them using the AppleScript and Automator automation tools. This is also where you can find out about using old, pre–Mac OS X programs in the Classic mode.

• Part 3, The Components of Mac OS X, is an item-by-item discussion of the individual software nuggets that make up this operating system—the 24 panels of System Preferences, and the 50 programs in your Applications and Utilities folders.

• Part 4, The Technologies of Mac OS X, treads in more advanced topics. Networking, dialing into your Mac from the road, security, and setting up private accounts for people who share a single Mac are, of course, tasks Mac OS X was born to do.

  VERSION ALERT: Version 10.4.2 and Beyond

  Only two weeks after the debut of Mac OS X 10.4, Apple began its traditional flood of system updates. These multi-megabyte installers patch holes, fix bugs, improve compatibility with external gadgets, and make the whole system work more smoothly.

  Version 10.4.1, for example, fixed a long list of bug fixes in several broad categories, including file sharing over networks, graphics-card drivers, .Mac synchronization, and programs like Address Book, iCal, Font Book, and Mail.

  Only a few weeks later, 10.4.2 came out, offering 80 bug fixes, many in iChat, file sharing, and Automator. It also changed the way you download Dashboard widgets (Chapter 5): instead of automatically installing them—an invitation to virus writers—Tiger now gives you the opportunity to test-drive a widget before installing it.

  You don't have to go out of your way to get these updates: One day you'll be online with your Mac, and a Software Update dialog box will appear before you, offering you the chance to download and install the patch. Almost always, doing so is a good idea.

  As for the differences between the "first decimal point" versions of Mac OS X: You'll find this book useful no matter which version you have, but it describes and illustrates version 10.4 and later. If you're still working with 10.1 through 10.2, you'll probably feel most comfortable if you seek out the first, second, or third edition of this book.

  Or, better yet, upgrade to Tiger.

  These chapters cover all of the above, plus the prodigious visual talents of Mac OS X (fonts, printing, graphics, handwriting recognition), its multimedia gifts (sound, speech, movies, VoiceOver), and the Unix beneath.

• Part 5, Mac OS X Online, covers all the special Internet-related features of Mac OS X, including the built-in Mail email program and the Safari Web browser/RSS reader; iChat for instant-messaging and audio or video chats; iSync for keeping your phone book and address book synchronized across Macs, cellphones, iPods, and PalmPilots; Web sharing; Internet sharing; and Apple's online .Mac services (which include email accounts, secure file-backup features, Web hosting, and so on). If you're feeling particularly advanced, you'll also find instructions on using Mac OS X's Unix underpinnings for connecting to, and controlling, your Mac from across the wires—FTP, SSH, VPN, and so on.

At the end of the book, you'll find several appendixes. They include two "Where'd it go?" listings, one for traditional Mac features and another for Windows features (to help you find their new locations in Mac OS X); guidance in installing this operating system; a troubleshooting handbook; and a list of resources for further study.