OS X Mavericks For Dummies (2014)

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Most Mac users have been forced to shut down improperly more than once without anything horrible happening, of course — but don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Break the rules one time too many (or under the wrong circumstances), and your most important files will be toast. The only time you should turn off your Mac without shutting down properly is when your screen is completely frozen or when your system crashed due to a kernel panic and you’ve already tried everything else. (See Chapter 20 for what those “everything elses” are.) A really stubborn crash doesn’t happen often — and less often under OS X than ever before — but when it does, forcing your Mac to turn off and then back on might be the only solution.

A few things you should definitely NOT do with your Mac

In this section, I cover the bad stuff that can happen to your computer if you do the wrong things with it. If something bad has already happened to you — I know . . . I’m beginning to sound like a broken record — see Chapter 20.

Don’t unplug your Mac when it’s turned on. Very bad things can happen, such as having your operating system break. See the preceding section, where I discuss shutting down your system properly.

Note that this warning doesn’t apply to laptops as long as their battery is at least partially charged. As long as there’s enough juice in the battery to power your Mac, you can connect and disconnect its power adapter to your heart’s content.

Don’t use your Mac when lightning is near. Here’s a simple life equation for you: Mac + lightning = dead Mac. ’Nuff said. Oh, and don’t place much faith in inexpensive surge protectors. A good jolt of lightning will fry the surge protector and your computer — as well as possibly frying your modem, printer, and anything else plugged into the surge protector. Some surge protectors can withstand most lightning strikes, but those warriors aren’t the cheapies that you buy at your local computer emporium. Unplugging your Mac from the wall during electrical storms is safer and less expensive. (Don’t forget to unplug your external modem, network hubs, printers, and other hardware that plugs into the wall as well; lightning can fry them, too.)

For laptops, disconnect the power adapter and all other cables (because whatever those cables are connected to could fry and fry your laptop right along with it). Once you do that you can use your laptop during a storm if you care to. Just make sure that it’s 100 percent wireless and cableless if you do.

Don’t jostle, bump, shake, kick, throw, dribble, or punt your Mac, especially while it’s running. Many Macs contain a hard drive that spins at 4,200 revolutions per minute (rpm) or more. A jolt to a hard drive while it’s reading or writing a file can cause the head to crash into the disk, which can render many — or all — files on it unrecoverable. Ouch!

Don’t think you’re exempt if your Mac uses a solid-state drive with no moving parts. A good bump to your Mac could damage other components. Treat your Mac like it’s a carton of eggs, and you’ll never be sorry.

Don’t forget to back up your data! If the stuff on your hard drive means anything to you, you must back it up. Not maybe. Must. Even if your most important file is your last saved game of Bejeweled, you still need to back up your files. Fortunately, OS X Mavericks includes an awesome backup utility called Time Machine. (Unfortunately, you need either an external hard drive or an Apple Time Capsule device to take advantage of it.) So I beg you: Please read Chapter 18 now, and find out how to back up before something horrible happens to your valuable data!

I strongly recommend that you read Chapter 18 sooner rather than later — preferably before you do any significant work on your Mac. Dr. Macintosh says, “There are only two kinds of Mac users: Those who have lost data and those who will.” Which kind do you want to be?

Don't kiss your monitor while wearing stuff on your lips. For obvious reasons! Use a clean, soft cloth and/or OmniCleanz display cleaning solution (I love the stuff, made by RadTech; www.radtech.us) to clean your display.

Don’t use household window cleaners or paper towels. Either one can harm your display. Use a soft clean cloth, and if you’re going to use a cleaner, make sure it’s specifically designed not to harm computer displays. (And spray it on the cloth, not the screen.)

Point-and-click boot camp

Are you new to the Mac? Just figuring out how to move the mouse around? Now is a good time to go over some fundamental stuff that you need to know for just about everything you’ll be doing on the Mac. Spend a few minutes reading this section, and soon you’ll be clicking, double-clicking, pressing, and pointing all over the place. If you think you have the whole mousing thing pretty much figured out, feel free to skip this section. I’ll catch you on the other side.

Still with me? Good. Now for some basic terminology:

Point: Before you can click or press anything, you have to point to it. Place your hand on your mouse, and move it so that the cursor arrow is over the object you want — like on top of an icon or a button.

If you’re using a trackpad, slide your finger lightly across the pad until the cursor arrow is over the object you want.

Click: Also called single click. Use your index finger to push the mouse button all the way down and then let go so the button produces a satisfying clicking sound. (If you have one of the new optical Apple Pro mice, you push the whole thing down to click.) Use a single click to highlight an icon, press a button, or activate a check box or window.

In other words, first you point and then you click — point and click, in computer lingo.

If you’re using a trackpad, press down on it to click.

Double-click: Click twice in rapid succession. With a little practice, you can perfect this technique in no time. Use a double click to open a folder or to launch a file or application.

Trackpad users: Press down on the pad two times in rapid succession.

Control-click: Hold down the Control key while single-clicking. (Also called Secondary click.)

Trackpad users can either hold down the Control key while pressing down on the pad with one finger, or by pressing down with two fingers without holding down the Control key.

Control-clicking is the same as right-clicking a Windows system and displays a menu (called a contextual menu) when you Control-clicked. In fact, if you’re blessed with a two-or-more-button mouse such as the Apple Magic Mouse, you can right-click and avoid having to hold down the Control key. (You may have to enable this feature in the Mouse System Preference pane.)

Finally, if clicking your trackpad with two fingers doesn’t bring up the little menu, check your Trackpad System Preference pane (see Chapter 3). If you have a Mac with a built-in trackpad or Apple Magic Trackpad, you can configure it to recognize a two-fingered tap as a right-click. (You may have to enable this feature in the Trackpad System Preference pane.)

Drag: Dragging something usually means you have to click it first and hold down the mouse button. Then you move the mouse on your desk or mouse pad so that the cursor and whatever you select moves across the screen. The combination of holding down the button and dragging the mouse is usually referred to as clicking and dragging.

Choosing an item from a menu: To get to OS X menu commands, you must first open a menu and then pick the option you want. Point at the name of the menu you want with your cursor, press the mouse button, and then drag downward until you select the command you want. When the command is highlighted, finish selecting by letting go of the mouse button.

If you’re a longtime Mac user, you probably hold down the mouse button the whole time between clicking the name of the menu and selecting the command you want. You can still do it that way, but you can also click the menu name to open it, release the mouse button, drag down to the item you want to select, and then click again. In other words, OS X menus stay open after you click them, even if you’re not holding down the mouse button. After you click a menu to open it, you can even type the first letter (or letters) of the item to select it and then execute that item by pressing the spacebar or the Return or Enter key.

A menu remains open until you click something else. Go ahead and give it a try . . . I’ll wait.

The terms given in the preceding list apply to all Mac laptop, desktop, and tower systems. If you use a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Apple Magic Trackpad, however, there are a few more terms — such as tap, swipe, rotate, pinch, and spread — you’ll want to add to your lexicon. You can read all about them in full and loving detail in Chapter 3.

Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu

One of the best features about all Macs is the excellent built-in help, and OS X Mavericks doesn’t cheat you on that legacy: This system has online help in abundance. When you have a question about how to do something, the Help Center is the first place you should visit (after this book, of course).

Clicking the Help menu reveals the Search Help field at the top of the menu and the Mac Help item, which opens the Mac Help window, as shown in Figure 1-5.

Figure 1-5: Mac Help is nothing if not helpful.

The keyboard shortcut for Help appears on the Help menu as +?, but you really need to press Shift++? to open Help using the keyboard.

Just so you know, this is the only shortcut I can think of in which the menu doesn’t display an up arrow (Shift++?) to let you know that you need to press Shift.

You can find out much more about keyboard shortcuts in Chapter 3.

To use Mac Help, simply type a word or phrase in either Search field — the one in the Help menu itself or the one near the top of the Help window on the right side — and then press Return or Enter. In a few seconds, your Mac provides you one or more articles to read, which (theoretically) are related to your question. Usually. If you type menus and press Return, for example, you get 17 help topics, as shown in Figure 1-6.

As long as your Mac is connected to the Internet, search results include articles from Apple’s online support database by default. Click the magnifying-glass icon to the left of the Search field, as shown in Figure 1-6, if you want to disable this feature.

Figure 1-6: You have questions? Mac has answers.

I can’t think of any reason why you’d want to disable this useful feature, but I want you to know that you can if you like.

Although you don’t have to be connected to the Internet to use Mac Help, you do need an Internet connection to get the most out of it. (Chapter 10 can help you set up an Internet connection, if you don’t have one.) That’s because OS X installs only certain help articles on your hard drive. If you ask a question that those articles don’t answer, Mac Help connects to Apple’s website and downloads the answer (assuming that you have an active Internet connection). These answers are the Support Articles, denoted by a plus sign (as shown at the bottom of the window shown earlier in Figure 1-6). Click one of these entries, and Help Viewer retrieves the text over the Internet. Although this can sometimes be inconvenient, it’s also quite smart. This way, Apple can update the Help system at any time without requiring any action from you.

Furthermore, after you’ve asked a question and Mac Help has grabbed the answer from the Apple website, the answer remains on your hard drive forever. If you ask for it again — even at a later date — your computer won’t have to download it from the Apple website again.

Finally, here’s a cool feature I like to call automatic visual help cues. Here’s how they work:

1. Type a word or phrase in the Help menu’s Search field.

2. Select any item that has a menu icon to its left (such as the Secure Empty Trash item in Figure 1-7).

Figure 1-7: If you choose an item with a menu icon, an arrow points to that item in context.

The automatic visual cue — an arrow — appears, pointing at that command in the appropriate menu.