mac os x snow leopard the missing manual

And on every page, we answer the simple question: “What’s this feature for?” David Pogue is the New York Times tech columnist, an Emmy-winning CBS News correspondent, and creator of

The book that should have been in the box®

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

For a company that promised to “put a pause on new features,” Apple sure has been busy—there’s barely a feature left untouched in Mac OS X 10.6

“Snow Leopard.” There’s more speed, more polish, more refinement—but still no manual Fortunately, David Pogue is back, with the humor and expertise that have made this the #1 bestselling Mac book for eight years straight

n Big-ticket changes A 64-bit overhaul Faster

everything A rewritten Finder Microsoft

Exchange compatibility All-new QuickTime

Player If Apple wrote it, this book covers it

n Snow Leopard Spots This book demystifies

the hundreds of smaller enhancements, too,

in all 50 programs that come with the Mac:

Safari, Mail, iChat, Preview, Time Machine…

n Shortcuts This must be the tippiest, trickiest

Mac book ever written Undocumented

sur-prises await on every page

n Power usage Security, networking,

build-your-own Services, file sharing with Windows,

even Mac OS X’s Unix chassis—this one witty,

expert guide makes it all crystal clear

The important stuff

you need to know

Answers found here!

Why I started the Missing Manual series.

People learn best when tion is engaging, clearly written, and funny Unfortunately, most computer books read like dry catalogs That’s why I created the Missing Manuals They’re entertaining, unafraid to state when a feature is useless or doesn’t work right, and—oh, by the way—written by actual

informa-writers And on every page, we

answer the simple question:

“What’s this feature for?”

David Pogue is the New York

Times tech columnist, an

Emmy-winning CBS News correspondent, and creator of the Missing Manual series.

CAN $43.99

THE MISSING MANUAL Mac OS X Snow Leopard

The book that should have been

in the box ® ˇ

David Pogue

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual

by David Pogue

Copyright © 2009 David Pogue All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc.,

1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472

O’Reilly Media books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales

promotional use Online editions are also available for most titles: safari@oreilly.

com For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department:

800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com.

October 2009: First Edition

The Missing Manual is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc The Missing

Manual logo, and “The book that should have been in the box” are trademarks of

O’Reilly Media, Inc Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers

to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks Where those designations

appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media is aware of a trademark claim, the

designa-tions are capitalized

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the

publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages

resulting from the use of the information contained in it

ISBN: 978-0-596-15328-1

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

What’s New in Snow Leopard 1

About This Book 4

The Very Basics 8

Part One: The Mac OS X Desktop Chapter 1: Folders & Windows 13

Getting into Mac OS X 13

Windows and How to Work Them 17

The Four Window Views 32

Icon View 34

List View 42

Column View 49

Cover Flow View 52

Quick Look 54

Logging Out, Shutting Down 58

Getting Help in Mac OS X 60

Chapter 2: Organizing Your Stuff 63

The Mac OS X Folder Structure 63

Icon Names 68

Selecting Icons 70

Moving and Copying Icons 74

Aliases: Icons in Two Places at Once 80

Color Labels 82

The Trash 84

Get Info 88

Chapter 3: Spotlight 93

The Spotlight Menu 93

The Spotlight Window 103

Customizing Spotlight 114

Smart Folders 117

Chapter 4: Dock, Desktop, & Toolbars 119

The Dock 119

Setting Up the Dock 120

Using the Dock 129

The Finder Toolbar 134

Designing Your Desktop 139

Menulets: The Missing Manual 141

Part Two: Programs in Mac OS X Chapter 5: Documents, Programs, & Spaces 149

Opening Mac OS X Programs 150

The “Heads-Up” Program Switcher 154

Exposé: Death to Window Clutter 155

Spaces: Your Free Quad-Display Mac 164

Hiding Programs the Old-Fashioned Way 170

How Documents Know Their Parents 173

Keyboard Control 177

The Save and Open Dialog Boxes 183

Two Kinds of Programs: Cocoa and Carbon 188

The Cocoa Difference 189

Universal Apps (Intel Macs) and Rosetta 193

Installing Mac OS X Programs 195

Dashboard 200

Web Clips: Make Your Own Widgets 215

Chapter 6: Entering Data, Moving Data, & Time Machine 219

The Macintosh Keyboard 219

Notes on Right-Clicking 224

Power Typing in Snow Leopard 226

The Many Languages of Mac OS X Text 231

Data Detectors 235

Moving Data Between Documents 237

Exchanging Data with Other Macs 241

Exchanging Data with Windows PCs 246

Time Machine 248

Chapter 7: Services, Automator, & AppleScript 261

Services 263

Automator 269

Building Your Own Workflow 280

Doing More with Automator 285

AppleScript 289

Chapter 8: Windows on Macintosh 293

Boot Camp 295

Windows in a Window 302

Life with Microsoft Exchange 305

Part Three: The Components of Mac OS X Chapter 9: System Preferences 311

The System Preferences Window 311

Accounts 314

Appearance 314

Bluetooth 316

CDs & DVDs 318

Date & Time 320

Desktop & Screen Saver 323

Displays 331

Dock 333

Energy Saver 334

Exposé & Spaces 337

Keyboard 337

Language & Text 338

MobileMe 339

Mouse 339

Network 340

Parental Controls 340

Print & Fax 340

Security 340

Sharing 340

Software Update 341

Sound 343

Speech 345

Spotlight 345

Startup Disk 345

Time Machine 345

Trackpad 346

Universal Access 348

Chapter 10: The Free Programs 353

Your Free Mac OS X Programs 353

Address Book 354

Automator 354

Calculator 354

Chess 356

Dashboard 358

Dictionary 358

DVD Player 361

Font Book 361

Front Row 361

GarageBand 361

iCal 361

iChat 375

iDVD 375

Image Capture 375

iMovie, iPhoto 382

iSync 382

iTunes 382

Mail 382

Photo Booth 382

Preview 386

QuickTime Player 395

Safari 395

Stickies 396

System Preferences 399

TextEdit 399

Time Machine 407

Utilities: Your Mac OS X Toolbox 408

Chapter 11: CDs, DVDs, & iTunes 431

Disks Today 431

Disks In, Disks Out 432

Startup Disks 435

Burning CDs and DVDs 436

iTunes: The Digital Jukebox 441

DVD Movies 451

Part Four: The Technologies of Mac OS X

Chapter 12: Accounts, Parental Controls, & Security 461

Introducing Accounts 461

Creating an Account 463

Parental Controls 472

Editing Accounts 480

Setting Up the Login Process 483

Signing In, Logging Out 486

Sharing Across Accounts 488

Fast User Switching 490

Five Mac OS X Security Shields 492

Chapter 13: Networking, File Sharing, & Screen Sharing 509

Wiring the Network 509

File Sharing 514

Accessing Shared Files 521

Networking with Windows 529

Screen Sharing 536

More Dialing In from the Road 544

Chapter 14: Printing, Faxing, Fonts, & Graphics 545

Mac Meets Printer 545

Making the Printout 549

Managing Printouts 553

Printer Sharing 555

Faxing 556

PDF Files 561

Fonts—and Font Book 563

ColorSync 571

Graphics in Mac OS X 573

Screen-Capture Keystrokes 575

Chapter 15: Sound, Movies, & Speech 579

Playing Sounds 579

Recording Sound 581

QuickTime Movies 582

Speech Recognition 593

The Mac Reads to You 600

VoiceOver 603

Ink: Handwriting Recognition 603

Front Row 604

Chapter 16: The Unix Crash Course 607

Terminal 609

Navigating in Unix 612

Working with Files and Directories 620

Online Help 626

Terminal Preferences 628

Terminal Tips and Tricks 632

Changing Permissions with Terminal 633

20 Useful Unix Utilities 643

Putting It Together 652

Chapter 17: Hacking Mac OS X 657

TinkerTool: Customization 101 657

Redoing Mac OS X’s Graphics 659

Replacing the Finder Icons 662

Rewriting the Words 663

Your Bright Hacking Future 664

Part Five: Mac OS Online Chapter 18: Internet Setup & MobileMe 667

The Best News You’ve Heard All Day 668

Network Central—and Multihoming 668

Broadband Connections 670

Cellular Modems 675

Dial-up Modem Connections 676

Switching Locations 679

Internet Sharing 681

MobileMe 684

Internet Location Files 693

Chapter 19: Mail & Address Book 695

Setting Up Mail 695

Checking Your Mail 700

Writing Messages 702

Stationery 710

Reading Email 712

The Anti-Spam Toolkit 727

RSS Feeds 729

Notes 731

To Dos 732

Address Book 735

Chapter 20: Safari 745

Safari 746

Tips for Better Surfing 754

Tabbed Browsing 762

RSS: The Missing Manual 765

Chapter 21: iChat 769

Welcome to iChat 769

Three Chat Networks 770

Signing Up 771

The Buddy Lists 773

Making a List 773

Let the Chat Begin 776

Text Chatting 779

Audio Chats 783

Video Chats 784

Sharing Your Screen 789

iChat Theater 790

iChat Tweaks 792

Chapter 22: SSH, FTP, VPN, & Web Sharing 795

Web Sharing 795

FTP 800

Connecting from the Road 802

Remote Access with SSH 803

Virtual Private Networking 805

Part Six: Appendixes Appendix A: Installing Mac OS X 10.6 813

Getting Ready to Install 814

Two Kinds of Installation 815

The Automatic Installation 816

The Erase & Install Option 818

The Setup Assistant 819

Uninstalling Mac OS X 10.6 822

Appendix B: Troubleshooting 823

Minor Eccentric Behavior 823

Frozen Programs (Force Quitting) 825

Can’t Move or Rename an Icon 827

Application Won’t Open 827

Startup Problems 827

Fixing the Disk 830

Where to Get Troubleshooting Help 834

Appendix C: The Windows-to-Mac Dictionary 835

Appendix D: Where to Go from Here 849

Web Sites 849

Free Email Newsletters 850

Advanced Books, Programming Books 851

Appendix E: The Master Mac OS X Secret Keystroke List 853

Index 859

The Missing Credits

About the Author

David Pogue (author) is the weekly tech columnist for The New York

Times, an Emmy-winning correspondent for CBS News Sunday

Morn-ing, a weekly CNBC contributor, and the creator of the Missing

Manu-al series He’s the author or coauthor of 50 books, including 25 in this

series, six in the “For Dummies” line (including Macs, Magic, Opera,

and Classical Music), two novels, and The World According to Twitter

In his other life, David is a former Broadway show conductor, a piano player, and a

magician He lives in Connecticut with his wife and three awesome children

Links to his columns and weekly videos await at www.davidpogue.com He welcomes

feedback about his books by email at david@pogueman.com

About the Creative Team

Julie Van Keuren (copy editor) is a freelance editor, writer, and desktop publisher who

runs her “little media empire” from her home in Billings, Montana In her spare time

she enjoys swimming, biking, running, and (hey, why not?) triathlons She and her

husband, M.H., have two sons, Dexter and Michael Email: little_media@yahoo.com.

Phil Simpson (design and layout) works out of his office in Southbury, Connecticut,

where he has had his graphic design business since 1982 He is experienced in many

facets of graphic design, including corporate identity/branding, publication design,

and corporate and medical communications Email: pmsimpson@earthlink.net.

Brian Jepson (technical consultant) is a Senior Editor for O’Reilly Media He co-wrote

Mac OS X for Unix Geeks, and has written or edited a number of other tech books

He’s also the co-founder of Providence Geeks, and serves as an all-around geek for

AS220, a non-profit, unjuried, and uncensored arts center in Providence, RI Email:

bjepson@oreilly.com

Chris Stone (author of Chapter 16) is a senior systems administrator at O’Reilly Media

and coauthor of Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell, published by O’Reilly A San Francisco

native, he got his English degree from Humboldt State University and spent 10 years

hidden away in the Japanese countryside before returning to the North Bay area,

where he lives with his wife, Miho, and sons, Andrew and Jonathan

Rich Koster (beta reader) bought his first Mac, a 17-inch MacBook Pro, in 2009, and

has never looked back toward the Dark Side (PCs) Rich served as the tech editor of

David Pogue’s iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition He’s a husband, a father, and

creator of the Disney Echo at DisneyEcho.emuck.com, which he has fun tending daily

with his MacBook Pro!

Man was this book a lot of work Apple just could not leave well enough alone For

an OS update that supposedly “put a pause on new features,” Apple sure put a lot of effort into rejiggering, rewording, or shuffling around what was already there!

Over the years, many friends and colleagues have contributed enthusiasm, expertise, and even prose to this book’s editions They include Zachary Brass, teenage screenshot machine; Dan Pourhadi, Mac writer extraordinaire, who updated Chapter 7 for the

previous edition; J.D Biersdorfer, New York Times computer Q&A columnist, who

updated Chapters 18, 20, and 21 for the previous edition; and Lesa Snider, my assistant for several years, who was the graphics goddess and co-indexer on previous editions

In addition to the dream team members identified above, I owe debts of thanks to O’Reilly’s Missing Manuals editor-in-chief, Peter Meyers; Teresa Noelle Roberts, copy editor for previous editions; Apple’s Monica Sarker and Bill Evans for helping me get answers to baffling tech questions; piano/indexing virtuoso Jim Jacoby; and to my crack team of eleventh-hour proofreaders, Kellee Katagi, Diana D’Abruzzo, and Julie Van Keuren I also wish I could send out an “I Made the Book Better!” T-shirt to every reader who ever took the time to write with corrections, suggestions, tips, and tricks

And thanks, as always, to David Rogelberg for believing in the idea

Above all, this book owes its existence to the patience and affection of Jennifer, Kelly, Tia, and Jeffrey They make these books—and everything else—possible

—David Pogue

The Missing Manual Series

Missing Manuals are witty, superbly written guides to computer products that don’t come with printed manuals (which is just about all of them) Each book features a handcrafted index; cross-references to specific page numbers (not just “see Chapter

14”); and an ironclad promise never to put an apostrophe in the possessive pronoun its

Here’s a list of current and upcoming titles:

• iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition by David Pogue

• iPod: The Missing Manual, 8th Edition by J.D Biersdorfer

• David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual by David Pogue

• Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual by Lesa Snider King

• JavaScript: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland

• CSS: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition, by David Sawyer McFarland

• Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald

• The Internet: The Missing Manual by David Pogue and J.D Biersdorfer

• Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland

• Flash CS4: The Missing Manual by E A Vander Veer and Chris Grover

• eBay: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner

• Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton

• Google: The Missing Manual by Sarah Milstein and Rael Dornfest

• Google Apps: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner

• Google Sketchup: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover

• Palm Pre: The Missing Manual by Ed Baig

• Netbooks: The Missing Manual by J.D Biersdorfer

• Home Networking: The Missing Manual by Scott Lowe

• Your Brain: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald

• Your Body: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald

• Living Green: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner

• Facebook: The Missing Manual by E.A Vander Veer

• Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton

For Macintosh:

• Photoshop Elements for Mac: The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage

• iMovie ’09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual by David Pogue and Aaron Miller

• iPhoto ’09: The Missing Manual by David Pogue and J.D Biersdorfer

• Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Snow Leopard Edition by David Pogue

• iWork ’09: The Missing Manual by Josh Clark

• AppleScript: The Missing Manual by Adam Goldstein

• iPod: The Missing Manual, 7th Edition by J.D Biersdorfer

• Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual by Jim Elferdink et al

• FileMaker Pro 10: The Missing Manual by Geoff Coffey and Susan Prosser

For Windows:

• Windows 7: The Missing Manual by David Pogue

• Windows Vista: The Missing Manual by David Pogue

• FrontPage 2003: The Missing Manual by Jessica Mantaro

• Office 2007: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover, Matthew MacDonald, and E A

Vander Veer

• Word 2007: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover

• Excel 2007: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald

• PowerPoint 2007: The Missing Manual by Emily A Vander Veer

• Access 2007: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald

• Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore

• PCs: The Missing Manual by Andy Rathbone

• Photoshop Elements 8: The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage

• Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore

• QuickBooks 2010: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore

• QuickBase: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner

• Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition by David Pogue

• Windows XP Pro: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition by David Pogue, Craig Zacker,

and L.J Zacker

• Windows XP Power Hound by Preston Gralla

Mac OS X is an impressive technical achievement; many experts call it the best

personal-computer operating system on earth But beware its name

The X is meant to be a Roman numeral, pronounced “10.” Don’t say “oh ess ex.” You’ll

get funny looks in public

In any case, Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the seventh major version of Apple’s

Unix-based operating system It’s got very little in common with the original Mac operating

system, the one that saw Apple through the 1980s and 1990s Apple dumped that in

2001, when CEO Steve Jobs decided it was time for a change Apple had just spent

too many years piling new features onto a software foundation originally poured in

1984 Programmers and customers complained of the “spaghetti code” the Mac OS

had become

On the other hand, underneath Mac OS X’s classy translucent desktop is Unix, the

industrial-strength, rock-solid OS that drives many a Web site and university It’s not

new by any means; in fact, it’s decades old and has been polished by generations of

programmers

The Snow Leopard Anomaly

Mac OS X 10.6, affectionately known as Snow Leopard, is a strange beast, for a couple

of reasons

The first has to do with the Law of Software Upgrades, which has been in place since

the dawn of personal computing And that law says: “If you don’t add new features

every year, nobody will upgrade, and you won’t make money.”

Introduction

And so, to keep you upgrading, the world’s software companies pile on more features with every new version of their wares Unfortunately, this can’t continue forever

Sooner or later, you wind up with a bloated, complex, incoherent mess of a program

The shocker of Snow Leopard, though, is that upping the feature count wasn’t the point In fact, Steve Jobs said, “We’re hitting Pause on new features.”

Instead, the point of Snow Leopard was refinement of the perfectly good operating

system that Apple already had in the previous version, Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)

Refinement meant fixing hundreds of little annoyances, like the baffling error sage that sometimes won’t let you eject a disk or a flash drive because it’s “busy.”

mes-Refinement meant making the whole thing faster, replacing substantial chunks of its plumbing—including rewriting the Finder from scratch—to be more modern

and streamlined Refinement also meant making Snow Leopard smaller—if you can

believe it, half the size of the previous Mac OS X, saving you at least 6 gigabytes of hard drive space right off the bat

As though to hammer home the point, Apple priced Snow Leopard at $30, about $100 less than its usual new-version Mac OS X price

So wait Apple’s not adding any new features? It’s spending all its time on polish,

optimization, and making things work better? Has Steve Jobs gone completely nuts?

If so, be grateful Snow Leopard builds beautifully on the successes of previous Mac

OS X versions You still don’t have to worry about viruses, spyware, or service pack releases that take up a Saturday afternoon to install and fine-tune And you still enjoy stability that would make the you of 1999 positively drool

But as it turns out, not all of Apple’s programmers got the “no new features” memo

As you’ll see in this book, there are hundreds of tiny new features and options Maybe

The Snow Leopard

Anomaly

All About “Snow Leopard”

What’s this business about big cats?

Most software companies develop their wares in secret,

us-ing code names for new products to throw outsiders off the

scent Apple’s code names for Mac OS X and its descendants

have been named after big cats: Mac OS X was Cheetah,

10.1 was Puma, 10.2 was Jaguar, 10.3 was Panther, 10.4

was Tiger, and 10.5 was Leopard Since 10.6 is considered

“only” a refinement of the existing Leopard version, it’s

called Snow Leopard

(The real snow leopard is an endangered species, native to

Central Asia It has no larynx and so it can’t roar It can kill

animals three times its size Insert your own operating-system metaphor here.)

Usually, the code name is dropped as soon as the product

is complete, whereupon the marketing department gives it

a new name In Mac OS X’s case, though, Apple thinks its cat names are cool enough to retain for the finished product

You do have to wonder what Apple plans to call future versions Apple increases only the decimal point with each major upgrade, which means it has four big cats to go before

it hits Mac OS XI

Let’s see: Bobcat, Cougar, Lion…um…Ocelot?

frequently asked question

there’s a blurry line between “new feature” and “refinement of an existing feature,”

but whatever; there are tons of enhancements.

A few of the big-ticket items:

•It’s faster Not everything is faster, but wherever Apple put effort into speeding

things up, you feel it

As noted above, the Finder—the desktop, where you manage your files, folders,

and disks—was rewritten from scratch in Mac OS X’s native language; you’ll feel

the zippiness right away Startup and shutdown are faster Mail and Safari open

faster Time Machine backups are faster And installation is faster (and many steps

simpler)

•It’s better organized Features like Exposé and stacks (pop-up Dock folders) have

been redesigned to make more sense and reduce scrolling

•It talks to Exchange corporate computers Just by entering your name and password

for your company’s network, you make your Mac part of a Microsoft Exchange

system That is, your corporate email shows up in Mac OS X’s Mail program, the

corporate directory shows up in Address Book, and your company calendar shows

up in iCal—right alongside your own personal mail, addresses, and appointments

•It’s better for laptops The Mac now adjusts its own clock when you travel, just like

a cellphone The menu of nearby wireless hot spots now shows the signal strength

for each Three- and four-finger trackpad “gestures” now work on even the oldest

multitouch Mac laptops

•QuickTime Player is new The Mac’s built-in movie player is brand new It

fea-tures a very cool frameless “screen,” plus a Trim command and one-click

upload-ing to YouTube, MobileMe, or iTunes (for loadupload-ing onto an iPod or iPhone) The

new Player can even make audio recordings, video recordings, and—a first for a

mainstream operating system—even screen recordings, so you can create how-to

videos for your less-gifted relatives and friends

•It has major new text-editing features Mac OS X’s system-wide spelling and

grammar checker is joined this time around by a typing-expansion feature You

can create your own abbreviations that, when typed, expand to a word, phrase, or

even a blurb of canned text many paragraphs long It’s great for autofixing typos,

of course, but also great for answering the same questions by email over and over

•Services are reborn Services, a strange little menu of miscellaneous commands,

has been in the Application menus for years now, baffling almost everyone In

Snow Leopard, they’ve been completely reborn They now appear only when

they’ll actually do something Better yet, creating your own system-wide Services

commands is a piece of cake, as Chapter 7 makes clear You can also assign any

keystroke you like to them So for the first time in Macintosh history, you have a

built-in means of opening favorite programs from the keyboard: Control-S for

Safari, Control-W for Word, and so on

The Snow Leopard Anomaly

•Improved navigation for blind people One feature turns your laptop’s trackpad

into a touchable map of the screen; the Mac speaks each onscreen element as you touch it In general, VoiceOver (as the talking-screen feature is called) has been given an enormous expansion/overhaul

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

About This Book

Power Tools for Software Companies

A couple of the biggest-deal features in Snow Leopard

are under-the-hood overhauls that you won’t see, but you

may someday feel They’re tools for software companies to

exploit And when they do, substantial speed and security

gains may result.

64-bit rewrites First, most of Mac OS X and its flotilla of

accompanying software programs have been rewritten in

64-bit code You can read more about this geeky term on

page 194; for now, it means (a) you can theoretically install

16 terabytes of memory in a Mac (if Apple ever sells one

with that many RAM slots, that is); (b) in programs that

have been rewritten as 64-bit apps—like Safari—there can be

noticeable speed payoffs; and (c) since more numbers can

be crunched simultaneously, programs can be even better

protected against nasties like viruses and hacker attacks.

(If you’re scoring at home, all but four of Snow Leopard’s

included software programs have been recast in 64-bit The

holdouts: DVD Player, Front Row, Grapher, and iTunes.)

Grand Central Dispatch You may have noticed that the

days of the megahertz marketing are over Processors are

no longer advertised with speed numbers like “3 gigahertz!

4 gigahertz! 5 gigahertz!” They pretty much topped out at

3 gigahertz; they’re just getting too hot to run any faster

Anything much higher, and your processor would melt a

hole through your desk.

Instead, the focus these days is for Intel and other chip

mak-ers to put multiple chips on a single processor—or multiple

cores All current Macs have multicore processors (two, four

or even eight cores), which can operate in parallel to get computing tasks done faster.

Unfortunately, unless a software program is rewritten to take advantage of the additional cores, it doesn’t run any faster than before The additional cores just sit there, wasted And

doing that rewrite—managing threads of a program—is an

expensive, time-consuming hassle for software companies

So Apple did the work for them Grand Central Dispatch

technology lets the operating system do the threading,

mak-ing it far easier for software companies to exploit modern Macs’ horsepower.

OpenCL The main processor in a modern computer isn’t

the only important chip; your Mac also has a graphics

processor This chip is traditionally dedicated to graphics and images And every year, as the demand for realistic movies and 3-D games grows, these graphics chips have been getting more powerful.

But what about when you’re not running a graphics-intensive program? Well, then your expensive, very fancy graphics chip just sits there, idle.

The idea behind OpenCL, then, is: “Use this high-horsepower chip for regular computing tasks when it’s free!” When software companies rewrite their apps to take advantage of OpenCL, then intensive computing tasks—financial, scientific, number-crunchy stuff—will be able to go much faster They’ll exploit your graphics processor for what it really is: a very powerful computer chip

PoWer users’ CliniC

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 10.6 in particular

Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual is designed to accommodate readers

at every technical level The primary discussions are written for advanced-beginner

or intermediate Mac fans But if you’re a Mac first-timer, miniature sidebar articles

called Up To Speed provide the introductory information you need to understand

the topic at hand If you’re a Mac veteran, on the other hand, keep your eye out for

similar shaded boxes called Power Users’ Clinic They offer more technical tips, tricks,

and shortcuts

When you write a book like this, you do a lot of soul-searching about how much stuff

to cover Of course, a thinner book, or at least a thinner-looking one, is always

prefer-able; plenty of readers are intimidated by a book that dwarfs the Tokyo White Pages

On the other hand, Apple keeps adding features and rarely 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—it isn’t going to get any thinner

Even so, some chapters come with free downloadable appendixes—PDF documents,

available on this book’s “Missing CD” page at www.missingmanuals.com—that go

into further detail on some of the tweakiest features (You’ll see references to them

sprinkled throughout the book.)

Maybe this idea will save a few trees—and a few back muscles when you try to pick

this book up

Snow Leopard Spots

When your job is to write a new edition of a computer book, and you hear about a

“no new features” mantra, you can’t help but be delighted That should make the job

easy, right? But in this case—wow, would you be wrong.

There may be very few big-ticket changes, but the number of tiny changes runs into

the hundreds! Undocumented, tweaky little changes For example:

The menu bar can now show the date, not just the day of the week When you’re

running Windows on your Mac, you can now open the files on the Macintosh “side”

without having to restart Icons can now be 512 pixels square—that’s huge—turning

any desktop window into a light table for photos There’s now a Put Back command

in the Trash, which flings a discarded item right back into the folder it came from,

even weeks later You can page through a PDF document or watch a movie right on a

file’s icon Buggy plug-ins (Flash and so on) no longer crash the Safari Web browser;

you just get an empty rectangle where they would have appeared Video chats in iChat

have much smaller connection-speed requirements And on and on and on

Not all of changes will thrill everyone, though Snow Leopard runs only on Macs

with Intel processors, meaning that pre-2006 Macs aren’t invited to the party Here

About This Book

and there, long-standing features have disappeared, especially in QuickTime Player

Plenty of little non-Apple utility programs no longer work in Snow Leopard, especially browser plug-ins and shortcut menu add-ons And some ancient file-management features, like invisible Type and Creator codes, are gone

In any case, it’d be pointless to try to draw up a single, tidy list of every change in Snow Leopard Instead, throughout this book, within the relevant discussions, you’ll

be alerted to all those little changes in little blurbs labeled like this:

Snow Leopard Spots: Little items like this one point out subtle changes from the previous version(s) of

Mac OS X—a good change, a bad change, or just a change.

About the Outline

Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual is divided into six parts, each

contain-ing several chapters:

•Part One, 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, Spaces, Exposé, Time Machine, icons, windows, menus, scroll bars, the Trash, aliases, the a menu, and so on

•Part Two, Programs in Mac OS X, is dedicated to the proposition that an operating

system is little more than a launchpad 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

•Part Three, The Components of Mac OS X, is an item-by-item discussion of the

individual software nuggets that make up this operating system—the 27 panels of System Preferences, and the 50 programs in your Applications and Utilities folders

•Part Four, The Technologies of Mac OS X, treads in more advanced territory

Networking, file sharing, and screen sharing, are, of course, tasks Mac OS X was born to do 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), and the Unix that lies beneath

•Part Five, Mac OS X Online, covers all the Internet features of Mac OS X, including

the Mail email program and the Safari Web browser/RSS reader; iChat for instant messaging and audio or video chats; Web sharing; Internet sharing; and Apple’s online MobileMe services (which include email accounts, secure file-backup features, Web hosting, and more) 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

•Part Six: Appendixes This book’s appendixes include a Windows-to-Mac

diction-About This Book

OS X); guidance in installing this operating system; a troubleshooting handbook;

a list of resources for further study; and an extremely thorough master list of all

the keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X Snow Leopard

AboutÆTheseÆArrows

Throughout this book, and throughout the Missing Manual series, you’ll find sentences

like this one: “Open the System folderÆLibrariesÆFonts folder.” That’s shorthand for

a much longer instruction that directs you to open three nested folders in sequence,

like this: “On your hard drive, you’ll find a folder called System Open that Inside the

System folder window is a folder called Libraries; double-click it to open it Inside

that folder is yet another one called Fonts Double-click to open it, too.”

Similarly, this kind of arrow shorthand helps to simplify the business of choosing

commands in menus, such as aÆDockÆPosition on Left

About MissingManuals.com

To get the most out of this book, visit www.missingmanuals.com Click the “Missing

CD-ROM” link—and then this book’s title—to reveal a neat, organized,

chapter-by-chapter list of the shareware and freeware mentioned in this book

The Web site also offers corrections and updates to the book (To see them, click the

book’s title, and then click View/Submit Errata.) In fact, please submit such

correc-tions and updates yourself! In an effort to keep the book as up to date and accurate as

possible, each time O’Reilly prints more copies of this book, I’ll make any confirmed

corrections you’ve suggested I’ll also note such changes on the Web site so that you

can mark important corrections into your own copy of the book, if you like And I’ll

keep the book current as Apple releases more Mac OS X 10.6 updates

About This Book

Version 10.6.1 and Beyond

Only two weeks after the debut of Mac OS X 10.6, Apple

rolled out a free update to 10.6.1, and thus began its

tradi-tional flood of system updates These installers patch holes,

fix bugs, improve compatibility with external gadgets, and

make everything work more smoothly

Version 10.6.1, for example, delivered a long list of bug

fixes in compatibility with cellular modems, DVD playback,

printer compatibility, automatic login bugs, glitches in Mail,

and so on

This book covers 10.6.1, but it’s only a matter of time before

10.6.2 comes out, then 10.6.3, and so on.

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.

As for the differences between the “first decimal point”

versions of Mac OS X: You’ll find this book useful no ter which version you have, but it describes and illustrates version 10.6 and later

mat-If you’re still working with 10.1 through 10.5, you’ll probably feel most comfortable if you seek out the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth edition of this book

Or, better yet, upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Version alert

The Very Basics

To use this book, and indeed to use a Macintosh computer, you need to know a few basics This book assumes you’re familiar with a few terms and concepts:

•Clicking This book gives you three kinds of instructions that require you to use

the Mac’s mouse To click means to point the arrow cursor at something on the

screen and then—without moving the cursor—press and release the clicker

but-ton on the mouse (or your laptop trackpad) To double-click, of course, means to click twice in rapid succession, again without moving the cursor at all And to drag

means to move the cursor while holding down the button

When you’re told to c-click something, you click while pressing the c key (which

is next to the space bar) Shift-clicking, Option-clicking, and Control-clicking work the same way—just click while pressing the corresponding key

(There’s also right-clicking But that important topic is described in depth on

page 224.)

•Menus The menus are the words at the top of your screen: a, File, Edit, and so

on Click one to make a list of commands appear

Some people click and release to open a menu and then, after reading the choices, click again on the one they want Other people like to press the mouse button con-tinuously after the initial click on the menu title, drag down the list to the desired command, and only then release the mouse button Either method works fine

•Keyboard shortcuts If you’re typing along in a burst of creative energy, it’s

disrup-tive to have to grab the mouse to use a menu That’s why many Mac fans prefer

to trigger menu commands by pressing certain combinations on the keyboard

For example, in word processors, you can press c-B to produce a boldface word

When you read an instruction like “press c-B,” start by pressing the c key, then, while it’s down, type the letter B, and finally release both keys

Tip: You know what’s really nice? The keystroke to open the Preferences dialog box in every Apple

pro-gram—Mail, Safari, iMovie, iPhoto, TextEdit, Preview, and on and on—is always the same: c-comma Better yet, that standard is catching on with other software companies, too; Word, Excel, Entourage, and PowerPoint use the same keystroke, for example

•Icons The colorful inch-tall pictures that appear in your various desktop folders

are the graphic symbols that represent each program, disk, and document on your computer If you click an icon one time, it darkens, indicating that you’ve just

highlighted or selected it Now you’re ready to manipulate it by using, for example,

a menu command

•Checkboxes, radio buttons, tabs See Figure I-1 for a quick visual reference to the

onscreen controls you’re most often asked to use

The Very Basics

A few more tips on mastering the Macintosh keyboard appear on page 220 Otherwise,

if you’ve mastered this much information, you have all the technical background you

need to enjoy Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual

The Very Basics

Figure I-1:

Mastering Mac OS X involves

knowing what things are

called, especially the kinds

of controls you find in dialog

boxes

Note, by the way, that the

dialog-box subdivisions once

called tabs are still called tabs,

even though they no longer

resemble file-folder tabs.

Tabs Checkbox

Radio buttons

Pop-up menu

Button Text box

Part One:

The Mac OS X Desktop

Chapter 1: Folders & Windows

Chapter 2: Organizing Your Stuff

Chapter 3: Spotlight

Chapter 4: Dock, Desktop, & Toolbars

1

1

Getting into Mac OS X

When you first turn on a Mac running OS X 10.6, an Apple logo greets you, soon

followed by an animated, rotating “Please wait” gear cursor—and then you’re in No

progress bar, no red tape

Folders & Windows

Figure 1-1:

Left: On Macs configured to

accommo-date different people at different times,

this is one of the first things you see

upon turning on the computer Click

your name (If the list is long, you may

have to scroll to find your name—or

just type the first few letters of it.)

Right: At this point, you’re asked to

type in your password Type it, and

then click Log In (or press Return or

Enter; pressing these keys usually

“clicks” any blue, pulsing button in

a dialog box) If you’ve typed the

wrong password, the entire dialog

box vibrates, in effect shaking its little

dialog-box head, suggesting that you

guess again (See Chapter 12.)

Logging In

What happens next depends on whether you’re the Mac’s sole proprietor or you have

to share it with other people in an office, school, or household

• If it’s your own Mac, and you’ve already been through the Mac OS X setup process

described in Appendix A, no big deal You arrive at the Mac OS X desktop

• If it’s a shared Mac, you may encounter the Login dialog box, shown in Figure 1-1

Click your name in the list (or type it, if there’s no list)

If the Mac asks for your password, type it and then click Log In (or press Return)

You arrive at the desktop Chapter 12 offers much more on this business of user accounts and logging in

The Elements of the Mac OS X Desktop

The desktop is the shimmering, three-dimensional Mac OS X landscape shown in Figure 1-2; technically, you’re in a program called the Finder On a new Mac, it’s

covered by a starry galaxy photo that belongs to Snow Leopard’s overall outer-space graphic theme (If you upgraded from an earlier version of Mac OS X, you keep whatever desktop picture you had before In fact, at first glance, you probably won’t spot anything different about Snow Leopard at all.)

If you’ve ever used a computer before, most of the objects on your screen are nothing more than updated versions of familiar elements Here’s a quick tour

Apple menu Menu bar Desktop Menulets

Getting into Mac OS X

Note: If your desktop looks even barer than this—no menus, no icons, almost nothing on the Dock—then

somebody in charge of your Mac has turned on Simple Finder mode for you Details on page 472

Disk icons

For years, Apple has encouraged its flock to keep a clean desktop, to get rid of all the

icons that many of us leave strewn around Especially the hard drive icon, which has

appeared in the upper-right corner of the screen since the original 1984 Mac

In Snow Leopard, the Macintosh HD icon no longer appears on the screen (unless it

was there before you upgraded) “Look, if you want access to your files and folders,

just open them directly—from the Dock or from your Home folder (page 63),” Apple

seems to be saying “Most of the stuff on the hard drive is system files of no interest

to you, so let’s just hide that icon, shall we?”

Note: If you’d prefer that the disk icons return to your desktop where they used to be, then Snow Leopard

can accommodate you Choose FinderÆPreferences, click General, and turn on the checkboxes of the disks

whose icons you want on the desktop: hard disks, external disks, CDs, and so on

The Dock

This row of translucent, almost photographic icons is a launcher for the programs,

files, folders, and disks you use often—and an indicator to let you know which

pro-grams are already open In Snow Leopard, they appear to rest on a sheet of transparent

smoked glass

In principle, the Dock is very simple:

• Programs go on the left side Everything else goes on the right, including

docu-ments, folders, and disks (Figure 1-2 shows the dividing line.)

• You can add a new icon to the Dock by dragging it there Rearrange Dock icons

by dragging them Remove a Dock icon by dragging it away from the Dock, and

enjoy the animated puff of smoke that appears when you release the mouse button

(You can’t remove the icon of a program that’s currently open, however.)

• Click something once to open it When you click a program’s icon, a tiny, bright,

micro-spotlight dot appears under its icon to let you know it’s open

When you click a folder’s icon, you get a pop-up arc of icons, or a grid or list of

them, that indicates what’s inside See page 122 for details

• Each Dock icon sprouts a pop-up menu To see the menu, Control-click it or

right-click it A shortcut menu of useful commands pops right out

• Hold the mouse button down on a program’s Dock icon to see mini versions of all

that program’s open windows This feature, new in Snow Leopard, is an extension

of the Exposé feature described on page 155 (Click the window, or the Dock icon,

to close Exposé.)

Because the Dock is such a critical component of Mac OS X, Apple has decked it out with enough customization controls to keep you busy experimenting for months

You can change its size, move it to the sides of your screen, hide it entirely, and so

on Chapter 4 contains complete instructions for using and understanding the Dock

The a menu

The a menu houses important Mac-wide commands like Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down They’re always available, no matter which program you’re using

The menu bar

Every popular operating system saves space by concealing its most important

com-mands in menus that drop down Mac OS X’s menus are especially refined:

• They stay down Mac OS X is multithreaded, which means it’s perfectly capable of

carrying on with its background activities while you study its open, translucent menus Therefore, Mac OS X menus stay open until you click the mouse button, trigger a command from the keyboard, or buy a new computer, whichever comes first

Tip: Actually, menus are even smarter than that If you give the menu name a quick click, the menu opens

and stays open If you click the menu name and hold the mouse button down for a moment, the menu opens, but closes again when you release the button Apple figures that, in that case, you’re just exploring, reading, or hunting for a certain command.

• They’re translucent Unless you’ve turned off this option in System Preferences

ÆDesktop & Screen Saver, you can faintly see the background through the menu bar

• They’re logically arranged The first menu in every program, which appears in

bold lettering, tells you at a glance what program you’re in The commands in this

Application menu include About (which indicates which version of the program

you’re using), Preferences, Quit, and commands like Hide Others and Show All (which help control window clutter)

In short, all the Application menu’s commands actually pertain to the application you’re using

The File and Edit menus come next As in the past, the File menu contains

com-mands for opening, saving, and closing files (See the logic?) The Edit menu contains

the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands

The last menu is almost always Help It opens a miniature Web browser that lets you search the online Mac help files for explanatory text (page 60)

• You can operate them from the keyboard Once you’ve clicked open a menu, you

can highlight any command in it just by typing the first letter (g for Get Info, for

example) (It’s especially great for “Your country” pop-up menus on Web sites,

Getting into

Mac OS X

where “United States” is about 200 countries down in the list Now you can type

united s to jump right to it.)

You can also press Tab to open the next menu, Shift-Tab to open the previous one,

and Return or Enter to “click” the highlighted command

All that’s left is figuring out a way to open the menu itself from the keyboard to

start the process (details on page 178)

Otherwise, the menu bar looks and works much as it has in operating systems past

Windows and How to Work Them

In designing Mac OS X, one of Apple’s goals was to address the window-proliferation

problem As you create more files, stash them in more folders, and launch more

pro-grams, it’s easy to wind up paralyzed before a screen awash with over lapping rectangles

That’s the problem admirably addressed by Exposé and Spaces They’re described in

detail in Chapter 5

But some handy clutter and navigation controls are built into the windows themselves,

too For example:

The Sidebar

The Sidebar is the pane at the left side of every Finder window, unless you’ve hidden

it (and by the way, it’s also at the left side of every Open dialog box and every

full-sized Save dialog box)

The Sidebar has as many as four different sections, each preceded by a collapsible

heading:

• Devices This section lists every storage device connected to, or installed inside,

your Mac: hard drives, CDs, DVDs, iPods, memory cards, USB flash drives, and

so on The removable ones (like CDs, DVDs, and iPods) bear a little gray ´ logo,

which you can click to eject that disk

• Shared It took 20 years for an operating system to list all the other computers on

the home or small-office network, right there in every window, without any

dig-ging, connecting, button-clicking, or window-opening But here it is: a complete

list of the other computers on your network whose owners have turned on File

Sharing, ready for access See Chapter 13 for details

• Places This primary section of the Sidebar lists places (in this case, folders) where

you might look for files and folders Into this list, you can stick the icons of anything

at all—files, programs, folders, anything but disks—for easy access

Each icon is a shortcut For example, click the Applications icon to view the contents

of your Applications folder in the main part of the window (Figure 1-3) And if

you click the icon of a file or program, it opens

Getting into Mac OS X

• Search For The “folders” in this Sidebar section are actually canned searches that

execute instantly when you click one If you click Today, for example, the main window fills with all the files and folders on your computer that you’ve changed today Yesterday and Past Week work the same way

The All Images, All Movies, and All Documents searches round up everything in those file-type categories, no matter what folders they’re actually sitting in

These instasearches are very useful all by themselves, but what’s even better is how

easy it is to make your own search folders to put here Page 117 has the details.

Snow Leopard Spots: If you drag away everything listed under the Devices, Places, or Search For

head-ings, the heading itself disappears to save space The heading reappears the next time you put something

in its category back into the Sidebar.

Figure 1-3:

The Sidebar makes tion very quick, because you can jump back and forth between distant corners of your Mac with a single click

naviga-In column view, the Sidebar

is especially handy because it eliminates all the columns to the left of the one you want, all the way back to your hard-drive level You’ve just folded up your desktop!

Good things to put here:

favorite programs, disks on

a network you often connect

to, a document you’re ing on every day, and so on

work-Folder and disk icons here work just like normal ones

You can drag a document onto a folder icon to file it there, drag a downloaded sit file onto the StuffIt Expander icon, and so on In fact, the disks and folders here are even spring-loaded (page 77).

Sidebar Eject button

Drag this divider to shrink or widen the Sidebar

“Old Finder Mode” button

Windows and How

to Work Them

Fine-tuning the Sidebar

The beauty of this parking lot for containers is that it’s so easy to set up with your

favorite places For example:

• Remove an icon by dragging it out of the Sidebar entirely It vanishes with a puff

of smoke (and even a little whoof sound effect) You haven’t actually removed

anything from your Mac; you’ve just unhitched its alias from the Sidebar.

Tip: You can’t drag items out of the Shared list Also, if you drag a Devices item out of the list, you’ll have to

choose FinderÆPreferencesÆSidebar (and turn on the appropriate checkbox) to put it back in.

• Rearrange the icons by dragging them up or down in the list (You’re not allowed

to rearrange the computers listed in the Shared section, though.)

• Install a new icon by dragging it off your desktop (or out of a window) into any

spot in the Places list of the Sidebar Unlike previous versions of Mac OS X, you

can’t drag icons into any old section of the Sidebar—just the Places place

Tip: You can also highlight an icon in any window, and then choose FileÆAdd to Sidebar, or just press c-T.

• Adjust the width of the Sidebar by dragging its right edge—either the skinny

di-vider line or the extreme right edge of the vertical scroll bar, if there is one You

“feel” a snap at the point when the line covers up about half of each icon’s name

Any covered-up names sprout ellipses (…) to let you know (as in “Secret Salaries

Spreadsh…”)

Windows and How

to Work Them

Fixing the Sidebar

In the pre-Leopard days, dragging stuff

out of the Sidebar to get rid of it

some-times created a small quandary: Once

you dragged the Macintosh HD, Home,

or iDisk icons out of the Sidebar, you

couldn’t drag them back in Suddenly you

were stuck with the orphaned horizontal

divider, with nothing to divide The top

half of your list was empty.

Nowadays, mercifully, anything you drag

out of the Sidebar can be dragged back

in again, including the big-ticket items like

Home and Macintosh HD

(Furthermore, entire headings now

ap-pear and disapap-pear as needed.)

Even so, there’s a quicker way to restore the Sidebar to its factory settings

If you choose FinderÆPreferences and then click the Sidebar button, you discover the checkboxes shown here They let you put back the Apple-installed icons that you may have removed in haste Just turn on a checkbox to restore its icon to your Side- bar So if something you expect to see in your Sidebar isn’t there, check back here.

On the other hand, you might as well streamline your computing life by turning

off the checkboxes of icons that you never

want to see filling your Sidebar.

troubleshooting moment

• Hide the Sidebar by pressing c-Option-S, which is the shortcut for the new

ViewÆHide Sidebar command Bring it back into view by pressing the same key combination (or using the Show Sidebar command)

Note: The Sidebar also hides itself when you click the Old Finder Mode button, described on page 29.

Then again, why would you ever want to hide the Sidebar? It’s one of the handiest

navigation aids since the invention of the steering wheel For example:

• It takes a lot of pressure off the Dock Instead of filling up your Dock with folder

icons (all of which are frustratingly alike and unlabeled anyway), use the Sidebar

to store them You leave the Dock that much more room for programs and ments

docu- •docu- It’sdocu- betterdocu- thandocu- thedocu- Dock.docu- In some ways, the Sidebar is a lot like the Dock, in that

you can stash favorite icons of any sort there But the Sidebar reveals the names of

these icons, and the Dock doesn’t until you use the mouse to point there

• It makes disk-ejecting easy Just click the ´ button next to any removable disk to

make it pop out After 20 years, Mac has finally beaten the “It’s illogical to eject a disk by dragging it to the Trash!” problem (Other ways to eject disks are described

in Chapter 11.)

Figure 1-4:

When Steve Jobs unveiled Mac OS X at a Macworld Expo in 1999, he said that his goal was to oversee the creation of an interface so attractive, “you just want to lick it.” Desktop windows, with their juicy, fruit- flavored controls, are a good starting point.

Close button

Minimize button

Zoom button Toolbar proxy iconFolder mode” button“Old Finder

Resizing handle Status bar Scroll bar

Sidebar

Search box

Windows and How

to Work Them

• It makes disc-burning easy When you’ve inserted a blank CD or DVD and loaded

it up with stuff you want to copy, click the X button next to its name to begin

burning that disc (Details on burning discs are in Chapter 11.)

• You can drag onto its folders and disks That is, you can drag icons onto Sidebar

icons, as though they were the real disks, folders, and programs they represent

• It simplifies connecting to networked disks Park your other computers’ hard drive

icons here, as described in Chapter 13, and you shave several steps off the usual

connecting-via-network ritual

Title Bar

The title bar (Figure 1-4) has several functions First, when several windows are open,

the darkened title bar, window name, mini-icon, and colored left-corner buttons tell

you which window is active (in front); in background windows, these elements

ap-pear dimmed and colorless Second, the title bar acts as a handle that lets you move

the window around on the screen

Of course, you can also move Mac OS X windows by dragging any “shiny gray” edge;

see Figure 1-5

Tip: Here’s a nifty keyboard shortcut: You can cycle through the different open windows in one program

without using the mouse Just press c-~ (that is, the tilde key, to the left of the number 1 key on U.S

keyboards) With each press, you bring a different window forward within the current program It works both

in the Finder and in your everyday programs, and it beats the pants off using the mouse to choose a name

from the Window menu (Note the difference from c-Tab, which cycles through different open programs.)

Windows and How

to Work Them

Figure 1-5:

Mac OS X is no longer

made of simulated brushed

aluminum, as in years past

Now it’s accented with strips

of gradient gray (that is,

light-to-dark shading) All

these gradient gray strips are

fair game as handles to drag

the window.

Gray gradient

Gray gradient

After you’ve opened one folder that’s inside another, the title bar’s secret folder

hier-archy menu is an efficient way to backtrack—to return to the enclosing window Get

in the habit of right-clicking (or Control-clicking, or c-clicking) the name of the window to access the menu shown in Figure 1-6 (You can release the Control or c key immediately after clicking.)

By choosing the name of a folder from this menu, you open the corresponding dow When browsing the contents of the Users folder, for example, you can return

win-to the main hard drive window by Control-clicking the folder name Users and then choosing Macintosh HD from the menu

Tip: Keyboard lovers, take note Instead of using this title bar menu, you can also jump to the enclosing

window by pressing c-, (up arrow), which is the shortcut for the GoÆEnclosing Folder command

Pressing c- (down arrow) takes you back into the folder you started in, assuming that it’s still highlighted

(This makes more sense when you try it than when you read it.)

Once you’ve mastered dragging, you’re ready for these three terrific title bar tips:

• Pressing the c key lets you drag the title bar of an inactive window—one that’s

partly covered by a window in front—without bringing it to the front (Drag any empty part of the title bar—not the title itself.)

By the way, you can close, minimize, or zoom a background window without the

help of the c key Just click one of those three corresponding title-bar buttons normally Mac OS X does its thing without taking you out of your current window

or program

Figure 1-6:

Control-click (or right-click, or

c-click) a Finder window’s title bar to summon the hidden folder hierarchy menu This trick also works in most other Mac OS X programs

For example, you can c-click a docu- ment window’s title

to find out where the document is actually saved on your hard drive.

Windows and How

to Work Them