Macos High Sierra for Dummies

by Levitus, Bob

• ISBN13: 9781119417132
• ISBN10: 1119417139
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-11-30
• Publisher: For Dummies

Summary

Work, play, connect, and share with the ultimate tour to macOS 'X'

macOS 'X' For Dummies is the ultimate tour guide to the Mac operating system, written by Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus himself! Whether you're upgrading your trusty old MacBook or venturing into new territory for the very first time, this easy to use guide will get you up and running quickly. It's all here: navigation, preferences, file management, networking, music and movies, and so much more. From the absolute basics to advanced techniques, this book shows you everything you need to know to turn your Mac into an extension of your brain. Concerned about security? Need to troubleshoot an issue? Want to make your Mac perform even better? Let Dr. Mac walk you through it with clear explanations and a little bit of humor. Read this book beginning-to-end for a complete tutorial, or dip in and out as needed when things take an unexpected turn; if you have macOS questions, Dr. Mac has the answers you need.

macOS has powered Macs since 2001. Each free annual update improves the system's functionality, and typically offers a few new tools and fixes old issues. If you need to learn your way around this year's update quickly, easily, and thoroughly, this book is for you.

• Get organized and find your way around the interface
• Customize your Mac's look, "feel," and behavior
• Get connected, get online, and into the cloud
• Access your movies and music, back up your data, and more!

Famous for its reliability and usability, macOS offers the sort of streamlined tools and operations you won't find anywhere else. macOS 'X' For Dummies helps you discover just how much your Mac can do for you.

Author Biography

Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus is a veteran Mac guru. He is the author of the "Dr. Mac" column for the Houston Chronicle and has been a consistent contributor to a variety of tech publications. Bob has written or co-written more than 80 books on macOS, iPhone, iPad, Office for the Mac, GarageBand, and other related topics.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 3

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: macOS Basics 5

Chapter 1: macOS High Sierra 101 (Prerequisites: None) 7

Gnawing to the Core of macOS 8

A Safety Net for the Absolute Beginner (or Any User) 10

Turning the dang thing on 10

What you should see on startup 11

Shutting down properly 13

A few things you should definitely not do with your Mac 15

Point-and-click boot camp 16

Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu 18

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

Touring Finder and Its Desktop 24

Anatomy of a Window 25

Top o’ the window to ya! 27

A scroll new world 29

(Hyper)active windows 30

Dialog Dealie-Boppers 32

Working with Windows 34

Opening and closing windows 34

Resizing windows and window panes 35

Moving windows 35

Shuffling windows 36

Menu Basics 39

The ever-changing menu bar 39

Contextual menus: They’re sooo contextual! 40

Recognizing disabled options 41

Navigating submenus 42

Under the Apple menu tree 42

Using keyboard shortcut commands 44

Chapter 3: What’s Up, Dock? 45

A Quick Introduction to Your Dock 46

The default icons of the dock 46

Trash talkin’ 49

Opening application menus on the dock 51

Reading dock icon body language 53

Opening files from the dock 53

Customizing Your Dock 54

Adding dock icons 54

Removing an icon from the dock 56

Resizing the dock 57

What should you put on your dock? 57

Setting your dock preferences 59

Part 2: How Stuff Works 63

Chapter 4: Delving Deeper into Finder and Its Desktop 65

Introducing Finder and Its Minions: The Desktop and Icons 65

Introducing the desktop 66

Bellying up to the toolbar 68

Figuring out what an icon is 71

Identifying your Finder icons in the wild 72

Aliases Are Awesome! 73

Creating aliases 74

Deleting aliases 75

Hunting down an alias’s parent 75

The View(s) from a Window 76

Moving through folders fast in Column view 76

Perusing in Icon view 78

Listless? Try touring folders in List view 78

You gotta go with the flow 80

What’s next on the (View) menu? 81

Finder on the Menu 82

The actual Finder menu 82

Like a road map: The current folder’s pop-up menu 85

Going places with the Go menu 86

Customizing Finder Windows 88

Adding folders to the sidebar 88

Setting Finder preferences 89

Digging for Icon Data in the Info Window 92

Chapter 5: Having It Your Way 97

Introducing System Preferences 97

Putting a Picture on the Desktop 100

Setting Up a Screen Saver 101

Putting Widgets on the Dashboard 103

Translation 105

Flight Tracker 105

Giving Buttons, Menus, and Windows a Makeover 106

Adjusting the Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad, and Other Hardware 109

Keyboard 109

Mouse 114

Bluetooth 115

Trackpad (notebooks and desktops with a Magic Trackpad) 116

Styling Your Sound 117

Changing sound effects 118

Choosing output and input options 118

Chapter 6: The Care and Feeding of Files and Folders 119

A Quick Primer on Finding Files 120

Understanding the macOS Folder Structure 120

Understanding nested folders 121

From the top: The Computer folder 123

Peeking into the Applications folder 123

Visiting the Library folders 124

Let it be: The System folder 125

There’s no place like Home 125

Your personal library card 127

Saving Your Document Before It’s Too Late 129

Stepping through a basic save 131

Save As versus Duplicate: Different names for the same result 136

Open, Sez Me 138

With drag-and-drop 139

With a Quick Look 140

When your Mac can’t open a file 140

With the application of your choice 141

Organizing Your Stuff in Folders 143

Files versus folders 144

Organizing your stuff with subfolders 144

Creating new folders 146

Navigating with spring-loaded folders 147

Smart folders 148

Shuffling Files and Folders 150

Moving files and folders 150

Selecting multiple icons 151

Playing the icon name game: Renaming icons 153

Compressing files 154

Getting rid of icons 154

The Incredible iCloud Drive 155

Chapter 7: Comprehending the macOS Clipboard 157

Introducing the Clipboard 157

Copying Files and Folders 158

Pasting from the Clipboard 160

High Sierra’s Universal Clipboard 160

Part 3: Getting Things Done 163

Chapter 8: Four Terrific Timesaving Tools 165

With a Quick Look 166

Share and share alike with the Share menu 168

Slide into Slideshow (full-screen) mode 169

Spotlight on Finding Files and Folders Faster 169

Using the search box in Finder windows 170

Using the Spotlight menu and window 172

Blast Off with Mission Control 173

The Mission Control pane: It’s painless 173

Hot corners! 176

Mission Control’s Spaces from 30,000 feet (an overview) 177

Getting around in space(s) 179

Launchpad: The Place for Applications 180

Chapter 9: Organizing Your Life 183

Keeping Track with Calendar 184

Navigating Calendar views 184

Creating calendars 185

Deleting a calendar 186

Creating and managing events 187

Reminders: Protection Against Forgetting 190

Getting started with Reminders 190

To do or not to do: Setting reminders 191

Everything You Need to Know about Notification Center 192

Use Notes for Making Notes 195

Chapter 10: Siri-ously! 199

What Siri Can Do for You 199

Working with Siri 201

Making Siri Your Own 202

Chapter 11: Maps Are Where It’s At 205

Finding your current location with Maps 205

Finding a person, place, or thing 206

Views, zooms, and pans 208

Maps and Contacts 209

Timesaving map tools: Favorites, Recents, and Contacts 210

Smart map tricks 212

Part 4: Getting Along with Others 217

Chapter 12: (Inter)Networking 219

Getting Connected to the Internet 220

Your Internet service provider and you 220

Plugging in your Internet-connection settings 221

Browsing the Web with Safari 223

Owning your toolbar 224

Using the Safari sidebar 226

Using the terrific Top Sites page 230

Searching with Google 231

Checking out Help Center 233

Audio and Video Calls with FaceTime 233

Chapter 13: Dealing with People 237

Collecting Your Contacts 237

Adding contacts 238

Importing contacts from other programs 240

Creating a basic group 241

Setting up a smart group (based on contact criteria) 242

Deleting a group or smart group 243

The view is lovely 243

Sync + Contacts = your contacts everywhere 244

Chapter 14: Communicating with Mail and Messages 247

Sending and Receiving Email with Mail 247

Setting up Mail 248

A quick overview of the toolbar 249

Composing a new message 251

Sending email from the Contacts app 253

Working with stationery 254

Checking your mail 256

Dealing with spam 257

Mailboxes smart and plain 258

Changing your preferences 260

Sign here, please 261

Mail rules rule 262

Markup and Mail Drop 265

Communicating with Messages 267

What the heck is an iMessage? 267

Chit-chatting with Messages 268

Chapter 15: Sharing Your Mac and Liking It 271

Introducing Networks and File Sharing 272

Portrait of home office networking 273

Three ways to build a network 274

Setting Up File Sharing 277

Access and Permissions: Who Can Do What 279

Users and groups and guests 279

Creating users 280

macOS knows best: Folders shared by default 287

Sharing a folder or disk by setting permissions 288

Useful settings for permissions 292

Unsharing a folder 294

Connecting to a Shared Disk or Folder on a Remote Mac 295

Changing Your Password 298

Changing your account password on your Mac 299

Changing the password of any account but your own on your Mac 300

Changing the password for your account on someone else’s Mac 300

More Types of Sharing 301

Sharing a screen 301

Sharing the Internet 302

And yet more ways to share 303

Part 5: Getting Creative 305

Chapter 16: The Musical Mac 307

Apple Music and iTunes Match Rock! 308

Introducing iTunes 309

Working with Media 312

Adding songs 312

Adding movies and TV shows 314

Adding podcasts 315

Learning from iTunes U 317

Listening to iTunes Radio 317

All about Playlists 318

Creating a regular playlist 318

Working with smart playlists 320

Burning a playlist to CD 321

Looking at the Genius playlist 321

Chapter 17: The Multimedia Mac 325

Playing Movies and Music in QuickTime Player 325

iBooks on the Mac 327

Buying iBooks 328

Shopping for books without Apple 330

Reading iBooks 331

You’re the Star with Photo Booth 333

Viewing and Converting Images and PDFs in Preview 334

Importing Media 336

Downloading photos from a camera 336

Downloading DV video from a camcorder 339

Chapter 18: Words and Letters 341

Processing Words with TextEdit 341

Creating and composing a document 342

Working with text 343

Adding graphics to documents 347

Font Mania 348

Types of fonts 348

Managing your fonts with Font Book 349

Installing fonts manually 350

Chapter 19: Publish or Perish: The Fail-Safe Guide to Printing 351

Before Diving In 352

Ready: Connecting and Adding Your Printer 352

Connecting your printer 353

Setting up a printer for the first time 353

One last thing: Printer sharing 356

Set: Setting Up Your Document with Page Setup 356

Print: Printing with the Print Sheet 358

Printing a document 358

Choosing among different printers 359

Choosing custom settings 360

Saving custom settings 362

Preview and PDF Options 363

Part 6: Care and Feeding 365

Chapter 20: Features for the Way You Work 367

Talking and Listening to Your Mac 367

Keyboard System Preferences pane: You talk and your Mac types 368

Commanding your Mac by voice 369

Listening to your Mac read for you 371

Automatic Automation 374

Script Editor app: Write and edit AppleScripts 374

Automator app: Automate almost anything 376

A Few More Useful Goodies 378

App Store app: The place to buy Mac apps 378

Accessibility System Preferences pane: Make your Mac more accessible 379

Energy Saver System Preferences pane: For energy conservation and sleep 380

Bluetooth System Preferences pane: Where Bluetooth lives 382

Ink System Preferences pane: Visible to pen-input tablet users only 382

Automatic Login in the Users & Groups System Preferences pane: Don’t bother with the login screen 383

Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac 383

Boot Camp Assistant app: Run Windows on your Mac really 384

AirPlay mirroring 384

Handoff 385

Chapter 21: Safety First: Backups and Other Security Issues 387

Backing Up Is (Not) Hard to Do 388

Backing up with High Sierra’s excellent Time Machine 388

Backing up by using the manual, brute-force method 392

Backing up by using commercial backup software 393

Why You Need Two Sets of Backups 393

Non-Backup Security Concerns 394

About viruses and other malware 394

Firewall: Yea or nay? 397

Install recommended software updates 398

Protecting Your Data from Prying Eyes 399

Blocking or limiting connections 399

Locking down files with FileVault 399

Setting other options for security 400

Chapter 22: Utility Chest 403

Calculator 403

Activity Monitor 404

Disk Utility 406

First Aid button 406

Partition button 407

Erase button 407

Mount/Unmount button 407

Info button 408

Grab 408

Grapher 408

Keychain Access 409

Migration Assistant 411

System Information 411

Terminal 412

Chapter 23: Troubleshooting macOS 413

About Startup Disks and Booting 413

Finding or creating a startup disk 414

They call it a prohibitory sign for a reason 414

Recovering with Recovery HD 416

Step 1: Run First Aid 416

Step 2: Safe boot into Safe mode 417

Step 3: Zapping the PRAM/NVRAM 418

Step 4: Reinstalling macOS 419

Step 5: Things to try before taking your Mac in for repair 419

If Your Mac Crashes at Startup 420

Optimizing Storage 421

Part 7: The Part of Tens 423

Chapter 24: Ten (or So) Ways to Speed Up Your Mac Experience 425

Use Those Keyboard Shortcuts 426

Improve Your Typing Skills 427

Resolution: It’s Not Just for New Year’s Day Anymore 427

A Mac with a View — and Preferences, Too 429

Get a New, Faster Model 431

You Can Never Have Too Much RAM! 431

Get an Accelerated Graphics Card 432

Get a Solid-State Drive (SSD) 433

Get a New Hybrid Drive 433

Chapter 25: Ten Great Websites for Mac Freaks 437

The Mac Observer 437

Macworld 438

TidBITS 438

AppleWorld.Today 439

Download.com 439

Alltop 440

Apple Support 441

Other World Computing 441

EveryMac.com 442

dealmac 442

Index 445