Fill In The Blanks To Understanding Mac OS X Mountain Lion. By Reginald T. Prior

Transcription

1 Fill In The Blanks To Understanding Mac OS X Mountain Lion By Reginald T. Prior 1

2 Table Of Contents: Chapter One: Computer Terminology Dictionary Computer Terminology Dictionary How To Turn Your Computer On And Off Chapter Two: Getting Acquainted With The Mac OSX Mountain Lion Desktop And Other Related Changes Getting Around The Desktop And Changes For Mac OSX Mountain Lion How To Add Or Remove Programs From The Dock Learning The New Touchpad Gestures (Specific To Macbooks) Configuring a Wireless Mouse On Your Mac Changing Your Desktop Background Changing/Configuring Your Screensaver Searching For Things On Your Computer The Notification Area Configuring Banners, Alerts, Badges and Notification Styles Changing Time/Date On Your Computer Using The Recycle Bin How To Activate And Use The New Dictation Feature Adding/Changing Users On Your Mac Chapter Three: ICloud Explained And How It Integrates With Your Mac & Other Apple Devices ICloud Explained How To Setup ICloud On Your Mac Signing Into ICloud On Your IPhone or IPad How To Use The Notes & Reminders Program Chapter Four: Basic Internet Browsing Internet Lingo, Web Terminology Getting Connected To Wireless Internet Connections Parts Of The Safari Web Browser Using Search Providers/Engines To Find Things On The Internet Using Bookmarks/Favorites Changing Default Web Page When Your Browser Loads Chapter Five: Using and Fully Utilizing Electronic Mail ( ) Setting Up Your Account On Mac Mail The Main Screens Of Your Program Sending s Sending Attachments In s Opening And Replying To s Forwarding, Deleting s Using Your Contact/Address Book Using The New VIP s Feature

3 Chapter Six: Installing & Uninstalling Apps On Your Mac Getting To The App Store Downloading And Installing Apps How To Remove Apps From Your Mac Chapter Seven: The Critical Task of Backing up Your Computer Using Time Machine To Simplify Backing Up Your Computer Restoring Your Backups With Time Machine Chapter Eight: Computer Maintenance and Upkeep Importance Of Having Current Antivirus Programs Updated Importance Of Performing Periodic Disk Cleanups Dangers Of Using Peer To Peer Software Like Limewire, etc Chapter Nine: Taking Back Control Of Your Computer Why You Should Take Charge Of Your Computer First Phase Time Restrictions Second Phase Limiting Access To Computer Programs Third Phase Filtering Internet Websites

4 Like I had said earlier in this chapter, these computer terms or definitions are not all of the terms we talk about when we geeks discuss computers. Not by a long shot. Most other terms are out of the scope of this particular book. But the above translations of the Computer Lingo are all of the terminologies that you need to know to effectively be knowledgeable and comfortable operating a computer. I hope that I did not put you to sleep with all of this computer terminology and their meanings. But it is necessary to be able to follow along with the rest of this book. The next chapter of this book goes into the fun stuff. Getting into and actually working with your computer, which is the main reason why you purchased this book! With no further delays, let s proceed to Chapter Two: Getting Acquainted with Mac OSX Mountain Lion. But before we do that, we have to first turn our computer on! How To Turn Your Computer On The first thing that has to be done before we can start working with Mac OSX Mountain Lion is to turn your computer on. Every computer or laptop is made differently and computer manufacturers place the power button in many different places on the computer or laptop. But the one thing you need to keep in mind is that on every computer, the power button has an icon that looks like the picture below: To turn your computer on, find the button that has the icon that looks like the picture shown above and press that button. On a desktop macintosh, you will find the same icon on your monitor power button also. Press the button to turn your monitor on. How To Turn Your Computer Off (Shut Down) To turn your computer off, you have to start a process called shutting down. The process of shutting down makes sure that the computer turns off programs and the many parts of your computer properly. To shut down your computer depends on which operating system you are using. To Shut Down A Computer Using Mac OSX Mountain Lion: Move your mouse cursor down to the upper left part of your screen and single left click the Apple logo.it looks like this the Apple menu will come up. Under this menu, there will be a option that says Shut Down. It will look like the picture shown below: 15

5 Single click the Applications label from the left pane. All applications currently installed on your Mac will show up. To add an application to the dock, just single click and hold the mouse button down and drag & drop the application to the Dock and let go of the mouse button. To remove an application from the dock, just move your mouse cursor to the application on the dock, single click and hold the mouse button down and just drag the application off the dock and let go of the mouse button. This pretty much sums up the basic functionality of the Mac desktop called the Finder. We will revisit and further explain additional features of the Finder in later chapters such as how to use spotlight, dictation and the new notification menu, But at this time, I wanted to only cover basic navigation of the Finder. How To Use Touchpad Gestures To Interact With Mountain Lion For the past couple of years, Apple has integrated a new way to communicate with OSX using your fingers with gestures. For example, the two finger swiping up or down was added for quickly scrolling up or down of a webpage or a document. But with Mountain Lion, additional gestures was added for you to communicate with your Mac with an IPad like familiarity. On a MacBook, gestures automatically work out of the box with the trackpad. But if you have a standard desktop Mac, you would have to purchase the Magic Trackpad device as shown in the next picture to fully take advantage of gestures in Mountain Lion. So lets get started learning about gestures that are available to you for interacting with Mountain Lion. 23

6 Here, we have the gesture for simulating the single button mouse click by tapping the touchpad once with one finger as you see here. Next, we have the gesture that simulates a right-button click on a standard mouse by single tapping the trackpad once with two fingers as shown here. 24

7 In the next section of this book, we are going to cover how to change what your desktop looks like, setting up/changing a screen saver, adding or removing users that are allowed to use the computer, and adjusting the date or time on the computer. Changing The Background Of Your Desktop When you take a first glance at the Mac Mountain Lion Desktop/Finder, you are looking at the Default background screen. The first thing most people would do with their desktop is to change the desktop picture so their personal computer would become more personal. The first step to personalizing your desktop is to go to the System Preferences menu. To get to System Preferences, move your mouse cursor to the apple logo at the top left part of the screen, and single click on it. the Apple menu should look similar to the next picture: Move your mouse cursor down and single click the System Preferences option. Within system preferences, the option to change your background of your desktop is available by single clicking the Desktop & Screen Saver option under the Personal section. 33

8 Move your mouse cursor to the On bubble and single click on it to activate dictation. Then move your mouse cursor to the red X on the top left part of the window to exit this menu. To use Dictation, open any application that has a text input area. For sake of example, we will use Textedit. To open up TextEdit, single click the Launcher icon on the dock next picture: and the Launcher will open similar to the 51

9 Over the past few years in the technology world, there has been a lot of buzz about the cloud. When people or companies talk about the cloud, it is always explained in very vague terms. I also find that nobody really explain the advantages or disadvantages of the cloud among other things. My aim in this chapter is to clear this for you. So let us begin with the technical definition of the cloud. The Cloud or Cloud Computing Cloud computing refers to applications and services offered over the Internet. These services are offered from data centers all over the world, which collectively are referred to as the "cloud." This metaphor represents the intangible, yet universal nature of the Internet. Examples of cloud computing include online backup services, App Stores such as Google s Android Market, Apple s App Store or Amazon s App Store. It also includes personal data services such as Dropbox. Cloud computing also includes online applications such as Facebook. ICloud (which is the subject of this chapter) is an cloud service from Apple that allows you to store content remotely on the internet, and access it with a range of devices. With icloud, you will get 5GB of data for free, on which to store documents, photos, and music. icloud will also sync with all your devices - so your iphone, ipad, and Mac (or PC) will always be up to date in terms of changes to the remotely-stored data. Additionally, icloud will automatically push changes to your devices. You will be able to buy additional storage beyond the 5GB limit for an additional cost. One of the downsides of the Cloud is that all of your devices will need a constant connection to the Internet for everything to work seamlessly. But overall, it is a nice service to have running on all of your devices anyway. So let us get started setting up ICloud on all of our Apple devices! How To Setup ICloud On Your Mac: To setup ICloud on your Mac, First go into the System Preferences menu. To get to System Preferences menu, move your mouse cursor to the apple logo at the top left part of the screen, and single click on it. the Apple menu should look similar to the next picture: 60

10 The true beauty about ICloud is that if you do something in a ICloud-Supported program such as Notes or reminders, Then whatever you do on your Mac... Then travels with you on your IPad or IPhone as seen in the picture below: 70

11 The picture above shows the top section of Apples Safari Web Browser. Many browsers share the same features. So let get started by going over the features and exactly what they mean. Navigate Backwards And Forward If you are looking at multiple websites, come upon a webpage, but quickly clicked on another link. But if want to go back to look at that previous webpage, the left arrow key will take you back to the previous webpage you were looking at, the right arrow key will take you to the webpage that you were looking at before you clicked the left arrow key. URL Of Current Page Address of the current page being viewed. If this box shows the yahoo website should be showing below. Every webpage has a unique URL or address. You can also type in a specific webpage into this box by moving your cursor to this box and single left click on the box. It should all highlight in blue. When it is highlighted, you can type in the desired webpage you want to go to starting with www. Desired website name here.com, org, net or gov. Note - You can also erase everything in this text box and perform a web search by typing in what you wish to search for here and pressing the return key on your keyboard. Reload/Stop Loading Page - When displaying a webpage, your web browser downloads the webpage from the Internet onto your computer. Therefore if the webpage changes, you can update the webpage in your browser window by clicking the Reload button with the green arrows. If the webpage is taking too long to load for any reason, you can stop the webpage by clicking on the Stop button with the red X. Click on the Reload button to start the downloading process again from the beginning. Bookmarks Favorites and Bookmarks are websites that you visit often to be within easy reach. If you find yourself always going to say, you can Bookmark the webpage and go to your bookmarks menu with your mouse and single left click on the bookmark and it will then go to that particular website that you had bookmarked saving you from constantly typing it into the URL Box. Social Media Share Button - This button allows you to quickly post the current webpage you are currently on to Twitter or any other preferred social media website. ICloud Tabs Sharing - This button allows you to save all of the current tabs that are open so that you can quickly open those same tabs back up on a IPhone or IPad. Tab Browsing Feature- This button allows you to utilize the tabbed browsing feature. Tabbed browsing can be an extremely useful feature for a Web browser to have in that it cuts down the clutter of having multiple web browser windows open at the same time. When tabbed browsing is enabled, new Web pages are displayed as tabs on your toolbar, not as separate windows. 84

12 Move your mouse cursor to your external hard drive listed in this menu and single click it to highlight it, then single click the Use Disk button to select your external hard drive. A prompt asking you format your external hard drive to work with Time Machine will come up as shown in the next picture: Single click the Erase button to prepare and setup your external hard drive for use with Time Machine. Then everything would be all set as shown in the next picture: As you can see, Time Machine is now using my external drive named Data. Once its set up, Time Machine is designed to need as little intervention from you as possible, and to be almost invisible until the point when you need to restore a file. Time Machine doesn't simply copy everything that's on your Mac. Instead, it creates periodic backups, and allows you to step back in time to find and recover a deleted file. It's designed to capture the most recent state of data on your disk, as well as files you've deleted, rather than archiving multiple versions of the same file in a reliable way. Note - When Time Machine is active and running on your computer, you will see this icon your menu bar. on 114

13 Restoring Your Backups To restore your Time Machine backups or transfer them to another computer, first plug in the external hard drive that you had set up initially to use with Time Machine in the USB port of your Mac. Then open Time Machine by single clicking this Icon come up as shown in the next picture: on the menubar. The Time Machine menu will Move your mouse cursor to the Enter Time Machine menu choice and single click it. The Time Machine restore screen open and look similar to the picture shown below: Single click on any date bar on the far right part of this screen to travel back in time and view the contents of your computer on a particular date and time. You could single click the arrows pointing back and forward near the bottom right of the screen to step things through one snapshot at a time. Browse through your hard drive on any date to find the file, folder or application you want to recover back on your Mac. 115