OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide

266 Pages·2012·15.296 MB·English

by  Chris Seibold

OS X Mountain Lion
Pocket Guide
Chris Seibold
Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Tokyo
OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide
by Chris Seibold
Copyright © 2012 Chris Seibold. All rights reserved.
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Editor: Dawn Mann
Production Editor: Melanie Yarbrough
Proofreader: Julie Van Keuren
Indexer: Kevin Broccoli
Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery
Interior Designer: David Futato
Illustrator: Robert Romano
July 2012: First Edition.
Revision History for the First Edition:
2012-07-11 First release
2012-08-10 Second release
See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781449330323 for release de-
tails.
Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are
registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. OS X Mountain Lion Pocket
Guide, the image of a puma, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly
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their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear
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designations have been printed in caps or initial caps.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the
publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or
for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
ISBN: 978-1-449-33032-3
[M]
1344369665
Contents
Preface v
Chapter 1: What’s New in Mountain Lion? 1
Improved iCloud Integration 1
Sharing Everywhere 4
Chapter 2: Installing Mountain Lion and Migrating Data 15
What You Need to Run Mountain Lion 15
Preparing for the Install 17
Installing Mountain Lion 17
Chapter 3: A Quick Guide to Mountain Lion 33
What You Need to Know About OS X 33
Using Mountain Lion 40
Mountain Lion Basics 45
Standard Window Controls 83
Full-Screen Applications 84
Files and Folders 86
Nonessential (but Useful) OS X Features 89
Auto Save and Versions 92
Resume 100
iii
Chapter 4: Troubleshooting OS X 103
Common Problems 103
Chapter 5: System Preferences 119
Preference Pane Rundown 121
Non-Apple Preference Panes 170
Chapter 6: Built-in Applications and Utilities 173
Applications Installed with Mountain Lion 173
Utilities Included with Mountain Lion 208
Chapter 7: Managing Passwords in Mountain Lion 217
Password Management 218
Chapter 8: Keyboard Commands and Special Characters 225
Key Commands 225
Typing Special Characters in OS X 231
Index 237
iv | Table of Contents
Preface
OS X was first released to the public over a decade ago as Mac
OS X Beta (code-named Kodiak). The decade after that saw
Mac OS X go from an interesting oddity unsuited to daily work
to a usable operating system with little third-party support to
everything most people want out of an operating system and a
little more.
Technology doesn’t stand still, and the days of being tied to a
desk if you wanted to use your Mac (as most people were when
OS X was first revealed) are long gone. Apple now offers lots
of ways to use Apple technology. You’ve got Macs, of course,
but you also have Apple TVs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. People
want to use all those things, and that’s where Mountain Lion
shines. Apple says Mountain Lion is “Inspired by iPad,” and it
offers a stunning number of new features designed to make
working with multiple devices easier and more streamlined.
Mountain Lion does the obvious things—like putting docu-
ments in iCloud and sharing your screen with your Apple TV
—as well as some unexpected things like making Twitter avail-
able system-wide.
Like Reminders on your iPhone? Love notifications on your
iPad? Then you’re going to really enjoy Mountain Lion. Apps
that were available only on iOS devices are now an integral part
of OS X. Other apps were renamed and reworked to match
their iOS counterparts: iChat is now Messages, and iCal is now
Calendar, to cite two examples.
v
You’ll also be relieved to know that the cost of all the improve-
ments and new features that comprise Mountain Lion isn’t in-
creasing. In fact, the price of the update actually dropped
$10.00 to $19.99. And since you can get it only from the App
Store, you don’t even have to get off your couch to upgrade!
NOTE
This book focuses on what you’d see onscreen if you
bought a brand-new Mac with Mountain Lion on it. If
you upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion, some things
you see may be slightly different, because some settings
will get transferred over from Lion. This book tries to
point out such instances whenever applicable, but you
may spot differences not noted here.
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames,
and file extensions.
Constant width
Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to
refer to program elements such as variable or function
names, databases, data types, environment variables,
statements, and keywords.
Constant width bold
Shows commands or other text that should be typed lit-
erally by the user.
Constant width italic
Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied
values or by values determined by context.
vi | Preface
Menu Symbols
With this Pocket Guide, you’ll always know which button to
press. The key labeled “option” is called Option throughout
this book. The key with the clover symbol (officially called the
Place of Interest symbol) is represented by ⌘, which looks pre-
cisely like the symbol on the keyboard.
Apple itself uses some symbols for these keys that you won’t
see on your keyboard. If you click the menu bar, you’ll see
symbols next to some commands that indicate their keyboard
shortcuts. For example, if you click the File menu while run-
ning TextEdit, you’ll see a long sequence of symbols for the
“Show Properties” shortcut, as shown in Figure P-1.
Figure P-1. Keyboard shortcuts in TextEdit’s File menu
From left to right, the symbols are Option ( ), Command
(⌘), and P. This indicates that you need to hold down the Op-
tion and ⌘ keys while pressing P. In this book, you’ll see this
written as “Option-⌘-P” instead.
Preface | vii
A less commonly used modifier is the Control key, which Apple
indicates with the symbol; this book spells it out as “Con-
trol.” You may also encounter , which indicates the Esc key.
The symbol for the Eject button ( ) is the same as the symbol
silk-screened onto most Apple keyboards. The Delete key is
symbolized with .
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don’t require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the
title, author, publisher, and ISBN, like so: “OS X Mountain
Lion Pocket Guide, by Chris Seibold (O’Reilly). Copyright 2012
Chris Seibold, 978-1-449-33032-3.”
If you feel your use of examples or quotations from this book
falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to
contact us at [email protected].
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viii | Preface