Introduction 1
About This Book 1
Conventions Used in This Book 2
Foolish Assumptions 3
Beyond the Book 3
Icons Used in This Book 3
Where to Go from Here 4
Part I: Introducing OS X El Capitan: The Basics 5
Chapter 1: OS X El Capitan 101 (Prerequisites: None) 7
Gnawing to the Core of OS X 8
A Safety Net for the Absolute Beginner (or Any User) 10
Turning the dang thing on 10
What you should see on startup 10
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 the Finder and Its Desktop 24
Anatomy of a Window 25
Top o the window to ya! 28
A scroll new world 29
(Hyper)active windows 31
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 38
The ever-changing menu bar 39
Contextual menus: Theyre sooo contextual! 39
Recognizing disabled options 41
Navigating submenus 42
Under the Apple menu tree 43
Using keyboard shortcut commands 44
Chapter 3: Whats Up, Dock? 47
A Quick Introduction to Your Dock 48
The default icons of the Dock 48
Trash talkin 51
Opening application menus on the Dock 53
Reading Dock icon body language 55
Opening files from the Dock 56
Customizing Your Dock 56
Adding Dock icons 56
Removing an icon from the Dock 59
Resizing the Dock 59
What should you put on your Dock? 60
Setting your Dock preferences 61
Chapter 4: Delving Deeper into the Finder and Its Desktop 67
Introducing the Finder and Its Minions: The Desktop and Icons 67
Introducing the Desktop 68
Bellying up to the toolbar 70
Figuring out what an icon is 73
Identifying your Finder icons in the wild 74
Aliases Are Awesome! 76
Creating aliases 78
Deleting aliases 79
Hunting down an aliass parent 79
The View(s) from a Window 79
Moving through folders fast in Column view 80
Perusing in Icon view 82
Listless? Try touring folders in List view 83
You gotta go with the flow 84
Whats on the (View) menu? 85
Finder on the Menu 86
The actual Finder menu 87
Like a road map: The current folders pop-up menu 89
Going places with the Go menu 90
Customizing Finder Windows 92
Adding folders to the Sidebar 92
Setting Finder preferences 93
Digging for Icon Data in the Info Window 97
Part II: Inside El Capitan (or How Stuff Works) 101
Chapter 5: Have It Your Way 103
Introducing System Preferences 103
Putting a Picture on the Desktop 106
Setting Up a Screen Saver 107
Putting Widgets on the Dashboard 108
Translation 111
Flight Tracker 112
Giving Buttons, Menus, and Windows a Makeover 113
Adjusting the Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad, and Other Hardware 116
Keyboard 116
Mouse 121
Bluetooth 122
Trackpad (notebooks and desktops with a Magic Trackpad) 123
Styling Your Sound 124
Changing sound effects 124
Choosing output and input options 125
Chapter 6: The Care and Feeding of Files and Folders 127
A Quick Primer on Finding Files 128
Understanding the OS X Folder Structure 128
Understanding nested folders 129
From the top: The Computer folder 130
Peeking into the Applications folder 131
Visiting the Library folders 131
Let it be: The System folder 132
Theres no place like Home 132
Your personal Library card 135
Saving Your Document Before Its Too Late 137
Stepping through a basic Save 138
Save As versus Duplicate: Different names for the same result 144
Open, Sez Me 146
With drag-and-drop 148
With a Quick Look 148
When your Mac cant open a file 149
With the application of your choice 150
Organizing Your Stuff in Folders 152
Files versus folders 152
Organizing your stuff with subfolders 153
Creating new folders 155
Navigating with spring-loaded folders 155
Smart folders 156
Shuffling Files and Folders 159
Moving files and folders 159
Selecting multiple icons 160
Playing the icon name game: Renaming icons 161
Comprehending the Clipboard 163
Copying files and folders 163
Pasting from the Clipboard 165
Compressing files 165
Getting rid of icons 166
The Incredible New iCloud Drive 166
Chapter 7: Four Terrific Timesaving Tools 169
With a Quick Look 169
Share and share alike with the Share menu 172
Slide into Slideshow (full-screen) mode 172
Spotlight on Finding Files and Folders Faster 173
Using the Search box in Finder windows 174
Using the Spotlight menu and window 176
Blast Off with Mission Control 178
The Mission Control pane: Its painless 178
Hot corners! 181
Spaces from 30,000 feet (an overview) 182
Getting around in space(s) 186
Launchpad: The Place for Applications 187
Customizing Your Launchpad 188
Part III: Getting Things Done in El Capitan 191
Chapter 8: Organizing Your Life 193
Keeping Track with Calendar 194
Navigating Calendar views 194
Creating calendars 195
Deleting a calendar 196
Creating and managing events 196
Reminders: Protection Against Forgetting 200
Getting started with Reminders 200
To do or not to do: Setting reminders 201
Everything You Need to Know about the Notification Center 202
Use Notes for Making Notes 206
Chapter 9: (Inter)Networking 209
Getting Connected to the Internet 210
Your Internet service provider and you 210
Setting up your modem 211
Plugging in your Internet-connection settings 212
Browsing the Web with Safari 213
Owning your toolbar 214
Using the Safari Sidebar 217
Using the terrific Top Sites page 220
Searching with Google 221
Checking out Help Center 223
Audio and Video Calls with FaceTime 223
Chapter 10: Finding People and Places 227
Collecting Your Contacts 227
Adding contacts 228
Importing contacts from other programs 230
Creating a basic group 231
Setting up a smart group (based on contact criteria) 231
Deleting a group or smart group 233
The view is lovely 233
Sync + Contacts = Your contacts everywhere 233
Maps Are Where Its At 235
Finding your current location with Maps 235
Finding a person, place, or thing 235
Views, zooms, and pans 237
Maps and Contacts 239
Timesaving map tools: Favorites, Recents, and Contacts 240
Smart map tricks 241
Chapter 11: 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 255
Dealing with spam 257
Mailboxes smart and plain 257
Changing your preferences 260
Sign here, please 261
Mail rules rule 262
Relative Newcomers: Markup and Mail Drop 265
Communicating with Messages 267
What the heck is an iMessage? 267
Chit-chatting with Messages 268
Chapter 12: 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 275
Setting Up File Sharing 276
Access and Permissions: Who Can Do What 278
Users and groups and guests 278
Creating users 280
OS X knows best: Folders shared by default 286
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 294
Changing Your Password 298
Changing your account password on your Mac 298
Changing the password of any account but your own on your Mac 299
Changing the password for your account on someone elses Mac 300
More Types of Sharing 300
Screen Sharing 301
Internet Sharing 301
And yet more ways to share 302
Part IV: Getting Creative in El Capitan 305
Chapter 13: 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 316
Listening to iTunes Radio 316
All About Playlists 317
Creating a regular playlist 317
Working with smart playlists 320
Burning a playlist to CD 321
Looking at the Genius playlist 322
Chapter 14: 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
Youre 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 15: Words and Letters 341
Processing Words with TextEdit 341
Creating and composing a document 342
Working with text 343
Adding graphics to documents 346
Font Mania 347
Types of fonts 348
Managing your fonts with Font Book 348
Installing fonts manually 349
Chapter 16: Publish or Perish: The Fail-Safe Guide to Printing 351
Before Diving In 351
Ready: Connecting and Adding Your Printer 352
Connecting your printer 352
Setting up a printer for the first time 353
One last thing: Printer sharing 355
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 359
Saving custom settings 362
Preview and PDF Options 362
Part V: The Care and Feeding of El Capitan 365
Chapter 17: Features for the Way You Work 367
Talking and Listening to Your Mac 367
Dictation& Speech 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 375
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: Dont bother with the login screen 383
Boot Camp Assistant app: Run Windows on your Mac really 383
AirPlay mirroring 384
Handoff 385
Chapter 18: Safety First: Backups and Other Security Issues 387
Backing Up Is (Not) Hard to Do 388
Backing up with El Capitans 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 19: Utility Chest 403
Calculator 403
Activity Monitor 404
Disk Utility 406
First Aid button 406
Partition button 406
Erase button 407
Mount/Unmount button 407
Info button 408
Grab 408
Grapher 408
Keychain Access 409
Migration Assistant 410
System Information 411
Terminal 411
Chapter 20: Troubleshooting OS X 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 417
Step 2: Safe Boot into Safe Mode 418
Step 3: Zapping the PRAM/NVRAM 419
Step 4: Reinstalling OS X 420
Step 5: Things to try before taking your Mac in for repair 420
If Your Mac Crashes at Startup 422
Part VI: The Part of Tens 423
Chapter 21: Almost Ten Ways to Speed Up Your Mac Experience 425
Use Those Keyboard Shortcuts 426
Improve Your Typing Skills 427
Resolution: Its Not Just for New Years 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! 432
Get an Accelerated Graphics Card 432
Get a Solid-State Drive (SSD) 433
Get a New Hard Drive 433
Chapter 22: Ten Great Websites for Mac Freaks 435
The Mac Observer 436
Macworld 436
AppleWorld.Today 436
TidBITS 437
Download.com 437
Alltop 438
Apple Support 439
Other World Computing 440
EveryMac.com 440
dealmac 440
Index 443
