OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide (24 page)

Stickies are virtual Post-it notes. Fire up this
application and you can leave notes all over your desktop. Select
File
→
New or press ⌘-N to create a blank
note you can type in, add images to, and use for reminders. When the
list on a sticky becomes something you need to share, you can export it
as rich text by choosing File
→
Export
Text.

This is the place to tweak OS X. System Preferences are
covered in
Chapter 5
.

TextEdit is a not-too-shabby word processor that you can
use to write the great American novel or a grocery list. Although
earlier versions of TextEdit were limited, it keeps gaining features in
every new version of OS X. For example, TextEdit now takes advantage of
iCloud. That’s right: you can store your TextEdit documents in the cloud
and work on them from any of your devices!

Mountain Lion’s system-wide spellchecker is available in
the program, and you can also add a grammar check (select TextEdit
→
Preferences and turn on “Check grammar with
spelling”). TextEdit’s default format for saving files is
.rtf
(Rich Text Format), but you can also
save (and open) HTML; OpenOffice.org (
.odt
); and Microsoft Word 97, 2003, and 2007
documents. TextEdit can also open and save
.docx
(Word 2011) files, but you might lose
some formatting or comments when you open one; saving as a
.docx
file preserves the formatting from
TextEdit.

Figure 6-14. TextEdit styles in action

Time Machine automates the backing-up process and puts a
beautiful graphical interface on flipping back time. To use Time
Machine, all you really need is an attached drive with sufficient space,
another Mac, or Time Capsule (Apple’s all-in-one backup device and WiFi
router).

Time Machine operates seamlessly once it’s set up and
turned on. To set it up, connect a suitable drive, and then launch Time
Machine (Applications
→
Time Machine),
click Set Up Time Machine, and then choose which disk (or Time Capsule)
you want to use as a Time Machine disk. After Time Machine is up and
running, you can make a few adjustments. When you launch Time Machine,
you’ll see a big On/Off button, a button to bring up the Select Disk
dialog box, and an Options button. Clicking the Options button lets you
specify which folders and drives you
don’t
want
backed up; just click the + button in the dialog box that appears and
then select the items you want to exclude.

Using Time Machine is intuitive when you’re looking for a
file you accidentally deleted (click the Time Machine menu extra or
application icon to launch the program, and then navigate through the
available backups). But if you want to restore your system from a Time
Machine backup, you’ll first need to boot from the Mountain Lion
Recovery 10.8 (see
Startup troubleshooting
). Once
you’ve booted up and picked your installation language, don’t start
installing OS X. Instead, click the menu bar and select Utilities. The
last option in the drop-down menu is Restore System From Backup;
selecting it lets you choose the Time Machine disk or Time Capsule you
want to use to restore your system.

The main window of Activity Monitor includes a list of all
the processes running on your Mac (click a column heading to change how
the list is sorted). You can view stats about CPU load, system memory,
disk activity, disk usage, or your network by clicking the various
buttons near the bottom of the window. Click a process in the list and
then click the Inspect icon to get a closer look at that process. You
can also use Activity Monitor to quit any process by selecting the
process and then clicking the Quit Process icon (very useful when a
program is needlessly hogging the processor or is unresponsive).

If you own a Time Capsule, an AirPort base station, or an
AirPort Express, you can use this utility to manage those
devices.

AppleScript is a programming language that’s designed to
be easy to use. It can control scriptable applications on your Mac (that
includes most, but not all, applications), allowing you to generate
scripts that can, for example, resize photos automatically. Using the
AppleScript Editor lets you write, edit, test, run, and compile
AppleScripts. For more information, see
http://developer.apple.com/applescript
.

MIDI is an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital
Interface. This utility lets you hook musical instruments up to your
computer, which is useful for fans of GarageBand and other audio
programs.

Use this utility to send files to supported Bluetooth
devices, such as phones, PDAs, or other computers. (Bluetooth is slower
than WiFi but requires less setup to transfer files.) After you launch
this utility, you can either drag the file you want to transfer onto the
Bluetooth Dock icon and wait for a list of recipients to appear, or
select a file in the Bluetooth File Exchange window and then click the
Send button (and wait for the list of possible recipients to
appear).

Boot Camp Assistant lets you install Windows (XP, Vista,
or 7) on any Mac running Mountain Lion. This utility will partition your
hard drive and install the necessary drivers. (Obviously, you’ll need a
Windows installation disk.) Once Boot Camp Assistant works its magic,
you’ll have a dual-boot Mac capable of running Mountain Lion or Windows.
You choose which operating system to boot into using the Startup Disk
preference pane—see
Startup Disk
.

Because everyone sees colors a little differently and
devices often interpret colors in different ways, ColorSync helps you
manage colors. It lets you repair
ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles on your Mac
(click the Profile First Aid icon to do so). Click the Profiles icon to
inspect the profiles used by your Mac; ColorSync displays a groovy 3-D
plot of the profile you select (when applicable). The Devices icon lets
you manage the profiles of attached devices. ColorSync Utility also
allows you to apply filters to, for example, a PDF document with the
Filters icon. Finally, the Calculator icon lets you sample any pixel
displayed on your computer and find its values (click the magnifying
glass icon and then click the color you’re interested in).

Unlike your car keys, your Mac keeps track of itself.
Every time something unexpected (or even routine) happens, the system
notes it in a log, but these logs are a bit difficult to find. That’s
where Console comes in: it lets you review the errors logged on your Mac
much more conveniently than if you had to dig through the Library
folder. Clicking on the Show/Hide Log List icon toggles a sidebar
showing the logs available on your computer. The logs contain
information critical for diagnosing bugs you send to Apple and can be
useful in tracking a problematic application.

With this utility, you can inspect the color values of
anything displayed onscreen. You can set the size of the aperture (all
the way down to a single pixel) and choose from five different ways the
results can be calculated.

Disk Utility is a toolbox for all your disks. You can use
it to erase disks (including CD-RWs and DVD-RWs), format disks, mount
and unmount disks (if you’ve ejected an attached disk, you can remount
it without unplugging/replugging it by clicking Disk Utility’s Mount icon),
securely delete data, create compressed or uncompressed disk images,
repair permissions, partition disks, and more. To learn how to use Disk
Utility to check your drive’s health, see the section
Startup Problems
.

Grab is OS X’s screen-capture utility. It lets you capture
a section of the screen, a complete window (sans drop shadow), or the
entire screen. It even has a timed option that gives you 10 seconds to
get whatever process you’re trying to capture running. All the images
are saved in
.tiff
format.

Grapher displays graphs of equations that are built into
the program, as well as equations you enter. This utility can handle a
wide range of coordinate choices (polar, cylindrical, Cartesian, and
spherical), and can even generate 3-D graphs. This is a useful tool if
you’re studying calculus.

This utility is where you tell your Mac what you want the
Java programming language to do for you and how. It lets you select your
preferred version of Java, manage security, and configure
debugging.

Keychain Access stores your passwords for the moments
when you inevitably forget them. As long as you remember your
system password, you can recover
any password stored in the Keychain. (Many third-party programs, like
Firefox, don’t use Keychain.) You can also create secure notes readable
only in Keychain that are locked with your password. For more on
Keychain Access, see
Chapter 7
.

When you first set up your Mac, you had the option of
transferring your data from another computer. You were also assured that
if you didn’t want to transfer your data right then, you could do it
later. For more info on all the ways you can transfer data using
Migration Assistant, see
Moving Data and Applications
.

Network Utility lets you perform common networking tasks.
Most users will find the Info tab the most useful. For those familiar
with Unix network diagnostics, there are also tabs for Netstat, Ping,
Lookup, Traceroute, Whois, Finger, and Port Scan.

Got a RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) card
installed in your Mac? No? Then you can ignore this utility. If you
do
have a RAID card, this utility lets you
configure a RAID on your system.

This utility can tell you just about everything you might
want to know about your Mac. Hardware, networks, and software are all
covered in great detail. If you’re wondering about any particular aspect
of your Mac, then System Information is the place to look.

OS X is built on Unix, and the Terminal utility is your
window into that world. Unix is incredibly powerful and Terminal lets
you run Unix commands. Clicking Help
→
Terminal Help will get you started if you
aren’t familiar with Unix. The most important Terminal tip? When you’re
confused, typing
man
command-name
brings up a manual page where
you can learn about a particular Unix command (try
man man
for starters). If you like, you can
make Terminal full screen by clicking the arrows in the upper
right.

Most Mac owners avoid Terminal because the idea of typing commands
seems archaic. Surprisingly, there’s plenty of fun to be had in
Terminal. Try opening Terminal and typing this:

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

VoiceOver is OS X’s screen-reading program that describes
what’s happening on your screen using one of the voices installed with
OS X. This utility allows you to customize VoiceOver’s settings: you can
control which voice it uses, how your computer is navigated when using
VoiceOver, how VoiceOver handles web pages, and how the keys on the
keyboard control your Mac. You can even set up a Braille monitor. For
additional information, see
VoiceOver
.

This looks like a utility, but it isn’t. Instead,
double-clicking this will open up a window asking you if you want to be
taken to a site to get X11 software. If you click Continue, you’ll be
taken to the home of XQuartz software, which offers software you’ll want
to install if you want to use a program that doesn’t support standard OS
X windowing. One example of this is the open-source image editor called
GIMP. While your Mac can run the program’s code, GIMP doesn’t use the
same windowing system used by OS X, so if you want to run it, you’ll
need a version of X11.