Mac Unlocked

Everything You Need to Know to Get Cracking in macOS Big Sur

David Pogue

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781982176679
• eBook ISBN: 9781982176686
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Informatik Allgemein

Make the most of your Mac with this witty, authoritative guide to macOS Big Sur.

Apple updates its Mac operating system every year, adding new features with every revision. But after twenty years of this updating cycle without a printed user guide to help customers, feature bloat and complexity have begun to weigh down the works.

For thirty years, the Mac faithful have turned to David Pogue’s Mac books to guide them. With Mac Unlocked, New York Times bestselling author Pogue introduces readers to the most radical Mac software redesign in Apple history, macOS Big Sur. Beginning Mac users and Windows refugees will gain an understanding of the Mac philosophy; Mac veterans will find a concise guide to what’s new in Big Sur, including its stunning visual and sonic redesign, the new Control Center for quick settings changes, and the built-in security auditing features.

With a 300 annotated illustrations, sparkling humor, and crystal-clear prose, Mac Unlocked is the new gold-standard guide to the Mac.

PART ONE Meet the Machine

CHAPTER 1

The Mechanics of the Mac

CHAPTER 2

Sixteen Settings to Change Right Now

CHAPTER 3

Laptop Life

CHAPTER ONE The Mechanics of the Mac

In 1997, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs returned to the company that had fired him in 1985. One of his first actions was to clean house—to simplify the assortment of 47,000 different Mac models the company was then making. He decided that from that moment on, Apple would manufacture only four Macs: two each for the desktop and the laptop.

Today, of course, Macs look a lot better, run a lot faster, and incorporate a lot less candy-colored plastic. Each model now comes in several sizes and speeds, and the oddball, screenless Mac mini doesn’t really fit into the lineup. But the spirit of the original 1997 product grid lives on.

Fortunately for you (and for computer-book authors), they all contain exactly the same components. There’s always a screen, a keyboard, a speaker, a power cord, and so on. And they all run the same operating system: a huge glob of software and apps (programs) called macOS. (It’s pronounced “mac oh ess.” Don’t embarrass yourself at a party by saying “mac-oss.”)

The subject of this book is the 2020 version of macOS: version 11.0, which Apple has nicknamed Big Sur. But before you start exploring the nooks and crannies of the Mac’s software, here’s a guided tour of its hardware.

On, Off, and Asleep

When your Mac comes from the factory, it’s turned off; Apple doesn’t want it to arrive with a dead battery. You turn it on like this:

• Laptop. On a MacBook Whatever, press the top-right key. On recent models, you may not even recognize it as a key, because it’s a dark, flat square without a label, and it doubles as the fingerprint reader. But it’s there, top right.
  
• Desktop. If you are the proud owner of an iMac, Mac Pro, or Mac mini, press the
  
  button on the back or top of the computer.

NOTE: If you are one of the 11 people who bought the rack version of the Mac Pro—the one that’s horizontal, intended to be bolted into a rack in some humming underground data center, and whose base model starts at $6,500—you’re probably a network administrator. Therefore, you probably know already that the power button is an unlabeled, featureless capsule-shaped button on the back panel. Apple didn’t want to insult you by painting the

label on it.

That ecstatic moment of unboxing a new Mac may be one of the only times you ever use the power button. For the rest of its life, when you’re not using the Mac, you aren’t supposed to turn it off. You’re supposed to put it to sleep.

If you have a laptop, just close the lid to induce sleep. On a desktop model, choose

→Sleep, or just wait awhile. After a few minutes of activity, the screen goes black, and the computer dozes off.

TIP: You can control how quickly the Mac goes to sleep in System Preferences→Battery (on laptops) or System Preferences→Energy Saver (on desktop Macs).

When the Mac is asleep, its screen goes black, and it uses very little power. But all your work, in all the open apps, is actually still in the computer’s memory.

As soon as you wake the machine up again—by pressing any key or opening the laptop lid—the screen lights up with everything exactly the way it was.

The lesson here: When you finish a work session, let the Mac sleep instead of shutting it down. It costs you almost no electricity, and next time you want to work you’ll save time.

NOTE: Even when the Mac is asleep, it still performs internet tasks like downloading email and synchronizing files on your iCloud Drive or Dropbox—as long as the Mac is plugged in.

This feature is called Power Nap. If you’re crazy, you can turn it off in System Preferences→Battery→Power Adapter (laptops) or System Preferences→Energy Saver (desktop Macs).

The Mouse/Trackpad

In one important area, your Mac is not like an iPad or an iPhone: It doesn’t have a touchscreen. Apple’s thinking goes like this: Sitting in a chair with your arm stretched out toward a vertical screen, for hours a day, is a recipe for an injury whose name—“Gorilla Arm”—is much more fun than its feeling.

So don’t try to reach out and touch something. Instead, you’ll use either the mouse or the trackpad, just as computer buffs have since the Reagan administration.

• The mouse—Apple’s version—is a white capsule about the size of a bar of soap. It’s available in both wireless and corded versions. You roll it across the desk to move the cursor on the screen.

TIP: You can control how far the cursor moves on the screen, relative to how fast you move the mouse. Visit System Preferences→Mouse, and adjust the Tracking Speed slider.

• The trackpad, built into Mac laptops (and available as an add-on for desktops), lets you move the cursor by sliding your finger across the pad. But it also permits all kinds of other stunts. For example, you can scroll through a document or a web page by dragging two fingers on the trackpad. And in some apps, you can actually make drawings using the trackpad as your canvas.

Shortcut Menus

Lurking behind almost everything on the screen—every file, folder, typed word, picture, web page, or whatever—is a hidden menu of things you can do to that thing. It’s a short menu of actions like Rename, Copy, or Move to Trash.

At the dawn of computing, these shortcut menus were known only to the geeky intelligentsia. Apple hid them because they contained technical options intended only for nerds.

Today, though, shortcut menus can save you a lot of time and fumbling, and sometimes they contain important options that aren’t available anywhere else. Next time you’re trying to accomplish something in some app, flailing and lost, say to yourself, “Oh, right! Maybe the command I want is in the shortcut men...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part One: Meet the Machine
• Part Two: Welcome to Big Sur
• Part Three: macOS Piece by Piece
• Part Four: Beyond the Basics
• Appendix A: Installing macOS Big Sur
• About the Author/Illustrator
• About the Creative Team
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Copyright