Mac OS X Jaguar

Mac OS X: Jaguar

Welcome to QMUG/LA’s highlights of Mac OS X: Jaguar. To start us off, here is an example of a default, fresh desktop, right after you install Jaguar or after you create a new account. (This particular Mac has five partitions: OS X, Apps, Docs, OS 9 & Apps, and Swap.)

Here we’ll highlight the seven applications that appear in the default Dock:

Finder, Mail, iChat, Address Book, Internet Explorer, Sherlock, System Preferences
(Desktop*, General*, Sound*, Universal Access*),

plus Dock Tips, Trash Tips, iTunes and User Accounts.
(Click the screenshots to jump to the next section.)

(If you print this up, it should be ~16 pgs.
If it comes out to much more, reduce your font size.)

Finder. One of the first things you may want to do is visit your Finder’s Preferences, and uncheck the first option, to show hard disks on the desktop, as well as review some of your other options.

Mail. The next app in your default Dock is Apple’s Mail program, w/ its new Junk mail filter, accessed from Mail’s Preferences, along w/ many options for setting up your own Rules. (The default “Other...” color is RGB 184 149 88, should you change it and then want it back.)

Once messages have been identified as Junk, you may want to “Bounce” them back to the sender. Here’s the Warning you get about that.

And once you’ve put mail in the Trash, just like in the Finder, you’ll eventually need to empty the Trash. You do that from under the Mailbox menu.

And here’s the Warning you get about that.

iChat. The next app in your default Dock is Apple’s iChat program, w/ its balloons settings accessed from iChat’s Preferences.

Address Book. The next app in your default Dock is Apple’s Address Book. Here’s an example of a listing.

From under the File menu, you can Import and Export vCards.

Internet Explorer. The next app in your default Dock is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which gives you a lot of options in its Preferences. In particular, on Web Content for animated GIFs, you can “Allow Looping” or not.

And on Advanced, you can set how many pages Explorer should remember, and how much space on your hard disk it should take to cache pages.

Sherlock. Next up in your default Dock is Apple’s Sherlock application, now only for the Internet w/ various Channels.

QuickTime. The next app in your default Dock is Apple’s QuickTime. New in version 6 is support for MPEG-4, AAC audio, JPEG2000 and Instant-On Streaming, none of which require screenshots.

System Preferences. The next app in your default Dock is Apple’s System Preferences. While we can’t tackle each and every one, here we’ll take a look at the Desktop*, General*, Sound*, and Universal Access* panes.

New in the Desktop pane is the ability to change your picture at various intervals.

Worth noting is that General pane allows you to set Mac OS X’s overall Appearance (Blue or Graphite) and Highlight Color, amongst other options.

New in the Sound pane is the ability to “play user interface sound effects.”

Also new in Jaguar is the Universal Access pane and its options to zoom in and out (Command Option *), and invert your screen’s colors like a photo’s negative (“Switch to White on Black,” Command Option Control *).

Also in the Universal Access pane in the ability to turn your Mac into a typewriter, or at least make it sound like one. To do that, under the Keyboard tab, turn Slow Keys on, click the Use click key sounds box, and drag the Acceptance Delay to Short, then type away! (The Sound pane’s interface effects have to be on as well.)

Dock Tips: Resizing. Next up in your default Dock is its divider bar, which you can use to resize your Dock, make it bigger or smaller, by positioning your cursor over its divider line and dragging away from or closer to the screen’s edge. However, if you’d like to jump to preset sizes, hold down your option key before dragging.

Dock Repositioning. If your Dock is in the way, you can of course hide the Dock (Command Option D). However, if you’d like to quickly move it to a different side of the screen (of left, bottom and right), hold down your shift key before dragging.

Dock Customizations. It’s your Dock, so customize it to suit you — remove items you don’t use, add items you do — i.e., applications, documents, folders, etc. —>

Trash Tips. Inevitably in the course of using Mac OS X, you’ll put some file or folder in the Trash, try to empty it, and get an error message saying you can’t do that. Here are three tips that should help.

(1) Select the item that can’t be trashed, Get Info on it (from under the File menu, select Get Info, or from the keyboard, Command I), and check the item’s Ownership & Permissions. If this is in fact a file or folder you created, but your Mac thinks the System owns it, by all means, change it over to yourself. If this item is *not* a file or folder you created, please make sure you know what you’re doing.

(2) If after confirming this item is owned by you but you still can’t trash it, relaunch the Finder (from under the Apple menu, select Force Quit, or from the keyboard, Command Option Escape). This will not affect any of the applications or documents you may have open, but it will close any Finder windows you may have open. If Classic were running, it would show up here, and you could Quit it and all its apps.

(3) Lastly, try Process Viewer. Locate it in your Applications folder (maybe in Utilities), launch it, and view the processes by user. Notice in the Force Quit window, only the Finder showed up, but here we have 33 processes running, including the Dock. Make sure you save and close any open unsaved documents, then select Window Manager, and from under the Processes menu, select Quit Process, or from the keyboard, Command Shift Q. This will effectively quit everything and reset your Mac faster than logging in and out or restarting.

More Apple Apps. Jaguar comes w/ more apps than we can cover in an hour, but we’d like to highlight at least five — Process Viewer 1.2 (just did), Calculator 3.0, iCal 1.0, iPhoto 1.1, and iTunes 3.0 — and even then we’ll cover these during the meeting — Calculator’s new Advanced and Paper Tape options, how to find iCalendars to subscribe to and use iPhoto for the holidays, etc. — but here for the handout are some highlights of iTunes.

iTunes. New in iTunes 3’s Preferences under Effects is Sound Check, which normalizes your music, so one track isn’t way too loud while the next one is way too soft.

Under Importing are the options to import as compressed MP3 (~1MB/min @ 128K) or uncompressed AIFF (or WAV, 10MB/min). If you’re importing tracks off an audio CD to make another audio CD to play in your stereo, import as uncompressed AIFF.

Under Burning are the options to make an audio CD that will work in your stereo (about an hour’s worth), or an MP3 CD that won’t (but will hold about eleven hours worth).

And under Advanced is the option to “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library,” which you may want to turn off.

More OS X Apps. More cool apps are available for OS X than we can cover in an hour, but time permitting we’d like to highlight at least five more — CandyBar, PrintWindow, Snö, Unsanities haxies (Labels X, WindowShade X, and Xounds), and xBack — during the meeting — how to customize your Finder toolbar icons (esp. Computer), print Finder window contents, have snow fall on your desktop, color-code your files and folders, and run a screensaver as your desktop.

For more cool Mac OS X software, check out our “Top 10 Mac OS X Links for 2002”!

User Accounts. Lastly, a concept that Mac users are getting use to is that of User accounts, as most Mac users don’t really have to share their Macs. What are they, and how do they affect you? For the purpose of this demo, we created a Demo Acct on the Mac of one of our members, and what do we see if we try to access the folders of that member?

And if we try to access the Pictures folder of that member?

So you can see that setting up other User accounts is an excellent way of keeping your settings — Finder, Mail, iChat account, Address Book, browser settings and bookmarks, System Preferences (like desktop, appearance, sounds, etc.), Dock, iCalendars, iPhoto albums, iTunes libraries, etc. — separate (and safe) from your roommate(s), holiday guests, etc.

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--------=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-------- QMUG/LA --------=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--------
the Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Macintosh User’s Group for all of Los Angeles
Meets the 2nd Monday of each month, 7:30pm * 6150 Santa Monica Blvd
* An Officially Registered and Recognized Apple Macintosh User Group *
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