macOS Mojave For Dummies

Bob LeVitus

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119520221
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Operating Systems
• Index: Computer Science

Pro tips for macOS from "Dr. Mac"

Your shiny new iMac ortrusty old MacBook both rely on macOS to help you get things done. It helps to have an equally reliable guidebook to steer you through the tasks and steps that make macOS run efficiently.

This fun and friendly guide provides the direction you need to easily navigate macOS. Longtime expert Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus shares his years of experience to help youbetter understand macOS and make ita timesaving tool in your life.

• Take a tour of the macOS interface
• Get organized and save time with macOS applications
• Get pro tips on speeding up your Mac
• Back up your data with ease

Covering the fundamentals of the OS and offering insight into the most common functions of macOS, this is indispensable reading for new or inexperienced macOS users.

Part 1

macOS Basics

IN THIS PART …

Find the most basic of basics, including how to turn on your Mac.

Make the dock work harder for you.

Get a gentle introduction to Finder and its desktop.

Find everything you need to know about Mojave’s windows, icons, and menus (oh my)!

Get all the bad puns and wisecracks you’ve come to expect.

See all of Mojave’s myriad new Finder features in one chapter!

Discover a plethora of Finder tips and tricks to make life with Mojave even easier (and more fulfilling).

Chapter 1

macOS Mojave 101 (Prerequisites: None)

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding what an operating system is and is not

Turning on your Mac

Getting to know the startup process

Turning off your Mac

Avoiding major Mac mistakes

Pointing, clicking, dragging, and other uses for your mouse

Getting help from your Mac

Congratulate yourself on choosing macOS Mojave 10.14, the 15th release of the venerable operating system (OS) formerly known as OS X. Congratulate yourself for scoring more than just an OS upgrade. See, macOS Mojave includes a few new features that make using your Mac even easier, plus hundreds of tweaks to help you do more work in less time.

In this chapter, I start at the very beginning and talk about macOS in mostly abstract terms; then I move on to explain what you need to know to use macOS Mojave successfully.

If you’ve been using macOS (formerly OS X) for a while, most of the information in this chapter may seem hauntingly familiar; a number of features that I describe haven’t changed in years. But if you decide to skip this chapter because you think you have all the new stuff figured out, I assure you that you’ll miss at least a couple of things that Apple didn’t bother to tell you (as if you read every word in macOS Help — the only user manual Apple provides — anyway!).

Tantalized? Let’s rock.

Gnawing to the Core of macOS

The operating system (that is, the OS part of macOS) is what makes your Mac a Mac. Without it, your Mac is nothing but a pile of silicon and circuits — no smarter than a toaster.

“So what does an operating system do?” you ask. Good question. The short answer is that an OS controls the basic and most important functions of your computer. In the case of macOS and your Mac, the operating system

• Manages memory
• Controls how windows, icons, and menus work
• Keeps track of files
• Manages networking and security
• Does housekeeping (No kidding!)

Other forms of software, such as word processors and web browsers, rely on the OS to create and maintain the environment in which they work their magic. When you create a memo, for example, the word processor provides the tools for you to type and format the information and save it in a file. In the background, the OS is the muscle for the word processor, performing the following crucial functions:

• Providing the mechanism for drawing and moving the onscreen window in which you write the memo
• Keeping track of the file when you save it
• Helping the word processor create drop-down menus and dialogs for you to interact with
• Communicating with other programs
• And much, much more (stuff that only geeks could care about)

So, armed with a little background in operating systems, take a gander at the next section before you do anything else with your Mac.

One last thing: As I mention in this book’s Introduction (I’m repeating it here in case you normally don’t read introductions), macOS Mojave comes with more than 50 applications in its Applications and Utilities folders. Although I’d love to tell you all about each and every one, I have only so many pages at my disposal.

THE MAC ADVANTAGE

Most of the world’s personal computers use Microsoft Windows (although more and more people are switching to the Mac). But you’re among the lucky few to have a computer with an OS that’s intuitive, easy to use, and (dare I say?) fun. If you don’t believe me, try using Windows for a day or two. Go ahead. You probably won’t suffer any permanent damage. In fact, you’ll really begin to appreciate how good you have it. Feel free to hug your Mac. Or give it a peck on the mouse or trackpad.

As someone once told me, “Claiming that macOS is inferior to Windows because more people use Windows is like saying that all other restaurants serve food that’s inferior to McDonald’s.”

We might be a minority, but Mac users have the best, most stable, most modern all-purpose operating system in the world, and here’s why: Unix, on which macOS is based, is widely regarded as the best industrial-strength operating system on the planet. For now, just know that being based on Unix means that a Mac running macOS will crash less often than an older (pre-OS X) Mac or most Windows machines, which means less downtime. Being Unix-based also means getting far fewer viruses and encounters with malicious software. But perhaps the biggest advantage macOS has is that when an application crashes, it doesn’t crash your entire computer, and you don’t have to restart the computer to continue working.

By the way, since the advent of Intel-powered Macs more than a decade ago, you can run Windows natively also on any Mac powered by an Intel processor, as I describe in Chapter 23. Note that the opposite isn’t true: You can run Windows on your Mac if you care to, but you cannot run macOS on a Dell or HP or any other computer not made by Apple (at least not without serious hacking, which is probably illegal anyway).

And don’t let that Unix or Windows stuff scare you. It’s there if you want it, but if you don’t want it or don’t care (like most users), you’ll rarely even know it’s there. In fact, you’ll rarely (if ever) see the word Unix or Windows again in this book. As far as you’re concerned...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: macOS Basics
• Part 2: How Stuff Works
• Part 3: Getting Things Done
• Part 4: Getting Along with Others
• Part 5: Getting Creative
• Part 6: Care and Feeding
• Part 7: The Part of Tens
• Index
• About the Author
• Connect with Dummies
• End User License Agreement