Chapter  18

Exploring System Preferences

Many of the configuration and administration options for OS X are located in System Preferences (Figure 18–1). System Preferences is an application that presents a collection of individual items called preference panes. Each preference pane presents configurable options for one specific facet of the OS.

Figure 18–1. Lion’s default system preferences

This chapter will give an overview of each of these preferences and explain what they all do. We will discuss them according to how they are categorized in System Preferences:

• Personal preferences
• Hardware preferences
• Internet & Wireless preferences
• System preferences

Personal Preferences

The first row of preferences in System Preferences contains the Personal preferences (Figure 18–2). These preferences together largely affect your personal environment and can be set differently for each user on your system.

Figure 18–2. The Personal preferences in System Preferences

General

The General preference pane (Figure 18–3) contains a number of options that control how certain aspects of your environment will not only look but also behave.

Figure 18–3. The General preference pane in System Preferences

Table 18–1 lists each of the appearance options and describes them.

Desktop & Screen Saver

The Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane is where you go to change your desktop picture or alter your screen saver and its settings. This pane is divided into two tabs: one that sets the desktop image (Figure 18–4) and one that contains all of your screen saver options (Figure 18–5).

Figure 18–4. The Desktop tab of the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane sets your desktop background image.

Figure 18–5. The Screen Saver tab of the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane

The Desktop tab presents you with a selection of images to use as your desktop background. By default, Apple provides a wide selection of attractive backgrounds, classified into general categories. Clicking one of the folder items in the left column presents you with a preview of all the images in the right viewing area. Selecting an image in the viewing area automatically sets the image as your desktop background and puts the preview image in the top image space with the image’s name besides it.

The default background images are set with preselected shape, position, and scale; however, if you choose one of your own images, a drop-down menu will appear that will allow you to alter the aspect of the image you choose. These aspects are described in Table 18–2.

This preference pane automatically reveals any top-level images in your Pictures folder; additionally, it shows items from your iPhoto and Aperture libraries so you can select images from them. You can also add your own image folders by clicking the + button and selecting the folder you wish to add. Also, if you’d like, you can set your preferences so that your background image will change at regular intervals.

The “Translucent menu bar” option at the bottom, toggles the appearance of the menu bar from translucent to opaque.

The Screen Saver tab presents a list of available screen saver modules on the left side of the window with a Preview area to the right. In addition to the individual modules, you can also select groups or libraries of images to be used as a screen saver.

To set up your screen saver, first choose the module you’d like to use. Some modules have settable options; if the selected module has options, the Options button will be active. Once you have chosen the module and set its options, you can test it by clicking the Test button. This activates the screen saver with your chosen module. To return, just wiggle the mouse or press a key.

Below the Preview area is the “Start screen saver” slider, which determines how long your system must be idle before the screen saver starts.

The following are some other screen saver options:

• Use random screen saver: This option randomly chooses a screen saver module when the screen saver starts.
• Show with clock: This provides an overlay that presents the current time over the screen saver.
• Main Screen Only: This option appears if you have multiple displays attached to your computer, when checked the screensaver will only appear on your main display.
• Hot Corners...:This button brings up the Hot Corner dialog, which allows you to assign certain functions to occur when the mouse cursor is moved into one of the corners of your screen. Two of the available options are Start Screen Saver and Disable Screen Saver (which prevents the screen saver from starting if the mouse cursor is in the selected corner).

While the screen saver modules included in Lion are nice, there are many third-party screen savers also available for download (www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screensavers/ is a good place to start looking). To install a new screen saver, just download the screen saver file and then double-click it. This brings up a dialog box asking if you’d like to install the screen saver for just yourself or for all the users of your computer. If you select the option for just you, the screen saver file will be installed in ~/Library/Screen Savers/; if you choose to install it for everyone, it will be installed in /Library/Screen Savers/.

Dock

The Dock preference pane (Figure 18–6) presents options for configuring your Dock behavior. Table 18–3 describes the preferences available for the Dock.

Figure 18–6. The Dock preference pane

Mission Control

The Mission Control preference pane (Figures 18–7) provides options for configuring OS X’s new Mission Control (which replaces/enhances Exposé & Spaces).

Figure 18–7. The Mission Control preference pane in Lion replaces the Exposé & Spaces preference pane.

The Mission Control preference pane provides a few ways to tweak the behavior of Mission Control, and also provides a way to customize the keyboard shortcuts for activating the various Mission Control features (Mission Control is covered earlier in Chapter 4).

Language & Text

The Language & Text preference pane controls the language and regional display settings of your computer, as well as default text handling in OS X. This preference pane has four tabs that control various settings: Language, Text, Formats, and Input Sources.

The Language tab (Figure 18–8) allows you to set your preferred display language. The column on the left lists the activated languages, and you can drag them in the order of your language preference. For example, if you switch the order of English and Japanese so that Japanese appears first, then Japanese will become the default language for your system and all applications. If, however, an application weren’t localized in Japanese (i.e., didn’t contain Japanese translations), then the application would attempt to find your second choice (English, in this case). For the system or any application, the first available language will be used.

Figure 18–8. The Language tab of the Language & Text preference pane sets your default display language.

You may notice that while the default list of languages covers many languages, many more are not covered. To add or remove languages from the list, click the Edit List... button. This brings up a dialog box with many more languages to choose from. Checking the box next to any of these languages will include that language in the default list.

The other option on this tab is an “Order for sorted lists” drop-down list. This selection determines the language used for sorting items in the Finder when you choose to sort items by name.

The next tab in the Language & Text preference pane is the Text tab (Figure 18–9). Here you will find a number of options for dealing with text, including a number of features to automatically substitute certain text with symbols, and options for smart quotes. All of these options are similar to AutoText features found in many word processors.

Figure 18–9. The Text tab of the Language & Text preference pane includes some system-wide options for dealing with text.

The Formats tab (Figure 18–10) sets up default date, time, number, currency, and measurement unit settings for your computer. Selecting your region from the Region drop-down list generally sets these items accurately. For example, switching from United States to United Kingdom alters the order of the date, switches to a 24-hour clock, changes the currency from US Dollars to British Pound Sterling, and changes the measurement units to metric. If, however, the default settings for your region aren’t exactly what you want, you can alter or customize most of them. If you don’t see the region that you want in the Region menu, try checking the “Show all regions” selection.

Figure 18–10. The Formats tab of the Language & Text preference pane sets how dates, times, numbers, currency, and measurements appear.

The Input Sources tab (Figure 18–11) is where you set up your input language and devices. It contains a long list of various items with check boxes. Each item represents an input palette, an input method, an input device (specifically, a keyboard), or a keyboard mapping. These items combine to allow a large number of languages to be used to input text in Mac OS X. Using the check boxes, you can select any number of languages and input devices that you commonly use. If you select more than one item, the “Show Input menu in menu bar” option will automatically be selected, allowing you to easily switch between inputting different languages at any time from the menu bar.

Figure 18–11. The Input Sources tab on the Language & Text preference pane sets the language input options for your systems.

The input palettes in the list provide the ability to open up a couple of special Input Source dialog windows (Figure 18–12) that allow you to input characters by clicking them. The Keyboard Viewer (which becomes available from the menu bar if you select the Keyboard & Character Viewer option under the Input Sources tab) is particularly interesting, since it shows how your keyboard is mapped and responds dynamically as you type on the keyboard. For example, if you press the Option key, the Keyboard Viewer will change to reflect the symbols available with the Option-key combinations. Paying attention to changes while playing around with this can teach you new tricks. For example, if you look at the changes while you hold the Fn key, you may notice a number of interesting functions (e.g., Function-Delete deletes the characters in front of the cursor rather than behind). The Character Viewer provides a way to browse and input a wide array of symbols and characters as well as input text from complex languages such as Chinese and Japanese.

Figure 18–12. The Character and Keyboard viewers

The input methods in the list affect the behavior of inputting text, primarily for languages with very large character sets. For such languages, you will commonly enter two or more keystrokes to input a single character. These varying input methods facilitate this.

Finally, the keyboard items affect the keyboard layout and language. In general, this is to accommodate different languages and the keyboards designed for them; however, you can use these options to remap any keyboard (even though in doing so, the letters on the keys will no longer match the inputted character). While some of the remappings are extreme, others are subtler—for example, switching to a Spanish key map will alter only a few symbol keys (making common Spanish symbols easier to access). In addition to changing the input character maps of your keyboard, changing to certain languages will alter the direction of input—for example, switching to Arabic or Hebrew will cause the input to flow from right to left rather than left to right.

In general, if you need to enter text, characters, or symbols and you are not quite sure how, selecting either the Keyboard Viewer or the Character Palette is a good place to start to help you find what you are looking for.

Security & Privacy

The Security & Privacy preference pane seems oddly placed in that many of its options affect the entire system rather than just your personal preferences. The Security & Privacy preference pane provides four tabs: General, for general system security options; FileVault, for encrypting your personal home folder and all of its contents; Firewall, which can help secure your system from network intrusion by limiting access to computer network services; and Privacy, which will allow you to set certain privacy option on a per-application basis.

Chapter 21 is dedicated to system security, so these preferences and more will be covered there.

Spotlight

The Spotlight preference pane (Figure 18–13) helps you customize what types of items Spotlight will index and in what order you want the results of a search to be returned to you.

The Spotlight preference pane has two tabs: Search Results and Privacy. The Privacy tab allows you to select folders that you want to prevent from being indexed. This can prevent information that you’d like to keep private from showing up in any searches of your system, or it can save system resources by indexing only the items that you are interested in indexing.

The Search Results tab provides a few more customization possibilities. First of all, it allows you to block certain types of files from appearing in a Spotlight search result. So, if you’d like to exclude mail messages from being returned in a Spotlight search, you can uncheck the Mail Messages item (this affects only system-wide Spotlight searches; messages will continue to be searchable from within Mail). Additionally, you can arrange the items in the Search Results list in the order that you’d like those items to be returned to you, so if you’d like all the matched images to appear before the matched contacts, just move the Images item above the Contacts item.

Figure 18–13. The Spotlight preference pane with the Search Results tab showing

The options below the window allow you to alter the keyboard shortcuts for activating Spotlight. Should you decide to change these, consider that while most applications are aware of the default settings, custom settings may overlap with some applications’ built-in shortcuts, so there may be times when the keyboard shortcuts you set do something unexpected.

Universal Access

The Universal Access preference pane provides settings to assist people who have difficulty hearing, seeing, or otherwise working with their computer. This preference pane is divided into four tabs: Seeing, Hearing, Keyboard, and Mouse &Trackpad.

The Seeing tab (Figure 18–14) provides a number of options to assist people who have trouble seeing things on their computer screen.

Figure 18–14. The Seeing tab of the Universal Access preference pane

VoiceOver, when activated, speaks out selected regions of the computer interface. First, it identifies the selected window, and then it allows you to tab through interface features, speaking the name of each as you tab through. VoiceOver itself has many options and can be fully customized viaVoiceOver Utility (Figure 18–15), accessible in the Utilities folder from Launchpad or by clicking the Open VoiceOver Utility... button on the preference pane.

Zoom allows you to zoom in and out of the screen. This is an extension of the zoom functions for the mouse and trackpad discussed earlier, but it provides a few additional options and methods of zooming.

Figure 18–15. VoiceOver Utility provides many options for customizing VoiceOver’s capabilities.

The Display section provides options that allow you to alter the display. This includes switching the display output to gray scale or color, adjusting the display’s contrast, and even inverting the color scheme of the display (try Command-Option-Control-8).

The Hearing tab (Figure 18–16) provides a few options to aid people with hearing issues. The primary option here allows you to flash the screen when an alert occurs. This option can also come in handy if you work in a very loud (or very quiet) environment.

Figure 18–16. The Hearing tab of the Universal Access preference pane

The Keyboard tab (Figure 18–17) builds upon the keyboard options on the Keyboard preference pane (covered below). Sticky Keys provides options for people who may have trouble holding multiple keys at once, so that they can more easily use keyboard combinations and shortcuts. The Slow Keys option helps the system ignore accidental key input.

Figure 18–17. The Keyboard tab provides some additional keyboard options.

The Mouse &Trackpad tab (Figure 18–18) provides options for people who have trouble using the mouse or trackpad. Mouse Keys allows you to use the keyboard’s keypad to move the cursor around on the screen instead of the mouse. There is also an option to increase the size of the mouse cursor so that it’s easier to track on the screen.

Figure 18–18. The Mouse &Trackpad tab on the Universal Access preference pane adds additional mouse and trackpad options.

Hardware

The row of preference panes below the Personal preferences contains the Hardware preferences (Figure 18–19). Here you will find settings for most of the hardware devices included with your computer.

Figure 18–19. The Hardware preference panes

CDs & DVDs

The CDs & DVDs preference pane (Figure 18–20) allows you to select what will happen when you insert certain media formats in your computer. The media formats that you can assign actions to include blank CDs, blank DVDs, music CDs, picture CDs, and video DVDs.

Figure 18–20. The CDs & DVDs preference pane

Displays

The Displays preference pane allows you to make adjustments to your computer displays. By default, there are two tabs on this preference pane: Display and Color, but if you have more then one Displays attached to your computer an additional Arrangement tab will be there as well.

The Display tab (Figure 18–21) allows you to set the display resolution for your display. Additionally, depending on the monitor additional options may appear for Brightness, Refresh Rate, and Rotation. If your computer has ambient light sensors (as some Apple laptops do), you can set an option that will automatically adjust your screen’s brightness according to the brightness of your environment.

Figure 18–21. Two slightly different panes of the Display tab of the Displays preference pane are shown here. If you have more then one display, each display will have its own independent controls.

The Color tab (Figure 18–22) allows you to manage the display’s color profiles. A color profile is a data file that contains color information about a device or color standard. ColorSync uses these data files to match up colors so that an item appears consistent from one device to another. All this allows an image from your digital camera to appear on your screen the way the camera intended and then allows the image you print out on your printer to match what you see on the screen. The trick, however, is to assure that your screen has the proper profile.

Figure 18–22. The Displays preference pane’s Color tab helps you manage your display’s color profiles.

Mac OS X comes with some generic color profiles for Apple displays as well as some others; however, it’s likely that you will want to calibrate your monitor, creating a custom profile for your display.

GAMMA AND OS X: WHY ARE THINGS DARKER?

To create a basic profile, click the Calibrate... button on the Color tab. This opens up the Display Calibrator Assistant (Figure 18–23), which walks you through the process of manually calibrating your display.

Figure 18–23. The Display Calibrator Assistant

Once the Display Calibrator Assistant is open, you can start calibration your displays color by clicking the Continue button.

Clicking the Continue button takes you to the screen where you select your target gamma (Figure 18–24). There are only two options in basic mode: Gamma 2.2 (Standard) and Gamma 1.8. As stated previously, we generally recommend the 2.2 gamma option.

Figure 18–24. Selecting the target gamma in the Display Calibrator Assistant

Continuing on from the gamma selection, you’re taken to the screen where you can set the display’s white point (Figure 18–25). White point is the strangest and most difficult-to-grasp concept in color matching. Your eyes generally compensate for ambient light so that things that may not be white appear white. This makes setting the white point of your monitor a bit tricky to do manually. In general, depending on the ambient light surrounding your computer, you will find a comfortable white point around 6000 to 7500 K (Kelvin, which is how white point is measured). For most modern displays, this should be right about where the native white point is, so unless you really know you don’t want to use your native white point, we recommend using it.

Figure 18–25. Selecting a target white point for your display

After you set the white point, click the Continue button. If you are using an account with administrator status, you will be prompted to choose if you’d like this profile to be available to users other than yourself; if not, you’ll jump straight to the Name step, where you’ll be asked to name your new profile. You can call your new profile anything you want, but we recommend using something sensible.

Once you are done, click Continue. You will be presented with one last screen, essentially telling you that you’re done. Click the Done button. When the assistant goes away, you will see your new profile as an option in the Display Profile area, along with any other profiles.

If you happen to have two or more displays hooked up to your computer, a third Display tab called Arrangement will appear (Figure 18–26). This provides a view area that lets you arrange your monitors next to each other and a check box that allows you to mirror your displays. If the Mirror Displays option is checked, then both displays will have the same information on them. If the Mirror Displays option is unchecked, then the displays will act together as one large work area.

Figure 18–26. When you have multiple displays attached to your computer, the Arrangement tab allows you to arrange the monitors into one large workspace.

Energy Saver

The Energy Saver preference pane (Figure 18–27) allows you to adjust some power-saving features for your computer. It does this by causing certain functions of your computer to sleep after a short idle period and by throttling overall performance of your system to conserve energy consumption.

Figure 18–27. The Energy Saver preference pane

Table 18–4 lists the general options available in this preference pane and their effects.

Keyboard

The Keyboard preference pane controls the options for your keyboard. It is divided into two tabs: Keyboard and Keyboard Shortcuts.

The Keyboard tab (Figure 18–28) provides options for your keyboard. The basic options are the following:

• Key Repeat rate: This slider controls how fast a letter will automatically repeat if you hold down a key.
• Delay Until Repeat: This slider controls how long you must initially hold down a key until the letter starts repeating.
• Modifier Keys...: This button opens a dialog box that allows you to remap the modifier keys (e.g., to switch the behavior of the Command and Control keys for a more Microsoft Windows–like experience). You can also turn these keys off (such as the Caps Lock key).
• Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar: This option will turn on the Keyboard & Character Viewer along with the Input Method menu item in the menu bar.

Other hardware-specific options include the following:

• Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys: On many Apple keyboards, the function keys control features such as volume, screen brightness, and other aspects of hardware by default. To use these function keys as standard function keys instead, you must hold down the Fn key. Selecting this box reverses the default behavior.
• Automatically illuminate keyboard in low light: This is for special Apple keyboards (like those found on many Apple notebooks) that allow the keyboard to light up. Selecting this box will cause the keys to light up in low-light conditions. You can use the slider to turn off the keyboard lights after a designated period of idle time.
• Set Up Bluetooth Keyboard...: If you have Bluetooth available on your computer, this button will appear at the bottom of the preference pane. Selecting it will open a dialog box (Figure 18–29) that will walk you through the process of connecting a wireless Bluetooth keyboard to work with your computer.

Figure 18–28. The Keyboard tab on the Keyboard preference pane controls your keyboard.

Figure 18–29. Clicking the Set Up Bluetooth Keyboard... button will open a dialog box that will walk you through the steps needed to set up your wireless Bluetooth keyboard to work with your Bluetooth-enabled computer.

Many years ago, one of the biggest fears we heard from people about Macintosh computers was that they felt they needed to use the mouse for everything, while with Windows there tended to be a keyboard shortcut for just about everything. (Ironically, the other big fear was people wrongly assumed that Macs work only with one-button mice.) The reality is that on a Mac there are keyboard shortcuts for all common tasks, along with some things you may not have thought of. The Keyboard Shortcuts tab (Figure 18–30) lists all the system-wide keyboard shortcuts, organized in useful categories, in one place. You can also change the default shortcuts here as well (although we recommend against this). Additionally, by clicking the + button at the bottom of the list, you can add a keyboard shortcut to any menu item in many applications.

Figure 18–30. The Keyboard Shortcuts tab on the Keyboard preference pane displays (and allows you to remap) a wide number of system-wide keyboard shortcuts.

Mouse

The Mouse preference pane provides different options depending on the mouse you have attached to your computer (provided you have a mouse attached at all). For most mice, it will provide a number of standard mouse options (Figure 18–31). These options include setting the mouse’s tracking speed, double-click speed, scrolling speed, and depending on the mouse whether the left or right button is the primary click (which is nice for left-handers). The pane also includes options to use the scroll wheel to zoom (magnify) the screen.

Figure 18–31. The default Mouse tab on the Mouse preference pane

If you happen to have an Apple Magic Mouse connected to your computer, the Mouse tab will be quite different and provide different options tailored specifically for the mouse (Figure 18–32). This special preference pane allows you to select special actions for the different features available on this mouse.

Figure 18–32. The Mouse preference pane for Apple’s Magic Mouse provides a number of different options allowing you to enable and customize gestures.

Trackpad

The Trackpad preference pane is available on Macs that have a built-in trackpad or those with the Magic Trackpad attached. Like the Mouse preference pane the options provided for your trackpad may vary depending on how old your laptop is.

For most recent Apple Laptops, as well as computers using the Magic Trackpad, the preference pane (Figure 18–33) will present three tabs allowing you customize a large number of options and gestures.

Figure 18–33. The new Trackpad preference pane for the new multitouch glass trackpads

Print & Scan

The Print & Scan preference pane allows you to add and manage local and network printers and scanners. Setting up printers and scanners will be covered in detail in the next chapter (Chapter 19).

Sound

The Sound System Preference pane controls your sound input and output devices, and provides options for system sounds and effects. The Sound preference pane has three tabs: Sound Effects, Output, and Input.

The Sound Effects tab (Figure 18–34) allows you to set your alert sound (the sound your computer plays when it tries to get your attention).

The Output tab (Figure 18–35) allows you to select your primary output device (if more than one is available) and set the setting for the selected devices. At the bottom of the Sound preference pane is the “Output volume” slider, along with an option to show (and control) the volume in your menu bar.

Figure 18–34. The Sound Effects tab lets you choose your system alert sound and provides a few options for audio feedback.

Figure 18–35. The Output tab on the Sound preference pane

The Input tab (Figure 18–36) on the Sound System Preference pane lists each of your available input devices and allows you to make level adjustments for the selected input device. Ambient noise reduction may help eliminate excess background noise; however, in some cases, it could also adversely affect the input sound quality.

Figure 18–36. The Input tab on the Sound preference pane controls your sound input devices.

Internet & Wireless

The next section of System Preferences deals with Internet and network preferences (Figure 18–37). This contains your Mail, Contacts & Calendars; Bluetooth; MobileMe; Network; and Sharing preference panes.

Figure 18–37. Internet & Wireless system preferences

Mail, Contacts & Calendars

The Mail, Contacts & Calendars preference pane (Figure 18–38) is a new Preference pane added in Lion that borrows from the Mail, Contacts, Calendars setting in iOS. This Preference pane provides a single location where you can set up and manage various online accounts. Much of this is covered in various places in Part III of this book.

Figure 18–38. The Mail, Contacts & Calendars preference pane provides a single location to manage many of your online accounts for use with various OS X applications.

MobileMe

The MobileMe preference pane allows you to set up and manage your MobileMe account. If you have used MobileMe in the past, not much has changed here from previous versions of OS X, and since Apple has signaled the end of MobileMe in June of 2012, we won’t go into any detail here.

Network

The Network preference pane (Figure 18–39) allows you to add and configure all of your network connections. Setting up a basic network connection was covered in Chapter 8 and later in Chapter 25 we will cover some additional network configuration.

Figure 18–39. You can add and configure all of your network interfaces on the Network System Preferences pane.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth System Preferences pane (Figure 18–40) is where you can manage all of your Bluetooth wireless connections. The basic options here are to enable Bluetooth (by checking the On option) and Making Bluetooth discoverable. Making Bluetooth discoverable allows other Bluetooth enabled devices to detect you computer. Pairing other Bluetooth devices with your computer is covered in the next chapter.

Figure 18–40. The Bluetooth preferences allow you to enable Bluetooth and manage paired devices.

Sharing

The Sharing preference pane (Figure 18–41) enables you to activate and configure various methods of sharing data or computer resources with other devices over a network. The details of most of the available shared services are covered elsewhere in the book (especially in Chapter 26).

Figure 18–41. The Sharing preferences allow you to enable and configure various sharing services, including file sharing, printer sharing, and remote access.

System

The System section of System Preferences (Figure 18–42) contains the remaining preference panes that are installed with Lion. The preference panes in the System section are Users & Groups, Parental Controls, Date & Time, Software Update, Speech, Time Machine, and Startup Disk.

Figure 18–42. The System preference panes in System Preferences

Users & Groups

The Users & Groups preference pane (formerly called Accounts) manages all the system’s users, including some of their settings and their login options. When an existing user is selected, you will see two tabs—Password and Login Items—each containing information about that specific user.

The Password tab (Figure 18–43), as the name suggests, allows users to change their password by clicking the Change Password button. It also allows you to do the following:

• Change your user icon by clicking the icon image and selecting a new image from the drop-down list (or use the Edit Image selection to create a custom image)
• Change your user name by typing in a new name (this, however, doesn’t change your short name)
• Add your Apple ID so the account information can be used for iCloud and other services
• View and edit your address book card in the Address Book application
• Allow the user to reset their password using their Apple ID (This will verify account information on Apple servers before allowing them to reset their password)
• Grant (or remove) administrator rights on the computer, provided that you are an administrator (you cannot remove administrator rights from yourself)
• Enable (or disable) parental controls for the user (provided that you have administrator rights)

Figure 18–43. When a user is selected, the Password tab allows that user to change his or her password and other user information.

The Login Items tab (Figure 18–44) lets you manage applications, scripts, other executable items that you want to start, and even folders or documents you want to open automatically when you log into your computer. In general, what you will find listed here are background tasks that certain applications use to provide some sort of feature. You can, however, add your own items. For example, if you want the Mail application to start up immediately when you log into your computer, you can add it to this list by clicking the + button and selecting Mail from the resulting dialog box.

Figure 18–44. The Login Items tab allows you to manage scripts and applications that will run automatically when you log in.

Selecting Login Options (Figure 18–45) allows you to set options that govern login behavior. They are listed and defined in Table 18–5.

Figure 18–45. Selecting Login Options from the bottom of the user list allows you to customize the login process.

Adding New Users to Your System

To add a new user to your system from the Accounts preference pane, first make sure that the preferences are unlocked, and then click the + button at the bottom of the user list. This brings up a window (Figure 18–46) to enter the basic information for your new user.

Figure 18–46. Information needed to add a new user

This window requires some basic information. To the right of New Account is a drop-down menu prompting for what type of account you are creating. Options include the following:

• Administrator: This grants users the ability to do just about anything they want on the system.
• Standard: This allows users to work fairly normally on the system but won’t let them perform any tasks requiring administrator access.
• Managed with Parental Controls: This allows the administrator to restrict users in various ways using parental controls (covered later in this chapter).
• Sharing Only: This only allows access for remote file sharing; these users cannot actually log in through the login window.
• Group: This is a special option that, rather than creating a new user, creates a group that existing users can be part of. You can allow access to files, folders, applications, and other system services based on the groups a user belongs to.

After you select the account type, just enter the name of the account, the short name, the password (twice), and a password hint if you’d like. If you are having trouble coming up with a password, you can access a random password generator (Figure 18–47) by clicking the key icon.

Figure 18–47. Password Assistant helps you create a reasonably strong password for new accounts.

By default, a Guest account will automatically be added to your user list. The Guest account is a limited account with its own options (Figure 18–48).

The Guest account can be configured in various ways. Selecting “Allow guests to log into this computer” enables the Guest account and allows guests to log in and use your computer as a sandbox of sorts. They will have access to most applications—however, all settings and files they create will be wiped out when they log off (unless they save them to a shared location). “Allow guests to connect to shared folders” allows guests to access any shared folders on your system over the network. It’s important to note that guests never need a password, so by allowing a guest access, you are essentially allowing anyone access to your system.

Figure 18–48. Guest account options

Parental Controls

Parental controls allow an administrator to put in place a number of restrictions upon a user. These are generally thought of as a way for parents to limit the computing activities of their children but could be used in any situation in which you want to restrict or monitor a user’s activity on the computer. The Parental Controls preference pane lets you tailor the controls for any user account that has parental controls enabled. To set the controls, first select the desired user from the user list (if the list is empty, then you have no accounts with parental controls enabled, and you will be asked if you want to enable them), and then work through the five tabs presented to configure them. The five tabs on the preference pane are Apps, Web, People, Time Limits, and Other.

The Apps tab (Figure 18–49) provides options that control how a user can interact with the system itself as well as what Apps are available for use. The Use Simple Finder option alters the Finder’s appearance (Figure 18–50), removing many options and directories, and providing access only to a user’s allowed applications and his or her documents. For old-school Macintosh users, this is similar to what At Ease used to provide.

Figure 18–49. The Parental Controls preference pane with the Apps tab active

Figure 18–50. The Simple Finder

The Limit Applications option allows access only to the applications (or groups of applications) selected in the following list. If you are using the Simple Finder, then only the selected applications will show up; otherwise, the user will be prompted for an administrator’s password before launching an unselected application. Applications from the App Store can be set automatically based on the App’s age restriction.

The Web tab (Figure 18–51) allows you to attempt to limit the content that the user has access to. The Website Restrictions options offer three choices for attempting to manage web content:

• Allow unrestricted access to websites: Does not block any web sites.
• Try to limit access to adult websites automatically: Tries to filter out adult web sites using a variety of methods. While somewhat effective, this is not foolproof, and it may both block sites that you don’t find objectionable and let some objectionable content through. The Customize button allows you to fine-tune this behavior a bit by manually entering acceptable and unacceptable web sites.
• Allow access to only these websites: Allows you to specifically enter the addresses of acceptable web sites. Only those entered will be accessible. Obviously, this will likely block lots of valuable information, while at the same time this is really the only way to block objectionable content with some certainty.

Figure 18–51. The Web tab on the Parental Controls preference pane

The People tab (Figure 18–52) allows you to specify addresses of select people who you allow the user to interact with through Mail and iChat. There is an option at the bottom that can be set to send a message to you every time the user attempts to contact someone who is not preapproved for permission. This is a decent way to attempt to keep track of people who a user is interacting with online—however, this has no effect on web-based chats, or any other e-mail or messaging applications. As such, this is really only effective in combination with other controls.

Figure 18–52. The People tab of the Parental Controls preference pane attempts to control what people a user is in contact with online.

The Time Limits tab (Figure 18–53) allows you to limit the time a user spends in front of the computer. It allows you to set daily limits for weekdays and weekends, as well as set specific times when the computer is off limits.

Figure 18–53. The Time Limits tab on the Parental Controls preference pane

The Other tab (Figure 18–54) provides some additional options that one may wish to enable to a controlled account.

Figure 18–54. The Logs tab on the Parental Controls preference pane keeps track of a user’s activities.

Date & Time

The Date & Time preference pane contains the system’s date and time settings. These settings are broken up across three tabs: Date & Time, Time Zone, and Clock.

The Date & Time tab (Figure 18–55) simply allows you to either set the date and time of your system manually or set it automatically using one of Apple’s timeservers. There are actually very few situations where you wouldn’t want to set the time automatically (e.g., you have no Internet connection and thus the timeservers aren’t available, or you want to fool your system into thinking the time is different than it actually is). If you choose to have the time set automatically, just select the closest Apple timeserver while connected to the Internet.

Figure 18–55. The Date & Time tab of the Date & Time preference pane

The Time Zone tab (Figure 18–56) allows you to select what time zone you are in. You can do this by entering or selecting a city from the Closest City drop-down menu/text field or by clicking your location on the minimap. It’s important to accurately set your time zone, even if you are manually entering your date and time information—otherwise, you may get incorrect time information.

The Clock tab (Figure 18–57) provides a number of options that affect how the clock appears in your menu bar. There is a further option that causes your computer to speak out the current time at designated intervals. These options are fairly explicit and shouldn’t need much elaboration.

Figure 18–56. The Time Zone tab on the Date & Time preference pane

Figure 18–57. The Clock tab on the Date & Time preference pane allows you to set options for the clock in the menu bar.

Software Update

The Software Update preference pane (Figure 18–58) manages the Software Update features of OS X. This allows you to set the frequency that updates are checked for automatically, and it also provides a Check Now button to check for new updates manually.

Figure 18–58. The Software Update preference pane

When you run Software Update (by clicking the Check Now button or using the Software Update item on the Apple menu), the Software Update window will open and check for the availability of updated Apple software. If updates are available, Software Update will let you now and allow you install them right away (by clicking Install) or later (by Clicking Not Now). To see the details of what software is available before you install click the Show Details button this will provide a detailed list of what will be installed (Figure 18–59). Certain updates may require authentication to install or require you to restart your computer to complete—in either of these cases, you will be prompted accordingly.

Figure 18–59. The Software Update window

The Installed Software tab of the Software Update preference pane lists all of your past software installs. Software Update tracks all the software listed here, but it’s likely not all the software you have installed.

Speech

The Speech preference pane contains two tabs: Speech Recognition, which contains options for responding to speech; and Text to Speech, which contains settings for controlling how the computer speaks back to you.

The Speech Recognition tab (Figure 18–60) contains settings that control how to set up the computer to receive and respond to speakable items. To enable this feature, you first must set the Speakable Items option to On. Once the Speakable Items option is switched on, a small, roundish floating window with a microphone in it will appear. This provides visual feedback for your speakable items. By default, to speak a command, first hold down the Esc key and then speak your command clearly into the microphone. If the computer accepts your command, it will carry out the command requested and provide you with acknowledgment as set up under the Upon Recognition setting. The Commands subtab provides a list of active command categories. Any time speech recognition is active, you click the small inverted triangle at the bottom of the small, round, hovering speech window, and select Open Speech Commands Window to view a list of available speech commands as well as a log of previous spoken actions.

Figure 18–60. The Speech Recognition tab contains settings that allow your computer to respond to spoken commands.

The Text to Speech tab (Figure 18–61) controls how your computer speaks to you. Here you can change your computer’s voice and the speed at which it talks. You can then set up options that will cause your computer to speak certain items:

• Announce when alerts are displayed: Causes your computer to read any alerts that pop up
• Announce when an application requires your attention: Causes your computer to tell you when an application is awaiting your input or has some message for you
• Speak selected text when the key is pressed: Allows you to set a key that causes any selected text to be read back to you

Figure 18–61. The Text to Speech tab on the Speech preference pane

Some applications have their own capability for reading back text as well. The important thing here is that the voice you pick on the Text to Speech tab will be the default voice used in all of the applications.

Time Machine

The Time Machine preference pane (Figure 18–62) allows you to set up and configure Time Machine. Time Machine is OS X’s built in data backup utility that we will cover in Chapter 20.

Figure 18–62. The Time Machine preferences provide a simple interface to configure Time Machine.

Startup Disk

If you have multiple bootable volumes connected to your computer, the Startup Disk preference pane (Figure 18–63) will allow you to select which disk to default to when starting your computer.

Figure 18–63. The Startup Disk preference pane controls which bootable volume the computer uses by default when starting up.

The startup disk selected here can always be overridden by special startup key commands (holding the Option key while starting your computer allows you to choose to boot from any connected bootable hard drive), unless you’ve set a firmware password (discussed in Appendix A).

One interesting option here is the Target Disk Mode... option. This allows you to set up your computer so that the next time it’s started, you can connect to another Mac via a FireWire cable and use it as a hard drive. This is a handy option for copying files from one computer to another very quickly. (You can also boot your computer in Target Disk mode by holding the T key while starting your computer.)

Summary

We have covered a lot of ground in this chapter, and while we have saved a few things that need more elaboration than was possible here for later in the book, you have hopefully learned a number of ways to help set up your computer to work in a way that suits you. Next, as promised, we will look at connecting and using a range of external devices with your computer.