Introduction 1 Foolish Assumptions 1 About This Book 2 Icons Used in This Book 3 Beyond the Book 4 Where to Go from Here 4 Part 1: Tie Myself Down with a Desktop? Preposterous! 5 Chapter 1: Hey, It Really Does Have Everything I Need 7 An Overview of Your Mac Laptop 8 The parts you probably recognize 9 The holes called ports 11 Don''t forget the parts you can''t see 13 Meet the MacBooks 14 Comparing the MacBooks 15 Look, Ma, no moving parts! 17 Whoa! Where''s my familiar USB port? 18 Sharing a CD or DVD drive 19 Location, Location, Location! 20 Unpacking and Connecting Your Laptop 21 Unpacking for the road warrior 21 Connecting Cables 101 22 Great -- a Lecture about Handling My Laptop 23 An Overview of Mac Software Goodness 23 What comes with my laptop? 24 Connecting to the Internet from your lap 24 Applications that rock 25 Boot Camp For Dummies 25 Other Stuff That Nearly Everyone Wants 26 Chapter 2: Turning On Your Portable Powerhouse 29 Tales of the On Button 30 Mark''s Favorite Signs of a Healthy Laptop 30 You Won''t Lecture Me about Batteries, Will You? 31 Setting Up and Registering Your Laptop 34 Your iCloud account is your friend 34 Setting up macOS Big Sur 35 Registering your MacBook 36 Importing Stuff from Another Mac 37 Importing Stuff from Windows (If You Must) 39 Chapter 3: The MacBook Owner''s Introduction to macOS Big Sur 41 Your Own Personal Operating System 42 The Big Sur Desktop 43 Meet me at the Dock 43 Check out that Control Center 44 Dig those crazy icons 45 There''s no food on this menu 45 The Finder menu bar is your friend 47 There''s always room for one more window 47 Wait a Second: Where the Heck Are the Mouse Buttons? 48 Launching and Quitting Applications with Aplomb 51 Performing Tricks with Finder Windows 55 Scrolling in and resizing windows 55 Minimizing and restoring windows 56 Moving and zooming windows 57 Closing windows 58 Juggling Folders and Icons 59 A field observer''s guide to icons 59 Selecting items 61 Copying items 62 Moving things from place to place 63 Duplicating in a jiffy 63 Using Finder Tabs 64 Keys and Keyboard Shortcuts to Fame and Fortune 65 Special keys on the keyboard 65 Using the Finder and application keyboard shortcuts 66 Home, Sweet Home Folder 67 Working with Mission Control 69 Switching Desktops with Spaces 70 Personalizing Your Desktop 72 Taking Control of Your MacBook 73 Customizing the Dock 74 Adding applications and extras to the Dock 75 Keeping track with Stacks 76 Resizing the Dock 77 What''s with the Trash? 78 All You Really Need to Know about Printing 79 And Just in Case You Need Help 81 The Big Sur built-in Help system 81 The Apple web-based support center 81 Magazines 81 Local Mac user groups 82 Part 2: Shaking Hands with macOS Big Sur 83 Chapter 4: What''s New in macOS Big Sur? 85 Introducing the Control Center 85 The Return of the Widgets 86 Your Guide to the Perfect Trip 87 Safari Covers New Ground 87 Messages Adds Effects, Images, and Pins? 87 Becoming One with Your Battery 88 Chapter 5: A Nerd''s Guide to System Preferences 89 An Explanation -- without Jargon, No Less 90 Locating That Certain Special Setting 92 Popular Preferences Panes Explained 93 The Displays pane 94 The Desktop & Screen Saver pane 95 Mission Control preferences 97 The General pane 99 The Battery pane 101 The Dock & Menu Bar pane 102 The Sharing pane 104 The Time Machine pane 105 Apple ID preferences 107 Notifications preferences 108 Chapter 6: Sifting Through Your Stuff 111 Doing a Basic Search 112 How Cool is That? Discovering What Spotlight Can Do 115 Expanding Your Search Horizons 116 Customizing Spotlight to Your Taste 118 Chapter 7: Using Reminders, Notes, Notifications, and Maps 121 Remind Me to Use Reminders 122 Taking Notes the Big Sur Way 125 Staying Current with Notification Center 127 Introducing the Maps Application 128 Switching Views in Maps 130 Getting Directions Over Yonder 131 Creating and Using Guides 133 Part 3: Connecting and Communicating 135 Chapter 8: Let''s Go on Safari! 137 Pretend You''ve Never Used This Thing 137 Visiting Websites 139 Navigating the Web 141 Configuring Your Home Page and Start Page 144 Adding and Using Bookmarks 145 Working with the Reading List 148 Downloading Files 149 Using History 150 Tabs Are Your Browsing Friends 150 Printing Web Pages 152 Protecting Your Privacy 153 Yes, there are such things as bad cookies 154 Banishing pesky iCloud Keychain passwords 155 Handling ancient history 155 Setting notifications 156 Avoiding those @*!^%$ pop-up ads 156 Chapter 9: iCloud is Made for MacBooks 157 So How Does iCloud Work, Anyway? 158 Moving, Saving, and Opening iCloud Documents 159 Putting Handoff to Work 160 Expanding Your Horizons with Sidecar 161 Configuring iCloud 161 Managing Your iCloud Storage 163 Chapter 10: Your Laptop Goes Multiuser 165 Once Upon a Time (an Access Fairy Tale) 166 Big-Shot Administrator Stuff 167 Deciding who needs what access 167 Adding users 168 Modifying user accounts 170 I banish thee, mischievous user! 172 Setting up login items and managing access 174 Tackling Mundane Chores for the Multiuser Laptop 178 Logging in and out of Big Sur For Dummies 179 Interesting stuff about sharing stuff 182 Encrypting your Home folder can be fun 182 Chapter 11: Working Well with Networks 185 What Exactly is the Network Advantage? 186 Should You Go Wired or Wireless? 187 Be a Pal: Share Your Internet! 189 Using your MacBook as a sharing device 189 Using a dedicated Internet-sharing device 189 What Do I Need to Connect? 190 Wireless connections 190 Wired connections 194 Connecting to the Network 198 Sharing stuff nicely with others 199 USE YOUR FIREWALL! 201 Playing Buck Rogers with FaceTime 203 Sending Instant Messages Across the Network 203 Part 4: Living the iLife 205 Chapter 12: The Multimedia Joys of Music and TV 207 What Can I Play in Music? 208 Playing Digital Audio Files 209 Finding songs in your Music library 213 Removing old music from the library 213 Keeping Slim Whitman and Slim Shady Apart: Organizing with Playlists 214 Know Your Songs 216 Setting the song information automatically 217 Setting or changing the song information manually 217 Ripping Audio Files 219 Tweaking the Audio for Your Ears 220 A New Kind of Radio Station 220 Tuning in your own stations 221 Radio stations in your playlists 222 Creating a custom Music Radio station 222 iSending iStuff to iPhone and iPad 223 Burning Music to Shiny Plastic Circles 224 Feasting on Music Visuals 225 Exercising Parental Authority 225 Watching Video with TV 227 Buying Digital Media the Apple Way 228 Chapter 13: Focusing on Photos 231 Delving into Photos 231 Working with Images in Photos 234 Import images 101 234 Organize mode: Organizing and sorting your images 236 Edit mode: Removing and fixing stuff the right way 242 Exploring iCloud Photos 247 Putting My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing to Work 248 Chapter 14: Making Film History with iMovie 251 Shaking Hands with the iMovie Window 252 A Bird''s-Eye View of Moviemaking 255 Importing the Building Blocks 256 Pulling in video clips 256 Making use of still images 258 Importing and adding audio from all sorts of places 258 Building the Cinematic Basics 261 Adding clips to your movie 261 Marking clips 262 Removing clips from your movie 263 Reordering clips in your movie 263 Editing clips in iMovie 264 Transitions for the masses 265 Even Gone with the Wind had titles 266 Adding maps and backgrounds 267 Creating an Honest-to-Goodness Movie Trailer 267 Browsing Your Video Library 269 Sharing Your Finished Classic 270 Chapter 15: Recording Your Hits with GarageBand 271 Shaking Hands with Your Band 272 Composing Made Easy 274 Adding tracks 275 Choosing loops 277 Resizing, repeating, and moving loops 280 Using the Arrangement track 282 Tweaking the settings for a track 283 Sharing Your Songs 285 Creating song files in Music 286 Exporting a project 287 Burning an audio CD 288 Part 5: Getting Productive and Maintaining Your MacBook 289 Chapter 16: Desktop Publishing with Pages 291 Creating a New Pages Document 292 Opening an Exist.