I ntroduction 1 About This Book 1 Conventions Used in This Book 2 Foolish Assumptions 3 Beyond the Book 3 Icons Used in This Book 3 Where to Go from Here 4 Part I: Introducing OS X El Capitan: The Basics 5 Chapter 1: OS X El Capitan 101 (Prerequisites: None) 7 Gnawing to the Core of OS X 8 A Safety Net for the Absolute Beginner (or Any User) 10 Turning the dang thing on 10 What you should see on startup 10 Shutting down properly 13 A few things you should definitely not do with your Mac 15 Point-and-click boot camp 16 Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu 18 Chapter 2: Desktop and Windows and Menus (Oh My!) 23 Touring the Finder and Its Desktop 24 Anatomy of a Window 25 Top o'' the window to ya! 28 A scroll new world 29 (Hyper)active windows 31 Dialog Dealie-Boppers 32 Working with Windows 34 Opening and closing windows 34 Resizing windows and window panes 35 Moving windows 35 Shuffling windows 36 Menu Basics 38 The ever-changing menu bar 39 Contextual menus: They''re sooo contextual! 39 Recognizing disabled options 41 Navigating submenus 42 Under the Apple menu tree 43 Using keyboard shortcut commands 44 Chapter 3: What''s Up, Dock? 47 A Quick Introduction to Your Dock 48 The default icons of the Dock 48 Trash talkin'' 51 Opening application menus on the Dock 53 Reading Dock icon body language 55 Opening files from the Dock 56 Customizing Your Dock 56 Adding Dock icons 56 Removing an icon from the Dock 59 Resizing the Dock 59 What should you put on your Dock? 60 Setting your Dock preferences 61 Chapter 4: Delving Deeper into the Finder and Its Desktop 67 Introducing the Finder and Its Minions: The Desktop and Icons 67 Introducing the Desktop 68 Bellying up to the toolbar 70 Figuring out what an icon is 73 Identifying your Finder icons in the wild 74 Aliases Are Awesome! 76 Creating aliases 78 Deleting aliases 79 Hunting down an alias''s parent 79 The View(s) from a Window 79 Moving through folders fast in Column view 80 Perusing in Icon view 82 Listless? Try touring folders in List view 83 You gotta go with the flow 84 What''s on the (View) menu? 85 Finder on the Menu 86 The actual Finder menu 87 Like a road map: The current folder''s pop-up menu 89 Going places with the Go menu 90 Customizing Finder Windows 92 Adding folders to the Sidebar 92 Setting Finder preferences 93 Digging for Icon Data in the Info Window 97 Part II: Inside El Capitan (or How Stuff Works) 101 Chapter 5: Have It Your Way 103 Introducing System Preferences 103 Putting a Picture on the Desktop 106 Setting Up a Screen Saver 107 Putting Widgets on the Dashboard 108 Translation 111 Flight Tracker 112 Giving Buttons, Menus, and Windows a Makeover 113 Adjusting the Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad, and Other Hardware 116 Keyboard 116 Mouse 121 Bluetooth 122 Trackpad (notebooks and desktops with a Magic Trackpad) 123 Styling Your Sound 124 Changing sound effects 124 Choosing output and input options 125 Chapter 6: The Care and Feeding of Files and Folders 127 A Quick Primer on Finding Files 128 Understanding the OS X Folder Structure 128 Understanding nested folders 129 From the top: The Computer folder 130 Peeking into the Applications folder 131 Visiting the Library folders 131 Let it be: The System folder 132 There''s no place like Home 132 Your personal Library card 135 Saving Your Document Before It''s Too Late 137 Stepping through a basic Save 138 Save As versus Duplicate: Different names for the same result 144 Open, Sez Me 146 With drag-and-drop 148 With a Quick Look 148 When your Mac can''t open a file 149 With the application of your choice 150 Organizing Your Stuff in Folders 152 Files versus folders 152 Organizing your stuff with subfolders 153 Creating new folders 155 Navigating with spring-loaded folders 155 Smart folders 156 Shuffling Files and Folders 159 Moving files and folders 159 Selecting multiple icons 160 Playing the icon name game: Renaming icons 161 Comprehending the Clipboard 163 Copying files and folders 163 Pasting from the Clipboard 165 Compressing files 165 Getting rid of icons 166 The Incredible New iCloud Drive 166 Chapter 7: Four Terrific Timesaving Tools 169 With a Quick Look 169 Share and share alike with the Share menu 172 Slide into Slideshow (full-screen) mode 172 Spotlight on Finding Files and Folders Faster 173 Using the Search box in Finder windows 174 Using the Spotlight menu and window 176 Blast Off with Mission Control 178 The Mission Control pane: It''s painless 178 Hot corners! 181 Spaces from 30,000 feet (an overview) 182 Getting around in space(s) 186 Launchpad: The Place for Applications 187 Customizing Your Launchpad 188 Part III: Getting Things Done in El Capitan 191 Chapter 8: Organizing Your Life 193 Keeping Track with Calendar 194 Navigating Calendar views 194 Creating calendars 195 Deleting a calendar 196 Creating and managing events 196 Reminders: Protection Against Forgetting 200 Getting started with Reminders 200 To do or not to do: Setting reminders 201 Everything You Need to Know about the Notification Center 202 Use Notes for Making Notes 206 Chapter 9: (Inter)Networking 209 Getting Connected to the Internet 210 Your Internet service provider and you 210 Setting up your modem 211 Plugging in your Internet-connection settings 212 Browsing the Web with Safari 213 Owning your toolbar 214 Using the Safari Sidebar 217 Using the terrific Top Sites page 220 Searching with Google 221 Checking out Help Center 223 Audio and Video Calls with FaceTime 223 Chapter 10: Finding People and Places 227 Collecting Your Contacts 227 Adding contacts 228 Importing contacts from other programs 230 Creating a basic group 231 Setting up a smart group (based on contact criteria) 231 Deleting a group or smart group 233 The view is lovely 233 Sync + Contacts = Your contacts everywhere 233 Maps Are Where It''s At 235 Finding your current location with Maps 235 Finding a person, place, or thing 235 Views, zooms, and pans 237 Maps and Contacts 239 Timesaving map tools: Favorites, Recents, and Contacts 240 Smart map tricks 241 Chapter 11: Communicating with Mail and Messages 247 Sending and Receiving Email with Mail 247 Setting up Mail 248 A quick overview of the toolbar 249 Composing a new message 251 Sending email from the Contacts app 253 Working with stationery 254 Checking your mail 255 Dealing with spam 257 Mailboxes smart and plain 257 Changing your preferences 260 Sign here, please 261 Mail rules rule 262 Relative Newcomers: Markup and Mail Drop 265 Communicating with Messages 267 What the heck is an iMessage? 267 Chit-chatting with Messages 268 Chapter 12: Sharing Your Mac and Liking It 271 Introducing Networks and File Sharing 272 Portrait of home office networking 273 Three ways to build a network 275 Setting Up File Sharing 276 Access and Permissions: Who Can Do What 278 Users and groups and guests 278 Creating users 280 OS X knows best: Folders shared by default 286 Sharing a folder or disk by setting permissions 288 Useful settings for permissions 292 Unsharing a folder 294 Connecting to a Shared Disk or Folder on a Remote Mac 294 Changing Your Password 298 Changing your account password on your Mac 298 Changing the password of any account but your own on your Mac 299 Changing the password for your account on someone else''s Mac 300 More Types of Sharing 300 Screen Sharing 301 Internet Sharing 301 And yet more ways to share 302 Part IV: Getting Creative in El Capitan 305 Chapter 13: The Musical Mac 307 Apple Music and iTunes Match Rock! 308 Introducing iTunes 309 Working with Media 312 Adding songs 312 Adding movies and TV shows 314 Adding podcasts 315 Learning from iTunes U 316 Listening to iTunes Radio 316 All About Playlists 317 Creating a regular playlist 317 Working with smart playlists 320 Burning a playlist to CD 321 Looking at the Genius playlist 322 Chapter 14: The Multimedia Mac 325 Playing Movies and Music in QuickTime Player 325 iBooks on the Mac 327 Buying iBooks 328 Shopping for books without Apple 330 Reading iBooks 331 You''re the Star with Photo Booth 333 Viewing and Converting Images and PDFs in Preview 334 Importing Media 336 Downloading photos from a camera 336 Downloading DV video from a.