Need a little help figuring out your new iMac or MacBook? You’ve come to the right place.
Check out our updated survival guide for the basics on Mac OS X, including details on the latest “Mountain Lion” features, illustrated guides for updating and backing up your Mac, must-know tips, and more.

The basics

What is Mac OS X?

It’s the software that powers all the day-to-day features on your iMac or MacBook. Every time you click a menu at the top of the screen, open a folder on your desktop, or search for a document on your hard drive, you have the Mac operating system (or “OS”) to thank.

OK, so what does the “X” in “Mac OS X” stand for?

It stands for “10,” as in the Roman numeral—and specifically, it means we’re currently using the tenth major version of the Mac OS. Mac OS X first arrived for desktop Macs way back in 2001, and had been preceded by—you guessed it—Mac OS 9.

“Mountain Lion” is the latest version of Mac OS X, the software that powers your iMac or MacBook.

What is “Mountain Lion”?

Over the past dozen years, there have been seven big updates to Mac OS X, and the latest update, 10.8, is nicknamed “Mountain Lion.” Previous updates to Mac OS X have been named “Panther,” “Leopard,” “Snow Leopard,” and plain-old “Lion.” Yes, it’s safe to say that Apple has a thing for felines.
Anyway, Mac OS X “Mountain Lion” (which came out in July 2012) adds more than 200 new features to the Mac operating system, including a “Notification Center” with alerts for incoming e-mail and calendar alerts, voice dictation, text messaging with iPhone, iPad, and other Mac users, and the ability to “mirror” a newer Mac’s display to an Apple TV-connected HDTV.
Check out Apple’s rundown of the 200 new features in Lion right here.

Where to get Mountain Lion

Lion is available for download from the Mac App Store for $20.

The “About This Mac” window will tell you is your Mac is new enough for Mountain Lion.

Can your Mac handle Lion?

Generally speaking, you’ll need an iMac or MacBook Pro that was manufactured no earlier than 2007, or a MacBook circa 2008 or later.
Specific iMac and MacBook models have different requirements, however; click here for more details.

How to install Mountain Lion

The Lion installation process is fairly straightforward, but it will require at least an hour of your time.
Once you purchase Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store, your system will download the update and alert you when it’s ready to begin the installation process. Just follow the prompts (there are only a few), sit back and wait. After a restart or two, your Mac should be all et.

How to back up your Mac

Don’t even thing of updating your Mac’s operating system without backing up your hard drive first. Luckily, backing up your hard drive is easy thanks for a Mac OS X utility called Time Machine; here’s how to use it.

35 must-know Mac tips and tricks

You can pause your Notification Center alerts with a quick swipe and click.

1. How to pause all your Notification Center alerts

Want a break from all the banners and alerts from the Mac’s new Notification Center? You put all your notifications on “pause” with a simple swipe and click.

2. Getting the hang of desktop “spaces” in Mission Control

The Mac’s handy Mission Control feature lets you manage multiple desktop “spaces” at once, each filled with its own assortment of open documents and applications. Sounds confusing, I know. But once you get the hang of it, these additional, virtual desktops can become addicting—and even essential.

3. Why “natural” scrolling feels backwards—and how to turn it off

Does scrolling on your Mac feel backwards to you? Blame Apple’s new “natural” scrolling feature. Luckily, turning it off is a cinch.

Wish you could get your scroll bars back? All you have to do is tweak the right setting.

4. How to get your missing scroll bars back

Hey, what happened to the scroll bars on your windows? Don’t worry—you can get them back in a few clicks.

5. 12 handy trackpad gestures you need to try

Want to zoom in on a web page, twirl a snapshot in iPhoto, sneak a peek at the desktop, or look up the definition of a head-scratching word? You can do all that and more with a simple swipe, “pinch,” or tap on your Mac’s trackpad.

6. Turn on your Mac’s speaking clock

Your Mac has a built-in speaking clock that will read you the time every hour, on the hour—or the half hour, or even quarter hour. Here’s how to turn it on.

You can add a new Mission Control desktop with a little help from your mouse.

7. Create a new desktop in Mission Control

Making a new “space” in Mission Control, the Lion feature that gives you a bird’s eye view of all your virtual desktops, is easy—if you know where to look.

8. Pin an app to a specific Mission Control desktop

There’s a way to assign an app to a specific desktop in Mission Control, perfect for keeping your programs in their proper “spaces.”

9. How to paste your signature into a PDF, no scanner or printer required

Got a contract or some other document that you need to sign and return via email? Just snap a photo of your John Hancock with your Mac’s iSight camera (just about any recent iMac or MacBook should have one), then paste it into the document you need to sign.

10. 8 ways to make the most of the Mac desktop dock

Thanks to the handy Dock at the bottom of your Mac desktop, your favorite programs, files, and folders are never more than a click away—and if you know where to look, you can make the Dock behave practically any way you want.

“Sticky Keys” make for a clever alternative to playing “Twister” with your fingers.

11. How to enable “sticky keys”

Having a tough time maneuvering your fingertips around multi-key combos like SHIFT + ALT + DELETE? The “sticky keys” feature in Mac OS X can help.

12. 5 ways to take a “Quick Look” at almost any file

Meet “Quick Look,” a handy, built-in Mac tool that lets you take a quick glance at almost any file or folder without committing to firing up a program.

13. 12 Mac keyboard shortcuts you need to know

Switch applications, take a “quick look” at a file, get help, and more, all without touching your Mac’s mouse or trackpad.

14. 6 ways to give your Mac desktop icons a makeover

Got a jumble of icons cluttering your Mac’s desktop? Are you desktop icons too big—or too small? Wish they would just arrange themselves? Help is here!

15. 5 ways to make the most of the sidebar

Looking to add your own folders to the Mac sidebar? Or perhaps you’d rather make the sidebar bigger, smaller, or just plain gone. Help is here!

Just dip into your Mac’s system settings to make the mouse pointer bigger.

16. How to boost the size of the mouse pointer

Want to save both your eyesight and your sanity? Here’s an easy way: by dipping into your system settings and boosting the size of the mouse pointer.

17. How to control your desktop with “Hot Corners”

Turn on the Mac’s hot-corner feature to jump to Mission Control, clear your desktop, and more, all with a simple flick of your fingertip.

18. How to “unthread” your e-mail conversations

It’s easy to “unthread” the mail conversations in your Mac’s Mail inbox messages—or at least it is once you know the setting you need to tweak.

19. How to disable the Caps Lock key

Sick of striking the Caps Lock key by mistake? The good news is that turning off Caps Lock for good on a Mac is easy.

20. How to stop programs from launching automatically

How long does it take for your Mac to start up? Too long? Maybe your Mac is trying to launch too many apps when it’s first starting up.

You can zoom your Mac’s display with a few keyboard combinations.

21. How to zoom the display

Squinting at your computer screen? You can zoom the entire display on your PC or Mac, a handy trick for anyone with iffy eyesight. Here’s how.

22. Choose your default web browser

Sick of having Safari pop up when you really wanted another browser, like Chrome or Firefox? There’s single, centralized place on your Mac where you can set your default web browser once and for all.

23. Create a “recent files” folder on your desktop

It’s easy to create a folder on your desktop that’ll display only the files you’ve created or worked with in the past day, week, month … you name it.

24. Set your Mac to automatically start up (or shut down) each day

Want to wake up each morning to a freshly brewed pot of coffee and a fully powered-on Mac? It’s easier than you might think.

25. 16 Mac keyboard shortcuts you need to know

Want to switch applications, empty the trash, search your hard drive, or put your Mac to sleep, all without touching your mouse? Read on for 16 keyboard shortcuts that’ll let you zip around your Mac like a pro.

By tweaking a single setting, you can use your Mac’s function keys without having to press and hold the “Fn” key.

26. Use the function keys without pressing “Fn”

On most Mac keyboards, the function keys—you know, those keys along the top of the keyboard marked “F1,” “F2,” “F3,” and so on—don’t get the luxury of having an entire key to themselves. Want to switch things around so you don’t need to press and hold “fn” to use a function key? No problem.

27. Set multiple “home” or “start” pages for your web browser

Want more than just a single home page to appear when you fire up your web browser in the morning? No problem.

28. Cram a bunch of files into a single “zip” archive

Got a bunch of little files that you want to send to a friend? Well, you could always drag them all into an email and send them as attachments, but talk about messy. A cleaner, tidier alternative is to take all those little (or not-so-little) files and compress them into an archive—or, to be more specific, a “zip” archive.

29. Turn any printable document or web page into a PDF

It’s actually quite easy to convert a Word document into a PDF, and you won’t have to pay a dime to do it. In fact, here’s the rule of thumb when it comes to turning documents or even web pages into PDFs: if you can print ‘em, you can convert ‘em.

Tapping to click takes getting used to, but it’s surprisingly addicting, not to mention easier on your fingers.

30. How to “click” the trackpad with a tap

Having a hard time clicking the MacBook’s squishy trackpad? If so, here’s an alternative: setting the Mac trackpad to “click” with a simple tap rather than an actual click.

31. Share files between nearby Macs with AirDrop

Got a file on one Mac that you’d like to send to another Mac just a few feet away? A built-in Mac feature called AirDrop lets you…well, “drop” a file from one Mac onto another.

32. Change the default programs for your files

Annoyed that the Mac’s Preview app, and not Adobe Reader, always gets to open your PDF files? There’s a way to permanently change the “default” program that opens a given type of document.

33. Customize the buttons in program toolbars

Ever wish there were a Print button next to the Reply and Forward buttons in the Mac’s Mail app, or a pair of Zoom buttons on the top of every Safari browser window? Well, here’s the thing: you can add, remove, and rearrange the buttons in the “toolbar” of several familiar Mac programs.

You can set your wallpaper to change at any interval you choose, from once a day to once every 5 seconds.

34. Put your desktop wallpaper on shuffle

Getting tired of the same old wallpaper on your Mac desktop? If so, try this: just set your Mac to shuffle some or all of your favorite desktop wallpaper (or “background”) photos, at any interval you choose.

35. 4 ways to right-click on a Mac trackpad

There are actually several different ways to right-click on the MacBook’s trackpad, which (nowadays, at least) is essentially one big button.

 35 Basics tips for Mac Xs You must know

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The following is a guest post by Juliana Meehan.

As I sat with my stack of 100+ personal narratives waiting for grading, the enormity of the task threatened to swamp whatever energy I had.  After thirteen years of teaching high school and middle school language arts, the idea of having to mark those papers with notations like “run-on” and “fragment” ad nauseam drove me to seek a different solution.  In my desperation, I remembered a session I wandered into at AMLE the year before, where Catherine Garrison of Measured Progress gave a talk on formative assessment and learning targets coupled with the Common Core Curriculum Standards (CCCS).  The idea was simple but powerful, and I realized in my consternation that what I had learned from Garrison was the answer to my present dilemma.

Image credit: http://gilpizano.com/personal-development/dont-youre-notyoull-2/

I put all my papers aside and took out the CCCS.  The idea was simple:  select those core standards that pertain to narrative writing (written in “teacher-ese”) and turn them into student-friendly language with the words “I can” in front of them.  For instance, some excerpts,

For composing (A):

A1_____ I can have my story unfold as a series of clear events.

A2_____ I can create a background for my story by telling stories, giving examples.
A3_____ I can organize events so that they unfold naturally and logically.


For publishing (B):

B1_____ I can show that I am editing my work.

B2_____ I can vary sentence length, depending on meaning, reader/ listener interest, and style.


For doing research to build knowledge (C):

C1_____ I can look at ways other writers have created their stories by reading several stories and imitating the style (or styles) that I think fit my work.

C2_____ I can do a bit of research so that my story is as realistic as possible; I will be able to show what I’ve learned and where I found it (from books, the Internet, interviews, etc.).


For using conventions of English (D):

D1_____ I can make sure it’s clear what character a pronoun refers to in my writing.

D2_____ I can use commas to set off an introductory phrase.

D3_____ I can use a comma with a conjunction to correct a run-on sentence.


It took a lot of work, but now my stack of papers could be coded at the end with E17 for “run-ons,” and A7 for “give background, thoughts and feelings.”  I would write short codes once, not many times.

Students and teacher then collaborate to decide which targets should be worked on first (I call it “writing triage”) and then, when a student demonstrates mastery, we put a check mark in their sheet and they move on to the next one(s).

Having done the hard work of breaking down the CCCS and creating those targets, I would now be doing several powerful things all at once:

• Giving students a rationale for my grading (I would explain the CCCS to them, i.e., “These are not my rules; they’re what students your age are expected to know and be able to do all across the country!”)
• Putting the CCCS right into the students’ hands, thereby transferring responsibility for and ownership of their work to them.
• Providing clear expectations.
• Providing students with measurable targets.
• Keeping my eyes on the CCCS.
• Uncovering patterns:  whole-class and individual strengths and weaknesses.
• Developing a system by which I could easily group students for whole-class or flexible, small group instruction.
• Providing a solid and easy way to formatively assess going forward.

And the targets were all ready for any future writing assignments too.  I only needed to do this once!

Now students would have feedback and goals set for their next writing work.  They’d know exactly what they should be working on for a better grade.  And I would have done the work of assessment with minimal frustration and repetition, knowing that I was setting my students up for future achievement.

I am indebted to Garrison for her fine work and to Yogi Berra for his catchphrase, "If you dont know where youre going, youll end up somewhere else," which the students loved as our learning targets motto!

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1. Match Paint Colors

Want to paint your walls the same color of green as your throw pillows? What about making your wainscoting the same color blue as yesterday afternoons sky?
With BEHRs ColorSmart mobile app, you can match the perfect paint color. The app is available for iOS and Android devices.

2. Use Your Phone as a Level

The free iHandy Level app (one of the five tools included in the iHandy Carpenter toolkit), lets you hang pictures, align shelves and measure angles accurately.

3. Start Your Car

The Viper Smart Start app lets you start your car remotely. All you have to do is install the device in your car, and you can warm the engine on a winter morning while you finish your coffee in the kitchen.
The Viper Smart Start is available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry.

4. Measure Stuff Using Your Camera Lens

Tired of pinching yourself on tape measures? Interested in measuring really tall things? There are several apps that can measure practically anything for you through your camera lens.
Check out Smart Measure Pro (linked above) for Android and Dot Measure Pro for iOS.

5. Create Blueprints (or Design Your Dream Room)

You can use your smartphone for high-level design with Mark On Call on iOS. Create detailed blueprints for your project, or mock up that living room you always wanted.

6. Visualize Your Home Using Augmented Reality

In the same design vein as Mark On Call, uDecore lets you view a real room of your house through your iOS devices camera and, using augmented reality, visualize different pieces of furniture and design elements.

7. Monitor Your Heart Rate

Azumios Instant Heart Rate measures your heart rate after you place your finger on your smartphone screen for a few seconds. The app, available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone, was awarded the Best Health & Fitness App in the Mobile Premier Awards in 2011.

8. Use Your Phone as a Remote Control

Odds are you lose track of your remote all the time, but you probably have your phone by your side at all times. Thats why ThinkFloods RedEye Mini comes in handy. With a small infrared device, you can control several devices from the palm of your hand. Compatible with iOS.

9. Change the Color of Your Lightbulbs

Wouldnt it be convenient to control the brightness and color of your lights from your mobile device? Now you can, with Phillips Hue. The app and "smart" light bulbs let you adjust the lighting via Wi-Fi on your iPhone or iPad, and you can also turn your lights on remotely if youre working late and want it to look like youre home.

10. Program Your DVR Remotely

Do you often forget to digitally record your favorite shows before you leave the house? With Verizons FiOS Mobile Remote app, not only can you control your cable box with your smartphone, but you can program the DVR when youre away from home. The app is available for iOS and Android devices.

 

original article is in mashable.com

10 Things You Didnt Know You Could Do With Your Smartphone

 

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