Take Control of Using Mountain Lion

Make the most of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion!

Learn to function effectively with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, whether you want to embrace recently added features (such as Notifications, Launchpad, gestures, and Mission Control) or want to strike a balance between old and new options. Most importantly, you'll get a thorough grounding in Mountain Lion's new "modern document model" that gives you three ways to save documents: the old way, the new way, or the new way with iCloud.

Written by Mac expert and former professor Matt Neuburg, this ebook also discusses how you can tweak Mountain Lion to best meet your needs—with details on customizing the menu bar, Finder windows, Dock, Launchpad—and much more.

More Info
Contents & Intro
What’s New
FAQ
Blog

You'll become comfortable with these important Mountain Lion features:

Notifications: Learn how to view, organize, and control your notifications—so that they don't control you!
Gatekeeper: Understand the new Gatekeeper security system, and how you can bypass it when necessary.
Resume: Enjoy the Resume feature that re-opens applications and windows when you restart your Mac or relaunch a program. Or learn how to shut it off.
Auto Save: Some applications don't have Save commands in Mountain Lion! Learn how to save if you need to, and what to do if OS X saves something you don't want.
iCloud: Read what Matt thinks is interesting about iCloud, plus come to a full understanding of how to work with Documents in the Cloud in OS X—including how to handle the new Open dialog (for full details about iCloud, read Take Control of iCloud).
Window management: Get help with resizing your windows, find out about full-screen mode, and go way beyond the basics with Mission Control and desktop spaces.
Gestures: If you have a trackpad or Magic Mouse, get ready for more gestures in Mountain Lion!

You'll learn how handle these core customizations:

Menu bar: Enable (or disable) menu icons at the right side of the menu bar, and locate the elusive checkbox for making the menu bar look solid.
Finder windows: Set up the default Finder window in a smart way that suits your needs.
Dock: Take control of your Dock's appearance, location, and contents.
Launchpad: Move and remove items in Launchpad—a close cousin to the iOS Home screen—and make "folders" that contain multiple apps.
Screen: Calibrate your screen so it looks good to you, and learn how to make choppy text look smoother.
Desktop: Set which elements appear on the Desktop, and pick a custom background image.

Plus you'll find the answers to these customization-related questions:

How do I turn off notification banners and alerts, for all my applications, all at once?
Where did my scrollbars go?
How do I make the text in my Finder window sidebar larger?
How do I change the size of my mouse pointer icon?
How do I create a custom keyboard shortcut for a menu item?

Chockablock with information, the ebook also teaches you how to:

Activate the new Voice Dictation feature.
Issue the nifty keyboard shortcut for the handy Accessibility Options dialog.
Find missing or deeply buried files quickly.
Enter accented characters—or type in a different language!
Install, delete, and organize fonts.
Let your fingers do the walking by choosing menu items with the keyboard.
Type a shortcut to "spring" open a closed folder while dragging a file onto it.
Set up a new user account—and limit its powers.
Zoom with picture-in-a-picture.
Find your hidden user Library—and keep it found.
...and much more!

Book Info

207 pages
Version 1.2
Updated Apr 19, 2013
3.2 MB download
ISBN: 9781615424108
Free sample with Table of Contents, Intro, Quick Start, and section starts.

iPad & Kindle

An EPUB is available to purchasers of this title; log in to your account to download it. More info...

A Mobipocket file is available to purchasers of this title; log in to your account to download it. More info...

About the Author

Matt Neuburg is a TidBITS contributing editor and the author of several books about Apple software, including Programming iOS 4. He has been programming computers for 45 years, and has written popular Mac and iOS freeware such as MemoryStick and the TidBITS News app.

Book Reviews

Author Interviews

Read Me First
Introduction
Mountain Lion Quick Start
Know What’s New
Straighten Out Your System Preferences
Dominate the Dock
Guard the Gates
Configure the Cloud
Notice Notifications
Wash Your Windows
Handle the Hierarchy
Stop Saving
Master the Mouse, Control the Keyboard
Fix Your Fonts
Tackle Your Text
Ease Your Eyeballs
Customize Status Menus
Perform Miscellaneous Configurations
Keep Using Mountain Lion
About This Book

Read Me First

Every couple of years, Apple plunges its users into a new world with a major revision of Mac OS X. This time, it’s Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8). So, what’s new in Mountain Lion? What’s all the fuss about? This book gives you a hands-on guided tour, while pointing out the adjustments, tweaks, and customizations you can and should make in the System, the Finder, and more. It was written by Matt Neuburg, edited by Tonya Engst, and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc.

Introduction

If working with computers teaches us anything, it’s that things change. Change is exciting! So I’m sure you’re excited about the prospect of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Mountain Lion, to make a sweeping generalization, is a better 10.7 Lion. It has some completely new features, such as the Notification Center and the availability of iCloud in Open and Save dialogs, along with various small tweaks, such as the way certain System Preference panes have been reorganized. But it inherits most of its look and feel from Lion, including Lion’s eye-catching animations and its ways of drawing windows styles and interface widgets. Mountain Lion also improves certain features introduced in Lion; for example, Auto Save is much friendlier than in Lion, with new options and menu items that make it easier to use and understand.

My goal in this book, as in my previous Take Control introductions to new systems, is to make you productive. Your computer isn’t a mere interface display; it’s a tool for getting things done. Now that you’ve upgraded to Mountain Lion, that tool might feel unwieldy at first. I want to get you past that feeling as fast as possible. You don’t just want to look at Mountain Lion; you want to use it. And you certainly don’t want it to use you; you don’t want what’s new and unfamiliar to keep you from getting back to work comfortably and quickly.

That’s what this book is for. What options, settings, choices do you need to tackle, what new techniques and possibilities, what ways of thinking and working and understanding do you need to know about, in order to start using Mountain Lion comfortably and efficiently, so you can stop gaping at your computer and get back to using it? This book will show you.

Since I don’t know what system version you were using previously, and because Mountain Lion is so closely related to Lion, I emphasize in this ebook not only new Mountain Lion features but also aspects of Mountain Lion that were new in Lion. I hope that this will help all readers, of whatever background, to become familiar with Mountain Lion quickly and easily.

Mountain Lion Quick Start

This book describes many areas of 10.8 Mountain Lion worth exploring and understanding, some of which will be more immediately important to you than others. Naturally, I think that sooner or later you should read this entire book, but I also understand that you’re eager to get working with Mountain Lion and that you might want to know what’s most important to know and do right now, and come back to the rest of the book later.

If you’ve just installed Mountain Lion, immediately improve your experience:

Suspend Spotlight: To do so, use the Spotlight system preference pane. In the Privacy view, click the plus button, choose your computer name from the Open dialog’s sidebar, and click Choose. (If you have multiple volumes, do this repeatedly until all disks and volumes are listed under “Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations.”) This will stop your disk from thrashing and free up your computer’s attention. You can later (like, before going to bed) remove from the Privacy list any disks you want Spotlight to index.
Suspend automatic updates: To do so, use the Software Update system preference pane; for now, uncheck everything. You’ll turn automatic updates back on later, or you’ll click Check Now, to update manually, because you definitely want any available updates. At the very beginning, though, you don’t want downloads happening automatically in the background; you want your computer’s undivided attention.

Tip: If you have Take Control of Upgrading to Mountain Lion, follow all the instructions in “Perform Post-installation Tasks” there, too. (If you don’t have it, don’t worry.)

If you installed Mountain Lion long ago, or with the above two items taken care of, now you can:

Straighten Out Your System Preferences—you’ll be using them a lot, especially at first.
The Dock is always present (or would like to be), so set it up the way you want it: Dominate the Dock.
Make sure you can see clearly. At the very least:

If text on the screen isn’t easy on your eyes, Smooth Your Text.
If the cursor is hard for you to see, you might prefer to increase its size: Grow the Cursor.
If the menu bar is hard to see because the color of the desktop background bleeds through, Make the Menu Bar Opaque.

Decide how you want scrollbars to work. Read Survey Your Scrollbars.

Explore new features of Mountain Lion:

There’s a lot to know about that’s new in Mountain Lion! Read Know What’s New. Many changes listed in that chapter aren’t mentioned elsewhere in this book. Then follow the links there to learn about and explore new Mountain Lion features. In particular:

Some applications save automatically as you work. That’s right: you’re about to Stop Saving. Lion users, take note! The Auto Save interface in Mountain Lion is changed (for the better) from Lion.
Enjoy Mountain Lion’s new iCloud integration: read Configure the Cloud and Store Files in the Cloud.
Meet Mountain Lion’s new Notification Center; it’s time to Notice Notifications.
Be a Great Dictator! Use your voice to make words appear in a document: Talk to Type.
Find out about new tighter security: Guard the Gates.
Are you a Dashboard user? If so, be aware of its Mountain Lion makeover: Dominate Dashboard.
Mountain Lion adds new AirPlay options for streaming audio and video from your Mac. Read Activate AirPlay to learn more.

Review—or learn for the first time—features that were new in 10.7 Lion:

Start with Lion windows, which have some new behaviors:

Resizing windows works in a new way, and so does customizing a window’s toolbar. Read Resize Efficiently, Lose the Lozenge.
Prepare to have windows reappear when you launch an application or restart the computer: Get Ready for Resume.
What’s that double-arrow at the top right of the window? It’s so you can Make Full-Screen Windows.

Now you’re ready to Meet Mission Control and Manage Spaces. (Lion users, there’s a new Mission Control configuration checkbox in Mountain Lion that might make your life easier, so don’t miss it.) As time permits, read the rest of Wash Your Windows.
Curious about Launchpad? Time to Adopt a Launcher.
Get acquainted, or reacquainted, with the Finder, Spotlight, and Open and Save dialogs, all of which are chock full of new tweaks and behaviors: read Handle the Hierarchy.
If you have a Magic Mouse, a Magic Trackpad, or a modern Mac laptop, Mountain Lion is a gesture-based world; get acquainted with those gestures by reading Trick Out Your Mouse or Trackpad.

Do these things as needed and when time permits:

Tweak keyboard shortcuts and keyboard behavior to match your needs and habits; read the rest of Master the Mouse, Control the Keyboard.
If colors seem washed out or unsatisfactory, Calibrate Your Screen. For more seeing tricks, survey the rest of Ease Your Eyeballs.
Simplify your font access and make your Mac run leaner and meaner; read Fix Your Fonts.
Meet the spelling correction interface and discover a new way to enter accented characters: Tackle Your Text.
Make effective use of the icons at the right end of your menu bar; read Customize Status Menus.
Make various additional small customizations; read Explore Miscellaneous Features.
Be ready to continue exploring customizations; read Keep Using Mountain Lion.

What's New in Version 1.2

Several changes near the beginning of the Start Saving chapter have corrected information (because the existing explanation was incomplete) or expanded advice (because Apple made an important change in Mountain Lion 10.8.2). In particular, read the sidebar Is Quitting the Same as Closing? and the emphasized text “What happens to the original document?”.

Other modifications that might interest you are these:

Directions for another way to toggle whether notification alerts and banners appear: Option-click the Notification Center icon at the far right of the menu bar. (See Set Up Notifications, just above the figure.)
Adjustments in the last few paragraphs of Get Ready for Resume, including new emphasized text with advice about unsticking an application that won’t launch because of a conflict between what it wants to do and what Resume wants it to do.
More detailed information about how to dictate: in particular, I’ve added a link to Apple’s recently released list of dictation commands (look near the end of Talk to Type).
A technique for permanently displaying the Save As command on the File menu of a modern document model application (see the last set of steps in Consider Application Shortcuts).
Because DejaMenu is no longer readily available, the sidebar An Alternative Solution now recommends MenuPop. MenuPop can “pop” up the commands on the menu bar at the pointer’s location, so it’s especially helpful if you have a big monitor—or more than one monitor.
A pointer to Display Menu, a free utility that returns the function of the traditional Displays status menu to Mountain Lion (read the last paragraph in Mirror Video).

What’s New in This Edition

Take Control of Using Mountain Lion is the sixth edition of an ebook I originally wrote in 2003, then called Take Control of Customizing Panther. Fast-forward to 2012, and although Take Control of Using Mountain Lion still covers customization, it also looks more fully at understanding and using this newest iteration of Mac OS X.

If you’ve been reading this ebook through its previous incarnations, or feel that you already know a great deal about previous Big Cat versions of Mac OS X, take note of the important Know What’s New chapter, a few pages ahead; it summarizes new goodies, methods of working, and other changes in 10.8 Mountain Lion, and helps you locate the related new info in this book.

You might be familiar with Lion, in which case Mountain Lion will appear to you as a readily usable minor update, or you might be a Leopard or Snow Leopard user making the big jump past Lion to Mountain Lion, which means you need to know what’s new in both Lion and Mountain Lion. For this reason, I’ve structured this ebook similarly to the previous edition, Take Control of Using Lion, and I’ve called out features that are new either in Lion or in Mountain Lion.

Note: You won’t get the full Lion experience unless you use finger gestures with a trackpad or a similar modern mousing device. Although this ebook will work nicely for you no matter what your input device, I wholeheartedly describe finger gestures for trackpads (and Apple’s Magic Mouse) throughout.

Like previous editions of this ebook, this one is sold with a companion ebook with the word Upgrading in its title, intended to be read before this one. You certainly don’t need Take Control of Upgrading to Mountain Lion to use this book, and if you’ve already been using Mountain Lion for a while you likely don’t need it at all. However, many people do buy these two books together.

Visit our catalog to see all the other books we publish!

Teach classes? Check out our discounted class copy pricing!