McFedries - MacBook Air: portable genius

MacBook Air Portable Genius, 3rd Edition

by Paul McFedries

MacBook Air Portable Genius, 3rd Edition

Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
10475 Crosspoint Blvd.
Indianapolis, IN 46256
www.wiley.com

Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-18618-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization of Web site may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at (877) 762-2974, outside the U.S. at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Not all content that is available in standard print versions of this book may appear or be packaged in all book formats. If you have purchased a version of this book that did not include media that are referenced by or accompany standard print version, you may request this media by visiting http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit us www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011940393

Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley and Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries, and may not be used without written permission. MacBook Air is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. MacBook Air Portable Genius, 3rd Edition is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple, Inc.

About the Author

Paul McFedries is a technical writer who has been authoring computer books since 1991 and has more than 70 books to his credit. Pauls books have sold more than four million copies worldwide. These books include the Wiley titles Teach Yourself VISUALLY Mac OS X Lion, Switching to a Mac Second Edition, iPad 2 Portable Genius, iPhone 4 Portable Genius, and The Facebook Guide for People Over 50. Paul is also the proprietor of Word Spy (www.wordspy.com), a website that tracks new words and phrases as they enter the language. You can visit Paul on the web at www.mcfedries.com or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/paulmcf and www.twitter.com/wordspy.

Credits

Senior Acquisitions Editor

Stephanie McComb

Project Editor

Chris Wolfgang

Technical Editor

Paul Sihvonen-Binder

Senior Copy Editor

Kim Heusel

Editorial Director

Robyn Siesky

Business Manager

Amy Knies

Senior Marketing Manager

Sandy Smith

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher

Barry Pruett

Project Coordinator

Sheree Montgomery

Graphics and Production Specialists

Noah Hart
Andrea Hornberger

Quality Control Technician

Melissa Cossell

Proofreading and Indexing

Debbye Butler
BIM Indexing & Proofreading Services

Dedication

For Karen.

Acknowledgments

When guests to our house would learn that I was writing a book about MacBook Air, their eyes would invariably light up. Ah, Id think, theyre impressed that Im writing a book! Alas, no: Ooh, theyd say, Can I see it?

They meant, of course, MacBook Air, and so Id trot it out so everyone could coo over it, and my wifes carefully planned dinner party would devolve into a geekfest for awhile. That was just one of the perks of writing this book.

Another was working with the amazing folks at Wiley, all of whom are preternaturally nice. They include Acquisitions Editor Stephanie McComb and Executive Acquisitions Editor Jody Lefevere, who asked me to write the original version of this book the same day that MacBook Air was announced, and of course I accepted about 5 seconds later; Project Editor Chris Wolfgang, whose edits, suggestions, and questions showed not only her smarts and utter common sense, but also her knowledge of what a book needs to make it better; Copy Editor Kim Heusel, who went beyond merely crossing my ts and dotting my is by using her keen eye to tighten my prose and make me look good in print; and Technical Editor Paul Sihvonen-Binder, a deep source of knowledge regarding all things Mac, who made generous use of that knowledge and his valuable time to supply this book with a layer of wisdom beyond what its author possesses.

Finally, many thanks to the wonderful Karen Hammond, who took the marvelous photographs that are sprinkled throughout this book. My heartfelt and deep thanks to all of you for your tremendous work on this project.

Introduction

Back in 2008, I bought one of the original MacBook Airs, and it quickly became my go-to Mac notebook. It was light as a feather and impossibly thin. The screen was gorgeous, the Multi-Touch trackpad was a lot of fun, and even the keyboard wasnt bad at all. No wonder my trusty MacBook Pro started gathering dust!

So, in mid-2011, when Apple came out with its latest version of the MacBook Air that had a backlit keyboard (yes!), a full-featured Multi-Touch trackpad, faster memory, the option to add more memory (up to 4GB!), a faster processor, longer battery life, Thunderbolt support, and it was both lighter and (gasp!) thinner, well, can you say no-brainer?