Heather Morris - The Healthy Mac: Preventive Care, Practical Diagnostics, and Proven Remedies

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ISBN: 978-0-07-179835-8

MHID: 0-07-179835-8

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About the Authors

Heather Morris is a technical writer and editor with more than eight years experience in publishing. She is the author of easy-to-use technology guides, including Researching Your Family History Online, Scanning and Editing Your Old Photographs, Starting Up an Online Business, and Pinterest Kickstart. A lifelong Apple enthusiast, she currently lives in a technology-infused household in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and a half dozen or more iOS devices and computers.

Joli Ballew is a technical writer, college professor, operating system expert, and gadget enthusiast. Shes written over 50 books on topics ranging from operating systems to smartphones to tablets to photo editing programs. Some of her books include How to Do Everything: iPad, Third Edition; Operating Systems Demystified; How to Do Everything: Netbooks; and Kindle Fire QuickSteps, all with McGraw-Hill.

About the Technical Editor

Guy Hart-Davis is the author of more than 80 computer books, including The Healthy PC, iPad Geekery, iPhone 4S Geekery, Kindle Fire Geekery, and iMac Portable Genius, Fourth Edition.

Contents

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the following people for their help creating this book:

Roger Stewart, Ryan Willard, and Janet Walden at McGraw-Hill for their ongoing support through each stage of writing and production.

Guy Hart-Davis for his helpful feedback and encouragement.

Margaret Berson for carefully reviewing the manuscript.

Harleen Chopra at Cenveo for coordinating the production of the book.

Susie Elkind for proofreading the pages.

Jack Lewis for creating the index.

And the authors also thank their agent, Neil Salkind, Ph.D., of the Salkind Literary Agency.

Introduction

Macs have a reputation as being easy to use and reliable, but even the newest models can succumb to data loss, buggy applications, malware, networking issues, and more. This book shows you, step by step, how to maintain and protect your data, make the most of essential applications and features, keep your computer safe, protect yourself online and over a network, and improve your Macs performance.

This book is for anyone who wants to keep their Mac running at peak condition by learning how to maintain data, optimize applications, and enable security settings, as well as troubleshoot problems when they arise.

We use Mountain Lion OS X throughout the book, but the advice can apply to any version of OS X, with a few tweaks. Differences between Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard and Lion are noted throughout.

You can work through each chapter in order or skip ahead to a chapter to help you solve a particular problem straight away.

How Is This Book Organized?

In of this book, youll learn how to improve your Macs performance and optimize the data on your computer.

helps you identify problems and review the technical specifications of your Mac. With those details in hand, you learn how to perform essential fixes including adding RAM, addressing disk space issues, and upgrading to the most recent OS X.