Galen Gruman - OS X Mountain Lion Bible

OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Galen Gruman

OS X Mountain Lion Bible

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

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

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-40143-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Dedication

To my friend Ken, one of the nicest, most enthusiastic, and most helpful guys there is.

And a toast to the late Steve Jobs and everyone at Apple past and present who has made OS X the wonderful example of how technology that actual people use should work.

Galen Gruman

About the Author

Galen Gruman is the principal at The Zango Group, an editorial development and book production firm. As such, he has produced books for Wiley. He also is author or coauthor of 28 books on desktop publishing, as well as author of the Mac OS X Lion Bible , iBooks Author For Dummies , and Exploring iPad For Dummies . Gruman has covered Macintosh technology for several publications, including the technology website InfoWorld.com, for which he began writing in 1986 and of which he is now executive editor, and Macworld, whose staff he was a member of from 1991 to 1998.

Credits

Acquisitions Editor

Aaron Black

Project Editor

Martin V. Minner

Technical Editor

Paul Sihvonen-Binder

Copy Editor

Gwenette Gaddis

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

Katie Crocker

Graphics and Production Specialists

Carrie Cesavice Jennifer Creasey Jennifer Mayberry

Quality Control Technician

Melissa Cossell

Proofreading and Indexing

John Greenough BIM Indexing & Proofreading Services

Introduction

For those who've used the Mac since the mid-1980s as I have, it's hard to believe that it's been more than 11 years since the first desktop version of OS X (10.0 Cheetah) was released, in March 2001, at a period when Apple's very survival seemed uncertain after years of chaotic management. Returned CEO Steve Jobs changed that chaos into focus and innovation, and a steady stream of improved OS X big cats have followed: Mac OS X 10.1 Puma in September 2001, Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in August 2002, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther in October 2003, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in April 2005, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in October 2007, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in August 2009, and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in July 2011.

After just a year's rein, the king of the jungle cedes the Mac crown to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, a refinement to OS X Lionand the first version of OS X to formally drop the Mac part of the name, though Apple often informally dropped it in OS X Lion.

OS X Mountain Lion moves OS X (pronounced Oh Ess Ten, by the way) further in the direction set by Lionthe post-PC world in which smartphones, tablets, and computers coexist and in fact form a constellation of devices used by the same person. It's a vision that the late Steve Jobs had for years, and he lived to see really take root with the success of the iPhone and iPad, and the launch of the iCloud service just before he died that ties so much of it together.

OS X Mountain Lion deepens the use of iCloud, bringing the online syncing service into the world of cloud storage, so applications can open and store files directly on iCloud. And Safari can even show you the web pages you were using on your other Mac or iOS device, so you can pick up where you left off as you move from one device to another, whether at home, at the office, or between the two.

But OS X Mountain Lion also adopts another form of collaboration that Apple has pushed aggressively in the iOS operating system used in the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch: share sheets that make it easy to share URLs, files, and more over Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, AirDrop, and other services. In the same sharing vein, the new Messages application takes the old iChat software and adds a free SMS-like service to connect OS X and iOS users.

And, because Apple is Apple, you'll see dozens of subtle improvements in OS X Mountain Lion that make it easier, more capable, and just better. That also means dropping technologies that have fallen into disuse, such as the RSS capabilities in Mail and Safari. Like a good gardener, Apple knows that you have to prune, not just plant. (Appendix B describes all the changes.)