Tabla de contenidos para Volume 1 2017 en MacLife Specials

REQUIRES macOS Sierra YOU WILL LEARN How to get started on a new Mac IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes ABOUT APPLE ID An Apple ID is not mandatory, but many of Apple’s services depend on it, particularly iCloud, which synchronizes data between your Mac and iOS devices. Find out more on page 40. When you first switch on a new Mac, there are a few steps to go through before you can get going. For starters, you’ll need to personalize your Mac, and optionally connect it to the internet and Apple’s iCloud service. The Setup Assistant guides you through these important steps in just a few minutes. You’ll need to confirm the language you want to use and verify your keyboard layout. The latter of these steps is especially important…

Whether you’re new to the Mac or have upgraded to Sierra from a much older version of OS X (now macOS), the new desktop might look different from what you’re used to. Don’t worry, though: the basics are much the same as before (and much like Windows Explorer, if you’re coming to the Mac from a PC). Here’s an overview of Finder – the app you’re actually using when you view the desktop, open and manage windows, navigate around your hard drive and organize your files and folders. A Apple menu Click the Apple logo at the top-left and you’ll find lots of useful stuff for managing your Mac. Software Update is vital for keeping software up to date, and App Store is for finding new apps. As well as options…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra YOU WILL LEARN To manage login items IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes Login items automatically open when you log into your account – perfect for apps and add-ons you want to be “on” all the time. If Dropbox, for example, is set as a login item, it’s always there, ready to go. Twitter and Stickies are similarly well suited to launching at login, as are various server apps that enable you to play media stored on your Mac from other devices. You can even launch an app as a hidden item. But for all its strengths, it’s possible to be too enthusiastic about Sierra’s Login Items feature. If you set too many apps (or files and folders) to open, your Mac will become slow to start up,…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra, internet connection, Apple ID, one or more thirdparty widgets YOU WILL LEARN How to keep on top of notifications and widgets in the Today view IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes One of the most notable things about macOS is how it not only works closely with iOS, but has also adopted some of the best bits from the iPhone and iPad over time too. The big revamp to Notification Center in iOS 8, for example, proved very popular on iOS devices, enabling users to use the Today view to see regularly accessed information, and add widgets to customize the experience. The Today view made its way into OS X in 10.10 Yosemite in 2014, providing at-a-glance views of calendar events, reminders, weather forecasts, stock prices, and more.…

It’s important that you can access all the files you’ve been working on, regardless of the device you have to hand. There are many cloud-based services that enable you to save files online so you can access them anywhere, either by keeping your devices in sync automatically, or by enabling access to their storage through a web browser. The iCloud Drive feature that’s part of your iCloud account provides both of these methods, but it also goes a step further… Many of us save files to the Desktop or Documents folders, sometimes intentionally but often habitually, but these folders aren’t typically synced by services such as Dropbox. That’s also true of iCloud Drive by default; when you first set up your Mac (or upgraded it to macOS Sierra), you’ll have…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra; an iCloud account YOU WILL LEARN Useful tricks to make browsing the web easier IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes Safari does everything you’d expect of a web browser, but it’s also tightly integrated with Apple’s iCloud service and your Mac’s trackpad or Magic Mouse for gesture control. It doesn’t matter that your Mac doesn’t have a touchscreen – you can simply swipe horizontally with two fingers on a trackpad (or one finger on a Magic Mouse) to move between pages you’ve visited. Once you’ve signed into social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, Safari’s Share button makes it quick and easy to post a link to a web page so that your friends can also view it. The browser’s integration with iCloud enables you to pick up…

Are you one of those people who like to organize their life around to-do lists? If so, you’ll be pleased to hear that macOS Sierra’s Reminders app is here to help. Just as on the iPhone and iPad, Reminders makes it easy to create to-dos and sync them with all of your devices using iCloud – with any changes made on one device appearing on all of the others. And now Siri has come to macOS, making reminders and to-do lists is even easier – Siri can create them for you! You get a default Reminders list to start things off, but it’s easy to add new ones. You can also rename a list by rightclicking on its name, choosing Rename from the pop-up menu, typing a new name and…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra, iTunes 12, an Apple ID, optionally a CD drive you will learn How to use the latest features of iTunes IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes When it comes to organizing your music, movies, TV shows, and other media, iTunes provides an easy way to build up your collection, and powerful features to help decide what music you hear. You can manually build playlists, but iTunes also enables you to specify a few criteria – say, tracks from the ’90s that you’ve rated four or five stars, or that you have “loved” using the new heart button – and it’ll pick out matching tracks in an instant, even from a library that contains thousands of items. You can buy media from the iTunes Store from within iTunes. You…

REQUIRES An iCloud account, Apple devices that meet certain hardware and operating system requirements you will learn The features that make your iOS and Mac devices into one experiences IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes universal clipboard This is the simplest of the features to set up. With your devices signed in to the same iCloud account, check that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are enabled on each device, then copy on one and paste on the other. Continuity is a group of six features that are available in the latest versions of iOS and macOS that make your devices work together in specific ways. Handoff is the ability to move a task, such as composing a message, working on a spreadsheet or reading a web page from one of your devices to…

Thanks to macOS Sierra, losing work should largely become a thing of the past. Barring catastrophic drive failure, you need no longer worry about things going wrong. And it’s all thanks to Auto Save and Versions. Provided you’re using an app that supports these two features, Sierra automatically saves your work, enabling you either to jump back to an older version of a file, or to recover part of it. The first thing to know is that not all your apps will work with Auto Save and Versions, although many now do, particularly Apple’s own apps such as Numbers, Pages, Keynote, and Preview. Crucially, you have to save your file once, manually, before Auto Save and Versions can kick in. So if you start writing a letter, save it straight…

The new version of the Mac’s operating system makes your computer better than it’s ever been. Whether you’re new to the Mac or upgrading from the older OS X software, there’s much to love in Sierra. Most notable is Siri, which enables you to talk to your Mac to see things like a list of files you worked on recently, the weather forecast, or to have it play specific music without you having to search iTunes. All the things you can do with Siri add up to make your Mac more enjoyable to use. The new macOS also makes better use of Apple’s iCloud Drive, so if you also own iOS devices or another Mac, you can share your desktop and documents among them, so that you never find yourself…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra, Time Machine backup on disk YOU WILL LEARN How to migrate to macOS Sierra IT WILL TAKE 1 hour You can upgrade to macOS Sierra on Macs from as far back as late 2009 (check apple. co/2kqfqQs). You’ll need to be running at least OS X 10.7.5 (Lion). You’ll also need an Apple ID to download the upgrade from the Mac App Store. In theory, all your settings and data will be preserved when you migrate. However, ensure you have an up-to-date Time Machine backup on an external drive or removable disk before you start (see page 92). If your Mac is set up to make regular backups, check when the last successful one ran. Click the Time Machine status icon in the menu bar and choose…

WRITE A CD/DVD Although today’s Macs don’t have optical drives, you can still burn discs using macOS. With a CD/ DVD writer attached to your Mac, choose File > New Burn Folder and drag items into it. Open it and choose View > Show Status Bar to monitor the required disc capacity. Click Burn (top right) to write the folder’s contents to a disc. Finder is an essential tool for every Mac owner. No matter what other bells and whistles macOS has gained over the years, Apple continues to describe Finder as “The Macintosh Desktop Experience” – it’s central to how you browse your Mac’s storage and organize your files using folders, tags and other attributes. And Finder hasn’t changed in its basic operation since the first release of OS…

Launchpad puts every app installed on your Mac at your fingertips, presenting you with icons that you click to open an app, and can rearrange as you please. There are several ways to get into Launchpad. The first is to click its icon (silver circle with a rocket) in your Mac’s Dock. If you’ve got a trackpad, place your thumb and first three fingers slightly apart on the trackpad’s surface, then pinch them together to make Launchpad appear. When done, just make the gesture in the opposite direction to make Launchpad vanish. Launchpad can cover several screens, arranged horizontally. To move between them, swipe two fingers sideways on a trackpad, swipe one finger on a Magic Mouse, click and drag the screen horizontally with other mice, or tap the left…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra, an internet connection YOU WILL LEARN How to control your Mac with voice commands IT WILL TA KE 15 minutes You may be familiar with Siri if you own an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. You can ask the personal assistant to look up information, create a new reminder or calendar event, send a message, and much more using just your voice. Siri makes it easy to get many common tasks done without having to move the pointer around the screen, click things, or type details into a window. There are several ways to initiate a conversation with Siri. Even if you aren’t much of a fan of keyboard shortcuts, we strongly recommend you try to memorize Siri’s. If your hands spend a lot of time on…

Do you use an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch in addition to your Mac? Assuming it runs iOS 5 or later, you can make use of a free Apple service called iCloud. To put it simply, iCloud enables you to sync your music, photos, contacts, and various other kinds of data – including your documents – wirelessly and automatically to the “cloud.” This means that they’re stored on Apple’s servers and are available on any compatible devices – your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC – wherever you might be and whenever you need them (as long as you can get online, and open a web browser). Even if you have just the one Mac and no iOS devices (we know, we know, it’s very unlikely!) it’s worth linking…

Mail is the standard app you use for getting your email on a Mac. It’s been around since the start of OS X (now macOS) but has been through many changes. In an age where webmail is king, it might seem old fashioned to use a dedicated email program instead of your browser to get your mail, but Apple’s app has several advantages, which we’ll outline here. At first glance Mail hasn’t changed much in macOS Sierra, compared to the previous Yosemite and El Capitan versions, but you now have the ability to selectively sift through your emails using Filters, just as you can in iOS 10. Mail also benefits from the Optimized Storage feature in Sierra, to free up space on your Mac when it’s needed. As with previous…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra, some photos to play with YOU WILL LEARN How to make use of the new Memories and improved image analysis features to view your photos IT WILL TAKE Give yourself at least 30 minutes Photos is a powerful yet easy to use image editing and management app that – with the launch of macOS Sierra and iOS 10 – has been gifted with an even greater range of useful features, including the new Memories feature. If you’ve used the Photos app on iOS, the Mac version will seem familiar. It provides the same ways to explore your photo library, the same methods for organizing photos into curated albums and sharing them with people. Over the next six pages you’ll be able to discover how Photos for macOS…

REQUIRES An iPhone with a Touch ID sensor, a Mac with Sierra or an iOS 10 device you will learn How to set up and use Apple Pay IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes If you’ve used a bank card that features contactless payment, you‘ll already be aware of how quickly it enables you to pay for small transactions. Apple Pay makes the process even better by eliminating the need to grab your bank card. Instead, you only have to reach out with the wrist on which you’re wearing your Apple Watch or do the same with your iPhone, either of which is likely to be faster than reaching for your wallet. Now, with the release of macOS Sierra and iOS 10, payments made online and for goods sold through apps…

Recovery is a built-in set of tools, hidden until you start up your Mac while holding down ç+R, that you’ll depend upon in a rare emergency – typically when some drastic glitch prevents macOS Sierra loading. Recovery looks like macOS proper, but its capabilities are limited to essential maintenance tools that will help you get up and running after a critical problem. Apple has made restoring a Mac from a Time Machine backup almost as easy as turning on that feature in the first place. In fact, it’s even possible to download and reinstall the whole operating system from here. If you’re daunted by the prospect of fixing something you don’t understand, then there’s one feature of Recovery that you’ll find invaluable: its web browser. With it, you can search…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra, a Windows PC connected to the same network YOU WILL LEARN How to move important data from Windows to Mac IT WILL TAKE 2 to 4 hours USB MOVES Consider moving big files like photos and videos using an external USB drive, which is usually much quicker than doing so over a network connection. If migrating from a Windows PC to a Mac, it’s important to make sure settings and data move from one to the other as smoothly as possible, and the Migration Assistant is designed to help with this. It’s not just a matter of picking up documents and files from one computer and dropping them onto the other. There are numerous types of data, many of which need to be converted or imported into…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra (some features work in older versions) YOU WILL LEARN How to make the most of Mission Control IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes Mission Control has been a feature of the OS X operating system (now macOS) since 2011, when it appeared as part of the release of OS X 10.7 Lion, but its roots go back to Exposé, which made its debut back in 2003 with OS X 10.3 Panther. As the name implies, Mission Control is envisaged as the control center from which you run your Mac. In reality, you could use your Mac for years without ever activating it, but it’s very useful when you need to find that one crucial app you’ve lost behind a dozen open folders, or you simply need to get…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra YOU WILL LEARN How to keep notified IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes Notification center pop-ups appear on your screen to tell you about a new email, an event in Calendar, a new iMessage, or a note you’ve left for yourself using Reminders (page 54). Notifications also appear in the Notification Center sidebar – click the right-most icon in the menu bar. You can also place two fingers on the right-hand edge of your Mac’s trackpad and swipe left onto the trackpad to slide it into view. You control notifications mainly in System Preferences. Many apps also provide extra control over their notifications in their Preferences window – simply open the app in question and press ç+,. How to Customize your Notifications 1 Get started We’ll show you…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra, a web connection, some documents for Spotlight to search YOU WILL LEARN How to find things easily using Spotlight IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes Spotlight has long made it easier to find content on your Mac, and, more recently, online. You can search for local documents, perform quick conversions and sums, and locate nearby stores and restaurants. You can also get the weather forecast for anywhere in the world, find out the latest sports scores and check transit information for locations covered by Apple Maps. Spotlight also has some naturallanguage smarts. The idea is you type a search query as a phrase – “email from Paul in April,” or “spreadsheet I worked on last week,” for example, and get relevant results. It’s worth noting Spotlight is navigable…

Whether you’re running a business, have a hectic home life, or just need to know what you’re doing, when and where, Calendar can help. The app, built right into macOS and iOS, makes it easy to plan your schedule and make sure you get to where you need to with plenty of time to spare. You can create multiple calendars and assign each a different color to help distinguish your commitments for the day, week, or month ahead. Create additional calendars by choosing File > New Calendar – you can store calendars in iCloud for access on all your devices, or keep them locally on your Mac. You can assign colors by right-clicking a calendar in the sidebar and choosing Get Info. Calendars can also be selectively hidden to show…

REQUIRES Details of people you want to use as the basis of your info graphics or a GEDCOM file; Numbers for Mac; Infogram, Piktogram or another infographic tool YOU WILL LEARN How to turn a family tree into fun data visualizations IT WILL TAKE A couple of hours (excluding any family tree research) Researching your family tree can be fascinating, but you still might end up with just a database and a few notes. showing who’s related to whom can make for a dry read. The information you compile, whether you’re using an offline app or an online family tree builder, creates a data set you can export and use to create charts and infographics. Numbers is Apple’s spreadsheet program, and we’ll show you how you can add data into…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra YOU WILL LEARN How to view Memories, and find photos with new searching options IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes Photograp hy is such a popular activity it’s no wonder that some of Sierra’s biggest changes can be found in the Photos app. One of the most prominent new features is Memories, which live in an eponymous tab in the app’s toolbar. Over time, the app picks out collections of pictures it thinks you might want to see again, typically comprised of pictures taken on or around the same date, or around a particular location. You can scroll through this automatically generated timeline to look back at all the memories the app has picked out for you. However, that’ll only get more unwieldy as the timeline gets longer,…

The System references window is your Mac’s nerve center: if you want to tweak how something works in macOS Sierra, this is where you’ll usually do so. You’ll find System Preferences in the ??menu. It’s laid out in rows of easily identifiable icons with a brief name description given underneath. Clicking each icon opens what’s known as a pane with the available settings within. When viewing a pane, clicking the button with a grid of dots at the top will take you back to the main window, or you can use the back and forward buttons at top left, similar to those in Safari. Here, we’ll show you the essential options that every new Mac owner needs to check out, such as security and internet accounts, and others that will…

Time Machine is the Mac’s built-in backup system. All you need to provide to make it work is an external drive. Once set up, Time Machine makes hourly backups to the second drive of any changed files on your Mac. This gives you an easy way to get back damaged or deleted files. Time Machine also allows you to roll back your Mac’s operating system to an earlier version if an update causes problems. It can also be used by the Migration Assistant to move user accounts, files, and settings to a new Mac. If you want to use an external drive, it needs to be Mac-formatted. Connect the drive to your Mac, and macOS Sierra will ask whether you want to set it up to use it with Time…

Your Mac should give you years of trouble-free service, but sometimes things can and do go wrong: apps may crash, preferences may get corrupted and very, very rarely your Mac may exhibit more serious problems – such as refusing to boot up correctly. But there’s no need to panic just yet! Outlined in the tips below are fixes for some of the most common issues you’re likely to face. For more help, go to support.apple.com/macos. 1 Make an emergency startup disk Preempt the possibility that your Mac’s startup disk may become damaged by turning a spare drive you don’t mind wiping into an emergency startup disk. An 8GB or larger thumb drive, ideally USB 3, will do nicely. Follow the instructions at support.apple.com/ HT201372 to create a macOS install disk,…