Learn the Mac In Under An Hour (See Notes for Updated Class)

[Music] hello everyone my name is david a cox and today i'm gonna teach all of you how to master the mac in one hour i'm the founder and CEO of a service called pcclassesonline.com you may have heard of us because we were recently on the television show shark tank which aired on ABC back in November of 2012 now since that show aired we've had a lot of changes including we picked up a lot of contracts which allowed us to do something that no one would ever think that we would do which is we have now recently made our entire service free to the general public so for an absolutely zero dollars any of you out there can learn how to use their your Mac PC iPhone or iPad right from the comfort of your own home we teach live classes every weekend Saturday and Sunday at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time now if that time doesn't work for you it's not a problem because we record our classes and upload them to our video library so I encourage you to check out our website for free you can sign up at PC classes online.com so that being said let's get started and in the next hour I'm gonna teach you how to master your Mac so a lot of you probably who are taking this class right now may have been on a PC and maybe are thinking about switching to a Mac so that's how I'm gonna approach a lot of this class is going after how you are used to using something and teaching you the new way for how to do it now let's start off with finder the guts of the computer is called finder and it's this little let me make these icons a little bit bigger it's this little happy Mac symbol that you see here down at the very bottom left-hand corner of my screen do not be thrown off by the fact that it says finder at the top left of my screen okay this happy mac icon is finder and finder is where all of your stuff is so anytime you're looking for where did I put that document where did that photo go that I downloaded through an email everything is located in finder so through here you can see for example applications okay so this would be every program that's in my computer you'll see a lot that I have here that probably a lot of you do not okay but you'll see a few that are familiar to everything that's on your desktop in my case I keep my desktop clean so there's nothing listed there documents okay so if you write up a lot of documents this is the easy place to store them another big one is downloads any time you download anything from the web or from your email this is the default location for where you will find it now I'm also going to be throwing in a lot of quick tips today during this class so one of the things I wanted to show you was if you're on your computer right now and you say David I don't have a shortcut here for downloads how do i how do I get this well here's how you do it you're gonna actually click up here at the top left of your screen where it says finder and go under preferences one of the things with the Mac is that every program has its own preferences and this is the same location for where it is for everything now you'll see here that at the top I have these four icons here and I'm gonna record I'm gonna make a recommendation to all of you that you emulate a lot of these settings just to make it a little easier for you so you can see here I've chosen not to show the hard drive on the desktop some of you if I check it will see that you may have something called Macintosh HD you don't really need that on your desktop because what actually is Macintosh hard drive its Finder so I choose to uncheck that you can choose to check or not check external disc CDs DVDs and iPods or connected servers if you want for most people you don't need them a new Finder window okay I always like to have show desktop if you are brand new to the Mac today's date by the way so that we're clear on when this is being recorded as July 21st 2013 the operating system that I am on right now is called mountain lion so one of the changes that happen is that when you first install mountain lion it goes to this feature called all my files and when you open a Finder window it shows you all of your documents photos and movies now for a lot of people out there you may have something on your computer that maybe you don't want to pop open every time you open a Finder window and that is the reason why I recommend changing it so that when you open a new Finder window it either opens this icon right here which looks like a house that is called the home folder or your desktop or for some people documents personally I just don't like it showing all of my files all at once okay now the other one here is the one that I was just referring to which is the sidebar the sidebar is this area right here so a lot of you if you have just recently purchased a Mac may find that all my files an airdrop are checked a lot of people do not use these features so I recommend turning them off you can see here I do have checked applications desktop documents and downloads for some of you the home folder may be useful in case you're wondering what is that home folder the home folder is actually where all of those other files are contained so the home folder contains your documents your photos all that jazz your music I don't ever really put checkboxes here for movies music and pictures only because for me all of my movies are typically stored in downloads all of my music is in the program iTunes and my pictures are all in the program known as iPhoto now if you decide to check out our service which again is pcclassesonline.com you'll see that we offer classes on all of these different topics I couldn't teach you now because we'd be here forever there's a few other options here actually for most people I don't recommend these ok this is my dummy computer so I got to turn those off these here you can choose to have on or off it's totally up to you I would for the most part recommend external disks hard drive okay and maybe CDs DVDs and iPods okay let's see here I've got my little notes here oh the next thing I want to talk about is if you're used to a Windows computer one of the things that you have is at the top right corner of pretty much everything you usually would have a annex a box and a minus symbol and that would be the equivalent of clothes maximize and minimize I want to show you how to do it on a Mac on a Mac we have these three dots right here but don't be fooled we're actually only gonna use two of them the little red dot here when you click on it will close whatever window you're on okay the yellow dot will minimize it so what will happen is it will genie down into the dock here this part here at the very bottom of the screen is known as the dock we're gonna get there in a little bit and over here on the very right hand side is my window which I just minimized now a lot of you may be thinking that the green dot is maximized not really no one I know actually uses the green dot what it actually does is it goes between two different sizes now if you want to resize any of these windows what you can actually do is put your cursor either on the border or a little bit easier on the corner and you can click and drag and make the window whatever size you want it to be and it'll stay that way okay now to maximize I want to show you this real quickly and I'm gonna actually open Safari here as an example one of the new features in Lion I believe it was is the ability to run every single application in full-screen mode this has caused a little bit of confusion for people who didn't know about that feature and then upgraded so I want to go over it right now you'll notice that at the top right corner of Safari I have these two grey arrows and when I click on them you'll see that Safari takes up the entire screen so part of the idea with this is my computer that you're seeing right now is a 13-inch MacBook Air it used to be that people who wanted a lot of you know wanted windows to take up a lot of space would have a 15-inch screen the idea though is that even if you're running a basic web browser stretched out on a 15-inch screen it's actually bigger on a 13-inch screen running in full-screen mode hopefully you followed me on that one so the idea is you can have it take up the whole computer so that you're doing nothing but being on the web now one of the important things I want to go over is how to get out of full screen mode and there are technically two ways to do it although the two ways don't work with every single program but for the most part they do the first is you can hit the Escape key which is the key on your keyboard at the very top left that says e s C so that would be one way to get out of full screen mode the second way is to just simply put your cursor at the very top of your screen I'm running a dual monitor display so it's actually a little bit hard for me to do that here let's try it over here and you'll see that at the very top right corner we have two blue arrows that are pointing towards the center if I click on that it shrinks back down to the normal size and that's how you enter an exit full-screen mode next I want to talk to you about the dock which is this as I said earlier this bar here at the very bottom of your screen the dock contains icons that represent the programs that you use the most and you can customize it you can put whatever you want on there so let's say for example that I don't want photobooth here to be on the dock now one of the things that's gonna be a little tricky today is some of you who are taking this are going to be on a desktop and some of you are gonna be on a laptop so if you're on a PC you're probably familiar with the fact that you have a left-click and a right-click on a Mac it's referred to as a secondary click for most of you on laptops if you put two fingers on your track and click that is how you create a secondary click that's how you initiate the command so when I do that I get a series of additional options and under options you'll see here I can remove it from the dock now for those of you who are on a desktop the other way that you can do this is you can hold the control key on your keyboard and it will do the same thing holding ctrl and clicking is the same thing as secondary clicking by clicking with two thinkers on a trackpad ok now if you want to add an application one of the basic concepts with Apple is that everything is drag-and-drop so if I have something in one location and I want it to be in a different location I should be able to very simply drag it and drop it there very very simple so remember all of your stuff lives in finder so if I remove photobooth and down the road I change my mind and I think you know what I really want that back here's how you do it you'd go back into finder it's an application so we would click on applications scroll down to where it lives it's an alphabetical order and now I can just simply click drag and drop it and you see here and I'm right now I'm holding my cursor down so that you can see this you'll notice that as I approach the dock these icons part so they're making room for it and when I let go it stays there and what's great is that when I shut my computer off or if I reboot it it's gonna be there when I come back to it so that's how you add or remove applications from your dock next we're going to talk about the Apple menu the Apple menu is right here at the very top left it always is there it doesn't move and this would be part of what you would normally find on a PC under the Start menu so for example we can find out information about this computer if you ever have to call Apple and need access to your serial number this is where you go to get it you click on about this Mac it'll give you the version of the operating system that you're running now let me go over what the different versions are just so that you're aware so on mine you can see it says version ten point eight point four version ten point eight is known as mountain line version ten point seven is Lian ten point six is Snow Leopard ten point five is Leopard and if you have anything before that it's time for a new computer also you can see here you can see the processor information how much memory and to get that serial number all you have to do is put your cursor here where it says version and double-click and you'll see the serial number next under the Apple menu we have software update so periodically you may get a notification on your computer that there are updates that are available to be installed so to do this you can manually do it by clicking on the Apple icon and hitting software update or that utility should automatically run once a week I get asked the question all the time should I because you do have an option to say not now you should for the most part I actually can't really think of an example where you wouldn't do it so it's just a good idea because when there are bugs out there which it's part of life there's bugs went with programs security bugs it's important to get those updates so that your computer is as up-to-date as it can be the App Store is very similar to the App Store on an iPad now to get software on your Mac you don't actually need to have a disk anymore pretty much everything out there you can now download online the big advantage of getting it through the App Store is that you know it's approved by Apple and by that I mean you know you're not going to get in trouble for it it's not gonna have a virus and we're gonna talk later on about why max don't get viruses that's to come later System Preferences we're going to go over in a little bit because that's a whole section System Preferences is the equivalent on a PC as control panel so all the settings affect the whole computer that's where they live below that we have our dock preferences so for example you can see here I can choose to have the dock loops I can have the dock on the bottom the left or the right I can also choose to have it hide so that it only appears when I put my cursor over it recent items will just show you whatever programs you've opened recently as well as files for squit is an important one now I've used pcs of course I think pretty much everyone out there has especially back in the 90s when Apple was in its slump and one of the things that you'd always have to do is use control-alt-delete because programs would crash and then inevitably you'd have to reset the computer and it was just this big nightmare the the guts of the Mac operating system is incredibly stable that being said every once in a great while you may have a program that crashes so the way you force quit is you can either click on the Apple icon and click force quit in which case it will show you all the programs that are running at that time now if Safari right now was not responding well it would probably be in red and then what I would do is simply click on it and click force quit and it will quit the other thing that you can do if you uh this is a good one to write down by the way during this class I do always encourage taking notes one of the important commands to know on your computer is if you hold down the command option and Escape key at the same time you just press and release all three at the same time it will do the same thing then we have our sleep restart and shutdown options here and finally logout for those of you who do have multiple accounts for example if it's a couple the husband may have one account the wife may have another account or significant other so now let's go over those system preferences ok so again we go into the Apple icon and System Preferences now when you sign up for PC classes online we have an entire class devoted to going over every single preference he right now what I'm gonna do with all of you is I'm gonna go over the most important ones starting with general now one of the new features in some of the recent operating systems is you may have noticed that when I was on Safari there is no scrollbar anymore now the computer uses something called multi-touch and this is another command that you're going to do with your fingers so imagine this window as though it were an actual scroll you would not scroll down you would push it up and so the way you do this for those of you who are on a laptop is you're gonna take two fingers put it on your trackpad and go from the bottom to the top and as you do that it's gonna scroll up and down now we're going to talk about the other multi-touch gestures later on in this class but that's how you scroll up and down now some people don't like that some people really want a scrollbar and the reason why I just showed you that now is if you go into system preferences and go into general you'll see here that show scroll bars has an option here where you can have it always be there for those of you who want that option okay the other ones that are going to be important to you our desktop and screen saver so right now of course I've got my company's logo right there in the background you're gonna probably want something a little more personal for you so you can go here into desktop and screen saver and you can either choose from photos that are in your computer photos that are in iPhoto or you can go here under desktop pictures and see one of Apple's own designs I'm also going to show you later today an app which turns your desktop background get ready for this into time-lapse photography it's a really really cool app will show that later some of the other ones here that are important to know let's see here for those of you who are using multiple displays you go here into displays I have mine right now so I'm not gonna really go into that because I don't want to lose my screen if you want to review the multi-touch settings on the trackpad you can go here under trackpad as you put your cursor over these different options you'll see here that on the right hand side of video we'll show you what it looks like so for example the secondary click that I talked about it shows two per person with two fingers clicking down and that causes the equivalent of a right click there's also watch out for these other bars here up top like scroll and zoom okay you can see what options I have here now let me go over these real briefly and so that I want to show you what I recommend for most people now tap to click some people love it some people hate it I go back and forth between it what that means is that instead of having to actually depress the trackpad you just lightly tap with your finger and it will click some people like this others it drives them nuts secondary click I absolutely recommend so it just means when you click with two fingers you're gonna get those additional options some people like the feature of being able to look up the definition of a word I actually don't really use that but if you want it you're certainly more than welcome to three finger drag will move the window that you're currently in around I find it to be kind of disorienting I decided to turn that off here under scroll and zoom you'll see here that I absolutely do have that checked for zoom in and out let's say you're on the web and you're having some trouble reading something that's in fine print just like you can on an iPhone or an iPad you can spread your fingers and you'll see they're in that little video animation that it will zoom in or out smart zoom more than I think it's designed for the web means you can just lightly tap with two fingers and it will zoom in to whatever it is you're focusing on rotate more than anything used with photos allows you to just turn your fingers and it will turn the orientation of your photo finally here under more gestures let me kind of get mine more ready swipe me between two pages so let's say you're on the web okay let's say I'm on Safari and I go from Apple's website and I want to see a preview of Mavericks if I want to go back a page instead of clicking the back button what I can do is take two fingers and excuse me and move them from the left hand side to the right hand side of my trackpad and it will go back a page that's what that is swiping between full screen apps when I showed you just a minute ago let's go back to where we were about the two arrows and put in the application into full screen if you want to use this feature and go back and forth the way you can use the multi-touch trackpad is to place three fingers on your trackpad and move them left or right depending on how you have it set up and you can go back and forth between the different pages okay the different applications rather Notification Center I don't really recommend for most people it's up here at the top right you see these three dots or these three lines and it's basically just notifications about recent emails tweets Facebook updates that kind of thing I don't really use it a lot some people love it if you are that kind of person feel free to use it for the most part I don't recommend it Mission Control is a feature where you can basically if you have multiple windows open you can see everything laid out for people who do a lot of programs at once this is a nice feature I don't typically do that so I decided not to use it app expose allows you to use three fingers and swipe down and it's sort of very similar to Mission Control the difference really is that multi-mission control allows you to have multiple desktops so you can have one desktop devoted to photos one devoted to video however you decide to do it launchpad we haven't talked about yet but it's sort of a way to look at all of the applications in your computer as if your computer or an iPad so it's this icon down here at the very bottom left that looks like a spaceship and this multi-touch gesture means that you can take your thumb and three fingers start them wide and bring them together and you see here it looks just like an iPad and to go back and forth between pages I can use two fingers and swipe left or right okay I like that feature I decided to keep that sometimes when you're working on something you just want to get to the desktop I actually don't really use this one that much but if you decide you want it it's very similar to launchpad it's just the opposite instead of starting wide and coming together you start with your fingers together and then spread them out that's the trackpad features one of the things I love about the Mac is it's so easy to add something like a printer so the way you do it is you go to print and scan if it's a wired printer you just simply plug it in and one of the features you'll find this comes up a lot in Apple both on the Mac the iPhone and also the iPad is that when you want to add a new something it's almost always represented well sorry it is always represented by a plus sign so in this case I want to add a printer so all I do is click the plus sign it senses in this case my printer is wireless I click on it it automatically finds the driver for those of you who don't know I already have this one installed so I don't need to do it those of you don't know what a driver is a driver is sort of like the mailman between your printer and your computer it allows the two to communicate and wallah you have a printer iCloud is something that's very difficult for me to teach because it's so different for everyone basically what iCloud does is it allows your computer your iPhone and your iPad to sync certain bits of information for example your address book your calendars to some extent it allows your photos although not as much as everyone seems to think that it does and we go over that in our I photocopied AOL etc now one of the things I was like to do is give these little to tidbits of good information if you don't for whatever reason have an email address right now or if you're thinking about getting a new one I really strongly recommend that you either check out gmail or iCloud as far as which one it depends it's different for everyone but the most versatile is probably Gmail it's owned by Google it's a free service and the reason why I recommend it is it uses a technology called IMAP now there are two different types of email technology one is called pop and examples of pop would be a lot of the different cable providers so for example Comcast Verizon AT&T a lot of these guys use pop technology and the problem with pop is that if I email you and you're using one of those technologies you're not actually getting it you're getting a copy of it which is fine if you have one device the problem is when you add a second so if I have an iPhone and an iPad and I get a hundred emails a day when I go to delete an email on my iPhone I would have to delete it again on my iPad there's no synchronization whereas with IMAP examples would be iCloud Gmail AOL does use it and Yahoo recently switched to it those will auto sync so if you delete it in one location it will delete it from all of them although actually technically speaking not every yahoo account does but we're not going to go into that right now you shouldn't use Yahoo for other reasons they have major privacy loopholes and a lot of security sorry security loopholes that I would strongly recommend you avoid now also in here you'll see you of your network settings sharing if you're going to be using multiple computers in your home and you want to access information on your other computer you can do that users and groups this one is important for those of you who maybe have family who come and visit with you sometimes you might have someone say hey can I use your computer check my email you probably don't want them to see all of your stuff you don't want them to go through your photos your download history etc so one of the easy things you can do is use a guest account which you'll see right here and by enabling a guest account what you can do is when that kind of situation arises you would go to the Apple icon click on log out and you would see a second account called guest now when you're in a guest account you can do whatever you want and the person who's using it can't see any of your data they can't see your photos they can't see your emails nothing as soon as they log out of the guest account it will delete everything out of their account so it'll do if they have downloaded anything it'll wipe it out but it allows you to maintain some privacy and finally I think the last one we'll go over here is dictation and speech one of the really cool features that came out with Mountain Lion is you can now talk to your computer and have it translate everything into text so to do this click on dictation all you have to do is turn it on which I'll do right now and you can choose what key you like to be your shortcut in my case I like to use either command key so the way this works is if I just open real quickly a notepad ok what I can do is tap the command key twice when I do that I'm gonna hear a beeping noise one beep then I can start talking and when I'm done I tap it again and it'll translate it all to text so let's show you how it works hi mom and dad looking forward to seeing you this coming weekend and there you go now if you want you can also add punctuation in so I can say dear Frankie comma how are you question mark as a horrible example so that is built-in dictation and what's great is that that is in the guts of the operating system so you can use that in email you can use it in a document you can use it in notes as I just did anywhere it's the whole system now let's see next we're going to talk about some of these items up here at the top right now a lot of you won't have most of these but some of them you will as I already mentioned this right here is your Notification Center which is just where you're gonna see the latest emails that you've gotten in tweets that kind of thing the little spyglass here is spotlight and that allows you to search for anything in the computer so if I'm trying to find a photo I can type in the name of that photo and it will show me where it is some of you may or may not see this next one which is it will show you which account you're in so for example if there is a husband and wife that are constantly going back and forth between accounts you can choose in system settings and users to have both accounts here so you can flip back and forth between the various accounts next of course we have the date and time for those of you are on a laptop you'll see here you'll have your battery symbol I recommend showing the percentage so that you can see how much battery is left next over here is volume you also have keys on your keyboard that will allow you to tweak the volume for most of you the f12 key is will increase the volume the f11 key will decrease the volume and the f10 key will mute or unmute your volume next we have Wi-Fi so if you have a laptop for example and go into a cafe most cafes have free Wi-Fi so what you can do is click on this icon you'll see all the wireless networks that are available now the ones that have a lock mean that they are password protected so in order to get into that network you are going to have to have that password if you do not see a lock usually it means it's open the exception to the rule are I've seen several airports where it appears to be an open network and then once you go to use the web it says pay here to use the internet which is kind of ridiculous this day and age next we have Bluetooth Bluetooth is a wireless technology it's used for headsets it's used for wireless keyboards and mice so you may or may not see that the next one here depending on how you have it set up is going to look like a clock nor how mine looks a little different right now but it looks like a clock with a circle going around it now that is one of the most important features built into the Mac which started several years ago back when they had the operating system leopard so what it is is your computer has this utility called time machine and time machine can run only if you introduce an external hard drive and the idea is that when you plug in a brand new external hard drive time machines gonna figure that out and it's gonna say would you like to use this device as your backup so every computer out there has something called a hard drive and a hard drive for the most part unless you have solid-state is a piece apart that moves very fast and like all parts that move they will fail so the idea is that by backing up your data one day inevitably when your computer's hard drive fails you can use your backup drive to bring back all of your data more likely you would bring your computer to someone whether it's an apple store or someone like myself who's tech-savvy who can help you were that with that process now one of the things we do here with PC classes online is we'd like to give you all a lot of resources so if you don't own an external hard drive and need one to backup your data more than anything photos are the big one a lot of people don't realize how many photos they have on their computer and those are memories you want to you want to preserve them you know today it may be just you and your family in the park but of down the road that's history so you want to protect that data one of the things I always like to do is make myself incredibly accessible to our clients so if you are in need of a hard drive drop us an email my email is David at pcclassesonline.com and let me know we'll send you a link to where you can get a really good and inexpensive hard drive that you can use with your computer next if you've just gotten a new Mac there's a couple programs that I really strongly recommend that you put into your computer whether or not you know you need them immediately is irrelevant because you probably will one day down the road now there's a total of four programs that I'm gonna recommend to everyone and to do this you're gonna go on your web browser and you can if you like you can just use Google so you can just go to google.com the first one is called V L C and just type in those letters and you'll see it it'll immediately Google and you want of course VLC for Mac OS X and you can click on that it's gonna ask you which version do you want just choose the one at the top and it's gonna start to download that program now VLC what it basically is is it's a media player so certain types of files for example a WMV file is a type of video file that you may one day download or someone may send it to you and if you don't have a program like VLC you won't be able to play it luckily it is free so quick test if you download something from the internet where does it go it goes into finder and downloads so now you'll see here VLC and it says dot dmg dmg is sort of the equivalent of a zip file so you can double click on that file and it'll open it and what you're gonna do if you ever see you'll see in just a second if you see a screen that looks like this some people don't know what am I supposed to do from here what it wants you to do is to install VLC you need to drag this icon and drop it right here so that is a shortcut to the Applications folder so that will install it ok the next piece of software that you're going to want let's go back to Google is flash flash is a technology used for video you'll find it all over the web YouTube uses it as an example just google the word and it's usually the first or second option here this one is it in this case get Adobe get Adobe calm / Flash Player okay and it's the very similar process I'll do it with you right now you're gonna click where it says download now it'll go to that same location if you look here it looks like it's finished I believe yes it has okay so you're gonna double click on it now not all software installs that way sometimes you have to double click here and it says install flash player it's going to give you a little warning saying you've downloaded this off the internet that's okay click open you'll need to type in the password that you first used when you created your account on your computer now I already have it so it's actually just installing it again on my computer right now and when it's done it's gonna say you're all set basically so we can skip it that and move on the next piece of software is our own and this is a great way that you can support us after all we are a free service and the name of this software is called Team Viewer and here's how you get it you're gonna go to your web browser and go to the website PC classes we type with two hands online comm and when you get to our website you'll see here that there is a tab called instant guru you're gonna click right there scroll to the bottom now this video is on Mac so you click download TeamViewer for Mac it's a very small file you'll see here that just like we were before in my downloads folder is TeamViewer now to install this one here's how you're gonna do it you're gonna drag teamviewer quicksupport into the applications shortcut right here I already have it and I actually have an admin copy so it looks a little bit different and here's how TeamViewer works it's a fantastic service that we're able to offer let's say down the road you have a problem with your computer you probably don't want to have to call Apple and you certainly don't want to have to go to a store now to do this you have to be online and your computer does have to turn on so all you do is double click on this icon you can even if you want drag it and drop it into your dock so that it stays there and what will happen is whenever you have a problem it'll show a code on your screen it'll give you our phone number and when you call us at that number give us that code one of us can remotely take over your computer and help resolve whatever issues you have it's also a way that we are able to offer private lessons to any of you out there the private lessons are 99 dollars an hour a very reasonable rate and we can get all of your questions answered the the fourth and final piece of software that I do recommend to most people is a web browser called Google Chrome ok Google Chrome you can get by just going to Google and typing in the word Chrome okay it's the very first one right here and all it is is it's an alternative to Safari Google Chrome I've always found to be a more reliable web browser it's faster and just a lot better in general so if you want to check out Google Chrome you can do that by doing by just downloading it next we're gonna talk briefly about a feature in the Mac called the dashboard now for those of you who are using your multi-touch gestures you can just take three fingers and move from left to right okay and the dashboard here are these little teeny tiny apps that run in the background and for example of course you can see what it comes with a calculator the weather a clock a basic calendar but there's a couple other ones that are really nice so I'm gonna show you those right now if you click on the little plus sign down here at the bottom left of my screen you can see the other apps the other widgets that it comes with including the stock market so you can see custom stocks movies will show you what movies are playing in your area you can also watch the movie trailers for them and in some cases you can even buy movie tickets now there's one other one that I always recommend to clients that does not come with a computer and I'm going to show you how to get it now what you're going to do is from this screen you're gonna go to where it says more widgets and that's going to take you to Apple's website and what you're gonna do is in this search bar up the top you're gonna type in radar in motion and it's usually the last one in the list here and it says downloads Dashboard widgets radar in motion and just click the little link and finally over here on the right hand side you'll see it says download this is a very small file it's this app is created by The Weather Channel and it allows you to have instant live radar for your area now to customize any of these widgets what you can do is if you put your cursor over the the actual widget itself you'll see many times that at the top right or bottom the top right or the bottom right corner you'll see this teeny tiny lowercase I and when you click on that but that by the way stands for inspector you can choose instead of us radar to do regional and type in your zip code so in my case oh two six five seven enter and there's Cape Cod where we're based out of and that's a little bit of your dashboard finally there's a couple actually no we sell a few more things here to go over one of the things I want to talk about when you get a new computer is Apple care a lot of people you know you're spending a lot of money on a Mac you think why should I spend another depending on which model you have between a hundred and seventy nine to three hundred and forty nine dollars to protect it the answer is simple let me give them a little metaphor for you if you buy a Maserati you have to still expect that parts are going to break at some point in time because it's moving well here's the thing your computers moving you just don't see it so for example the hard drive when that fails if you have Apple care it will pay for it I very very strongly recommend that you always buy Apple care for your computer now as far as an iPhone or an iPad goes for the most part you can skip on that because with those there's still an incident fee if you need to replace it the exception to the rule is if you have a history of dropping devices in which case by all means go ahead and get it now if you would like to support our little small business you can shoot us an email again that's david at pcclassesonline.com and we can sell you Apple care and we can do it all over the phone it's just an easy way to support us and we can help get to know you also if you're looking for a printer this is a big one there is so much crap out there at all the big-box stores when it comes printers these big-box stores will practically give you a printer why so that you'll buy the ink and so we do a lot of research on what are the best printers for consumers if you are in need of a printer give us a call or an email again david at pcclassesonline.com and we can help hook you up with the right printer the most popular model that I sell is one made by Canon it only has two in cartridges each cartridge retails for $19 and it will print wirelessly from an iPhone an iPad or a computer and it also has a feeder so that if you need to scan multiple pages you can do that it also has a fax and all the other jazz that you would expect with a printer what I want to talk a little bit about maintenance on your computer one of the things that a lot of people think when they get a mac is that don't I need some sort of a program to keep it clean no you do not one of the biggest scams on the internet is a piece of software called Mac Keeper and I am Not Afraid to call them a scam because they are and basically these companies thrive on scare tactics they make you think that your computer is infected with all of these horrible viruses when in fact those viruses are actually Windows viruses that won't run if we go to metaphor land for a minute it would be like putting a security system on your stomach and every time you get a new bacteria it sends off alarms there's no reason to panic okay if you're on a laptop one of the tricks I try to teach all of my clients is that it's good idea to use the battery think of your computer or anything if you have a phone an iPad think of your battery as though it were a muscle you want to flex that muscle in order to keep it strong a lot of people who don't do that find that after a year their computer will no longer hold a charge they may unplug it and it just plummets that because your battery has gotten weak it hasn't been exercised so it's a really good idea once a week once every other week to run that battery down to maybe 10% and then back up in my case I do it several times a week just because I work so much for those of you who are on a desktop one of the things I strongly recommend that you buy as an accessory for your computer is a battery backup with a feature called AVR AVR stands for automatic voltage regulation and what it does is if your home is subject to brownouts especially in the summer or the winter depending on where you live brownouts can actually cause more problems then believe it or not surges and so the AVR system will filter the electricity before it hits your computer if you need a recommendation on a battery backup they make all different sizes for all different computers shoot us an email and we can absolutely make a recommendation and one last maintenance maintenance tip for those of you who are on laptops specifically the MacBook Pro you may have noticed that when you shut the lid to your computer you get a little white light that comes on by the by the bezel by the edge rather and that white light typically will stay on it'll be solid for 10 seconds it fades out and then it starts to slowly pulse and a lot of people don't know what that means what that basically means it takes 10 seconds for your computer to take all the data that's out and put it back in the right place so a lot of times I'll get in kids who are in college and they're having hard drive issues and the reason why is that they will slam the lid shut and immediately invert the computer and this can cause that data to be put back in the wrong place so it's a good idea if you're on a MacBook Pro to wait 10 seconds before you physically move your computer oh and one tip that I forgot the question I get all the time should I shut my computer down or put it to sleep for the vast majority just put it to sleep it they're so well made these days they're so energy-efficient if you were to unplug your laptop at a hundred percent shut the lid by the time you wake up in the morning it should only be at 98% so feel free to let it sleep you don't have to shut it down and the last thing that we're gonna go over today is what apps should I get if I've just gotten a new computer well the great thing with the Mac is that it comes with so many great applications I strongly encourage you if you're brand new to this whole thing go to our website sign up and take the iPhoto class it's by far the the rock star of the Mac and it allows you to do everything with your photos from create slideshows photo books greeting cards all sorts of different things but there's a couple apps that your computer doesn't come with that you may want to check out to get any of these you're gonna go to the App Store which again is the Apple icon and just go here into your App Store now the first is the entire I work sweet I work is a is made up of Pages Numbers and Keynote those would be the equivalents to Microsoft Office so instead of Word you have pages instead of Excel you have numbers and instead of PowerPoint you have keynote these programs are significantly more creative and you can still go back and forth with PC users if you have to it's just that if you're going to be creating anything remotely creative whether it's a flyer you're gonna have a lot more fun using pages than you would something as plain Jane as Microsoft Word the second app that I really strongly recommend if you want to have a little bit of fun more than anything this is better for desktop owners because it does use a little bit more power is a application called magic window and they've reduced the price on this let's see what it is now oh I can't see the price because here it is it's $6.99 okay what it does is it transforms your desktop background into time-lapse photography and there's I think around 50 different scenes oh sorry 90 three total scenes in the world so you'll start off viewing a city for example and it will be the equivalent of I don't know six o'clock and then every minute it's as though you know it times going by and you see the sunset slowly it's just a really nice fun way to jazz up your desktop background so that's all for today I hope you've enjoyed this and if you haven't already done so make sure you go to our website at PC classes online comm you can sign up it is a hundred percent free it's a public service made possible by the Mac guru and you can take our live classes you can check out the video library and learn and have fun at the same time this is david a cox and i hope you all have a wonderful day take care [Music]

Channel: Tech Talk America

Views: 3,256,813

Keywords: Learn the Mac, New to Mac, Master the Mac, How to use a mac, how a mac works, pc classes online, Macintosh (Computer), apple manual, mac manual, apple computer manual, how do i use a mac, Macintosh (Video Game Platform), Mac OS (Operating System), How-to (Website Category)

Id: twf70Tl7piY

Length: 53min 27sec (3207 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 21 2013