Chapter 6 Part II

6.7 Save Energy

     The Energy Saver pane in System Preferences provides several options you can use to minimize your MacBook Air’s power draw, thereby maximizing your work time on the battery. Your options include dimming the display on battery power and adjusting the time before the display goes to sleep. You can also turn on the Power Nap feature, which enables your MacBook Air to wake up periodically to check for new information, and set up a schedule for your MacBook Air to sleep and wake.

6.8 Configure the Display

     OS X automatically sets your MacBook Air’s bright and beautiful display to its default resolution. This resolution, also called the native resolution, is normally the best choice for general use, but you can change the resolution if you prefer. You can also change the resolution for any external display you connect to your MacBook Air. When you change the resolution, OS X changes the size of each pixel, or picture element, that makes up the display’s images. Larger pixels make the screen’s contents appear zoomed in; smaller pixels make the screen’s contents appear zoomed out, so more content fits.

6.9 Control Sound

     From sound effects to music and movies, sound is an important part of OS X. Additionally, you may want to use sound input for audio and video chats, to record narration for movies, and so on. The Sound pane of the System Preferences application is your primary stop for managing audio settings on your MacBook Air. Here, you can configure sound effects, choose output settings, and select the input device you want to use.

6.10 Create and Configure User Accounts

     OS X is a multiuser system, so you can create a user account for each person who uses your MacBook Air. Each person who uses it then has a unique desktop, folders, files, and preferences so that the MacBook Air is tailored specifically to her. For yourself, you will already have created an Administrator account, which gives you the power to perform administrative tasks, such as those discussed in this chapter. For most other users, you should create a Standard user account. This type of account can access all the MacBook Air’s resources, but it cannot perform administrator tasks.

     You should have at least two user accounts for yourself. One should be an Administrator account that you use for your regular computing. This can be the account you created when you first set up your MacBook Air. The other account should be an Administrator account that you create but do not use so that it remains in the default state. You use this second account during troubleshooting.

6.11 Protect Users with Parental Controls

     When you need to limit a user account, you can use the parental controls built into OS X. You can use parental controls to tailor any user’s access to OS X features and the Internet. Further, you can set up a user account such that the user can use the MacBook Air only during times you specify.

6.12 Set Login Options

     By default, the OS X login window displays a list of users in which you click your user name, but you can configure it to display an empty username field instead for greater security. You can also choose whether to display the Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down buttons, and control whether the Input menu and password hints appear. Beyond these options, you can set up automatic login to save yourself the need to log in. You can also turn Fast User Switching on to enable multiple users to be logged into the MacBook Air at the same time.

6.13 Set Up Internet Accounts

     Before you can use the Mail application, you need to set it up with the details of your e-mail account. Similarly, if you use online calendars, contacts, or social networking, you need to set up the accounts for the Calendar application, the Contacts application, or the social-networking application, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Flickr. You can set up your accounts in the individual applications, but it is usually easier to manage them centrally using the Internet Accounts pane in the System Preferences application. After you set up an account here, other applications that need to access the account can pick up the details without you having to enter them again.