Monday, August 9, 2010

OS X Starter Kit (Configuration)

In the last year I’ve helped migrate a couple of family members to Macs, advised (to one degree or another) several peers & colleagues on their own switch and built (or rebuilt) several for myself. In that time, I’ve come up with something of a starter kit I consider essential and indispensable. These range from configuration settings to utilities to applications and from minutia to massive, so don’t look for this to be highly targeted.

While writing this post, I came to realize that I could probably milk it into more than one, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Stuff like this is just easier to write and read in bite size chunks.

Configuration

Let’s start with configuration. The proverbial unboxing is complete and you’ve just finished the introductory video and wizard. While everything is still fresh and clean, let’s begin the personalization journey. You may have already done a system update, but if you haven’t, now is a good time. In the menubar, select  > Software Update. Follow the instructions. I’ll wait…

Good? Okay, moving on. Configuration at this stage begins and ends with the System Preferences. Open these from the Apple menu:  > System Preferences…. I won’t talk about all of them because some are relatively vanilla. I’ll just be touching on those that I alter in a meaningful manner. Looking at the preferences panel, I’ll be working left to right, top to bottom.

Desktop & Screen Saver

I’m in the minority here, but I kind of like the wallpaper that ships with Snow Leopard. I usually change it to use one of my own photos, but I’d probably leave it otherwise. That’s just me.

I do, however, uncheck the Translucent menu bar option. Depending on your wallpaper, being able to see it behind the menu bar is egregiously annoying.

As screen savers go, I have several that I kind of like, but nary a one of them ships with OS X. Out of the box, the screen saver options just blow. My current favorites include (in no particular order):

Dock

I tend to make extensive use of application launchers, so I like to get the dock out of my way completely by checking the option to Automatically hide and show the dock. I also move the Size slider much closer to the Small end than the default setting has it placed.

I also position it on the left side of my screen because I’ve found that my cursor doesn’t wander over there as often as it wanders to the bottom which keeps me from accidentally triggering the dock’s visibility as often.

Lastly, I like a bit of eye candy, so I turn on a little bit of magnification. Not too much, but I like a little bit of animation.

Expose & Spaces

I don’t do much with Expose, but it’s come in handy from time to time. That said, the default settings are probably fine unless you’re a power user.

Spaces, on the other hand, I use extensively. I have separate spaces for browsing, for development, for photography and for apps that I often have running behind the scenes. If you’ve never used multiple desktops on any OS (read: Unix systems), then you may not need or want Spaces. If you do try it and like it, but find some aspects annoying, you may want to check out these hints:

Language & Text

Notice the left most pane on the Text tab. Add your own custom text replacement values for words and phrases you type often or even _mis_type often. This is universal autocorrection and it is good.

Displays

Unless you’re a power user, you probably won’t have a lot of need to change your display settings with any frequency, if at all. For that reason, it probably makes sense to uncheck the option to Show displays in menu bar.

Keyboard

Keyboard

I use the function keys all the time. I use the “special features” far less frequently. For that reason, I check the option to Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard keys.

Apple also does something (stupid, IMO) that trips up a lot of new Mac users. By default, when using forms you can only tab between selected controls—specifically text boxes and lists. If you often use the keyboard to navigate forms, it may make you crazy that you can’t tab to a submit button and hit Enter. You can fix that by finding the Full Keyboard Access setting and selecting the All Controls option. I don’t know why this isn’t the default, but I find it maddening when I forget to change this setting immediately.

A while back, it occurred to me that the only time I use the Caps Lock key is, well, on accident. If you find the same, you have the option of simply disabling it. To do so, click the Modifier Keys… button and, in the popup window, select the No Action option in the Caps Lock Key drop down menu. Click OK and the Cops Lock key will no longer be a problem for you.

Keyboard Shortcuts

A subject near and dear to my heart. One of my favorite aspects of OS X is that you can configure your own universal or application-specific keyboard shortcuts. For example, every OS X application that has preferences and was built to standard provides access to those preferences via the ⌘+, shortcut. You’ll get to know that one well, if you’re a keyboard junkie.

Since System Preferences is really just a universal version of application preferences, I create a similar shortcut by assigning ⌘+Shift+, to open the System Preferences application. To do so:

  1. Click Application Shortcuts in the left pane.
  2. Click the + button beneath the right pane.
  3. Select All Applications (should be the default).
  4. Type System Preferences… in the Menu Title field.
  5. Type the shortcut you want to use in the Keyboard Shortcut field. To use mine, hold down the ⌘, Shift and , keys at the same time. You’ll see the value change.
  6. Click Add.

Now explore. The possibilities are endless.

Trackpad

Watch the videos, learn the gestures, ditch the mouse (at least for a while). I can’t recommend this enough.

Sharing

I uncheck everything except File Sharing and Remote Login. And with File Sharing, I only allow access to my Public folder.

Date & Time

If you didn’t set the option to Set time zone automatically using current location during the introductory wizard, you might want to do so now. If you do, you’ll never have to think about it again.

Software Update

Make it easy on yourself. Keep your system up to date. Check the option to Check for updates and do so Daily or Weekly. Make life even easier, by allowing the computer to Download updates automatically. It will let you know when they’re ready and all you have to do is tell it to install (or not).

As I promised, I didn’t mention every possible option, but I hit the high points. Those I skipped are either solid out of the box (no changes necessary), are trivial (how long to wait before activating the screen saver) or are deeply personal and very much based on personal preference.

Whatever you choose to do with your system preferences, I highly recommend that you look through each and every item in the System Preferences window and become familiar with your options. One day you may want to change something and it will be helpful if you have some idea where to go to do it.

I’ll follow up with posts to discuss the applications, preference panes, utilities and plugins that I consider essential, but I’d love to hear about your essential configuration tweaks in the comments.

Posted at 12:19 PM Tags: mac101 osx mac