System Preferences

Maads 101 here. Today, I'm going to be showing you how to use System Preferences. Now, you probably know what this is already, and if you do, you can skip this video. But, um, basically, you'll notice in the top left corner—and you probably won't be able to see it—there's an Apple symbol. You just click that and go down to System Preferences and click that. System Preferences will come up; it's this window that should look something like this with a little search bar at the top and everything.

Um, what this is, is all the settings for the machine. Under System, there might be another topic called Other, and that's where other applications may put settings. But, um, I'm just going to show you how to use a few things. First of all, for things like security and users, you will need to authenticate yourself. So, you need to click the lock and type a username and password. Unless you're logged in as root; if you're logged in as root, the lock will automatically be unlocked and you won't be able to lock it, and you'll be able to set settings.

Right here on the main thing for System Preferences, you'll see all these icons. You can click one to set settings for it and, um, click the Show All button or the back and forward buttons. The Show All button goes back to the main springboard, if you will.

So, I'm going to show you first how to use Network, and this is an icon you'll see under um Internet and Network. What you do is you can set up your network connection: so AirPort, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and FireWire. You can say your location, Advanced to set stuff, you can say your IP address, etc. I'm going to click AirPort and then click Advanced to see my IP address right there. And, um, it says all the information you want to know.

Um, another thing is, um, Sharing, which is actually the same topic, the same folder, and it lets you set all this up. You can set up file sharing; you can set up—actually, this is called Remote Management. You click that and then click Computer Settings, and you can check VNC viewers may control the screen with a password and type a password. Then people who use something like Chicken of the VNC or Mocha VNC for the iPhone will be able to remotely connect to your computer and manage it and maneuver your mouse and do stuff like this. You can give a specific user remote log-on and file sharing, etc.

Another thing, which isn't so important, is Speech, and um, this lets you set up speech recognition and text-to-speech. We can click Show All to go back to the main thing. Appearance lets you set the overall look of buttons, etc., highlight color, etc. Um, so yeah.

Another thing is, um, with this highlight color, you can select the highlight color that's good. I prefer blue as a nice highlight color, and um, that's default. You can set up everything that you'll see on your screen.

Desktop and Screen Saver; you probably know what this is, and these are like tabs up here. And, um, Accounts. System Accounts is right there; this is very useful. It lets you set the logon options down here, add an account, take away an account, lock it, of course, and you can set automatic login. By default, um, on your Mac, you will just log in automatically as a user. You can set that to be whatever user you want, and you can say whether it displays a list of users or a username and password thing. Actually, that's a good idea. Um, so it's good to go around and set stuff there.

Another thing is Parental Controls. All you parents or kids who don't want to get controlled by your parents, whatever, can go on here, click a user, and select the content they can view. Um, try to limit access to websites, etc. You can set time limits, and you can see the websites they've visited.

Um, all, and you can see everything that's ever happened on that computer. Um, you can see the applications they've run; that's useful. You can see the iChat logs, so that's very useful.

So, um, that's some simple stuff in System Preferences. You can also search, um, and so we do Sound. Say, and then it will let us select something.

And, um, that's simple, simple System Preferences. Press Apple Q or close, click the X, whatever you want to do to get out of System Preferences.

Um, so that's Maads 101 here today, and, um, we've showed you how to use System Preferences. Um, if you have any questions or comments, leave stuff in the comment box, but please no swearing; a bunch of kids work on this anyway. Um, uh, see you later, and, uh, bye.