Spotlight
Spotlight itself deserves it’s own entry, and indeed has one. Suffice to say at this moment that Spotlight is a system-wide search tool built in to Mac OS X. It allows you to find files, folders, web bookmarks, music, pictures, and about anything else you can think of almost instantaneously. In this preference pane, you can select what spotlight will and won’t show you when you perform a search, and drag the order in which matches are displayed (say, for instance, you rarely search for safari bookmarks, you probably want those either at the end of the list, or not searched at all).
Energy Saver
If you own a Laptop, this is a great preference pane to mess around with. If you own a desktop, there’s still some useful tools here to consider. Firstly, for the laptop crowd, you can create Custom Power Setting Optimizations, Ranging from whether the processor is going full-bore,
You should Know: This is the first preference pane we’ve covered that you will notice a small padlock in the lower left corner, and probably some options that were Greyed Out, meaning you could see them, but they were visibly lighter than the text around them and could not be modified or touched. This padlock is a symbol of security, and where there are preferences that could be important in a security sense, you have the option of locking them with the administrator account, and preventing further changes without unlocking each item. This will be covered in other articles.
Sharing
Here you’ll see the padlock again. If it’s locked, unlock it with the administrator password. You’ll see some tabs, we’re mostly concerned with the first two, Services & Firewall. Services allows you to select certain
Moving over the the Firewall tab, you can select here to turn the Firewall on. I recommend that if it’s not already on, take care of this now. This prevents other computers from accessing certain services and core properties from over the internet or local connections. I also recommend clicking on the Advanced Tab, and enabling Stealth Mode, which does as its name suggests, and cloaks your computer from being visible to hackers or other computers you haven’t specifically invited to send you things. (Note: as of Mac OS X version 10.5 “Leopard,” the Firewall settings have moved to be under “Security”)
Accounts
Accounts is where you set up different users. That’s a topic revolving around security, and it, too, has it’s own section. For now, we’ll concentrate on simply enhancing the user experience. If you go to the Startup Items tab, you will see an empty list with a “+” and “-” symbol at the bottom. Adding items to this list will get them open and ready as soon as the computer starts up, allowing you to set certain things in motion without having to wait at the computer for it to get through its startup motions and then navigate to whichever item to start it. This is useful, for instance, if you want your mail program to open and check for mail immediately upon startup, or if you almost always like to have a particular document open for reference or something, you can select it in this list to open so that when it starts up, it’s ready for you.
You can also change your user picture here under the Picture tab. Of course, if you open the Address Book Application, you can navigate to your card (an easy tip: go to the Menu, select Card then select Go to My Card), and click “Edit” at the bottom, and drag a picture to the picture spot to change your picture at any time without digging into system preferences.
Speech
If you navigate to Speech, you can modify a rather cool portion of Mac OS X. The system has the ability to speak any text you highlight for you, and you can even control your computer using spoken commands! I have tried using this feature, and while cool, is not always faster and easier than the mouse & keyboard, though it is great for showing off. I recommend checking it out and messing around with it. If you can’t get it to do what you want, then turn it off. But if nothing else, you should find a nice voice you like, then later, if you are in a program (such as Safari, surfing the internet), and want to highlight some text and have it read to you, simply go to the Menu under the program’s name, go to Services>Speech>Speak Text, and you can awe your friends. Try it out!
End
And that wraps up the basic system preferences. The next topic in the list deals with Application-specific Preferences. You can skip it in all actuality, as each are different for each program and I’m not nearly bored enough to do one for each program ever created. That topic will mainly deal with making people aware that they are there, and deserved to be looked at and modified as much as if not more than the system preferences. We’ll be messing with Safari, if anyone is interested. Don’t know where they are? The menu at the top that is the application’s name (always Bolded) houses the Preferences menu item. Get busy checking it out!