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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Setting Up Your .Mac Account

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When you install Mac OS X or start up a new Mac for the first time, you are given an opportunity to enter the information for your .Mac account or to sign up for an account. If you don't have a .Mac account, or aren't sure of what your username and password are, you can always go back later and take care of these.

Apple offers four ways to sign up for a .Mac account:

• When you start up a new Mac for the first time while entering your user account information.
• When you install (or reinstall) Mac OS X.
• When you purchase a "boxed set" for a .Mac account from an Apple Store or Apple's web site.
• Online via the Mac.com (http://www.mac.com) web site.

Once you've signed up for your .Mac membership, you'll need to configure your Mac OS X system to use its services and software. This chapter shows you how to configure your Mac OS X system to work with the .Mac services.

The goal of this chapter is to help you get up and running with your .Mac account as soon as possible. Future chapters go into greater detail on using your iDisk, .Mac Mail, and the other applications and services that come as part of your .Mac membership.

If you haven't already signed up for your .Mac account, there are some things you might want to take into consideration before doing so, including selecting a member (or user) name and choosing a password.

If you don't already have a .Mac account, go to the Mac.com web site and click on the big red Free Trial button. This will take you to a page where you can sign up for a 60-day free trial .Mac membership. The trial .Mac membership includes the following:

• A Mac.com email address with 5 MB of email storage
• An iDisk with 20 MB of storage
• Software to back up to your iDisk
• Use of the HomePage web page builder

The trial .Mac membership should give you a taste of what's to come if you decide later that you want the full membership.

If you have a trial .Mac membership, you should be aware that the Backup application (discussed in Chapter 6) only permits you to backup data to your iDisk. You won't be able to use Backup to make backups to CDs, DVDs, or to a networked or external drive.

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Before You Sign Up

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If you haven't already signed up for your .Mac account, there are some things you might want to take into consideration before doing so, including selecting a member (or user) name and choosing a password.

If you don't already have a .Mac account, go to the Mac.com web site and click on the big red Free Trial button. This will take you to a page where you can sign up for a 60-day free trial .Mac membership. The trial .Mac membership includes the following:

• A Mac.com email address with 5 MB of email storage
• An iDisk with 20 MB of storage
• Software to back up to your iDisk
• Use of the HomePage web page builder

The trial .Mac membership should give you a taste of what's to come if you decide later that you want the full membership.

If you have a trial .Mac membership, you should be aware that the Backup application (discussed in Chapter 6) only permits you to backup data to your iDisk. You won't be able to use Backup to make backups to CDs, DVDs, or to a networked or external drive.

Before you sign up for your .Mac membership, there are a couple online documents that you should read. These include:

Privacy Policy

Apple's privacy policy (http://www.apple.com/legal/privacy) describes how the information you provide to Apple will be used and protected.

Terms & Conditions

The .Mac Terms & Conditions (http://www.mac.com/1/membership_terms.html) details the rules and usage terms by which all .Mac members must abide. Make sure you read this in its entirety, particularly the Acceptable Use Policy Guidelines section.

When selecting the username for your .Mac account, keep in mind that your member name will also be your Mac.com email address (e.g., membername @mac.com), as well as the lead-in for your Mac.com HomePage (http://homepage.mac.com/ membername). So, you should select your username with care, being conscious that the username you select will be your permanent moniker.

You can opt for a plain-vanilla member name by combining your first and last names (e.g., chucktoporek or chuck_toporek), or something radically different to reflect your persona or personality (e.g.,

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Your First Stop: System Preferences

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Now that we've cleared the air about member names and passwords, it's time to configure your Mac OS X system to accept your .Mac account. For the purpose of this book, we'll assume that you didn't enter the settings for your .Mac account during the install or when you first started up a new Mac.

To configure the settings for your .Mac account, you'll need to launch the System Preferences application by clicking on its icon in the Dock, and then clicking on the icon for .Mac in the Internet & Network section; the .Mac panel is shown in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1: The System Preferences .Mac preferences pane.

As you can see from Figure 1-1, the .Mac preference panel has two tabbed panes:

.Mac

This pane has two fields for entering your .Mac Member Name and the Password you've chosen for your account. The information you enter in these fields will be used when you access your Mac.com email account or attempt to log on to your iDisk.

iDisk

The iDisk pane, described more in the next section, contains information about the state of your iDisk.

If you don't already have a .Mac membership, click on the Sign Up button in the .Mac pane. This launches your default web browser and takes you to Apple's .Mac web site (http://www.mac.com), from which you can purchase a membership.

If you aren't comfortable with making a purchase and giving your credit card information over the Web, you can also purchase a boxed .Mac membership from any Apple Store. To find the Apple Store nearest you, go to http://www.apple.com/retail or call 1-800-MY-APPLE (or 1-800-692-7753).

As mentioned in the previous section, the iDisk pane (System Preferences → .Mac → iDisk), shown in Figure 1-2, is mainly used to keep track of how much space you have on your iDisk. However, the iDisk pane also gives you a quick way to purchase additional storage space (by clicking on the By More button), and to control the access privileges to your iDisk's Public folder.

Figure 1-2: The iDisk pane.

When you click on the iDisk tab, your Mac quickly connects to your iDisk over the Internet to gather information about how much disk space you have used. If you are not connected to the Internet, an alert sheet slides out of the window's titlebar informing you that you cannot connect to your iDisk. When you dismiss the sheet by clicking on the OK button, you are returned to the .Mac pane.

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Configuring Mail

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The information you enter for your .Mac account in the .Mac preference panel (see Figure 1-1) is automatically used by your email client, which by default is set to use Apple's Mail application. This makes it really easy for you to start using your Mac.com email account quickly.

To check Mail's settings, launch the Mail application (/Applications) and select Mail → Preferences (or use its keyboard shortcut, -,) from the menu bar. When the preferences window opens, you'll see Mail's General settings, as shown in Figure 1-3.

Figure 1-3: Mail's preference pane.

To choose a different email client, click on the pop-up menu next to the heading, Default Email Reader, and choose the Select option. A sheet will slide down from the preference window's titlebar, placing you in the Applications folder, from which you can select another email application.

By default, your .Mac email account is configured to use the Internet Mail Access Protocol, or IMAP, for managing your mail on Apple's email server. The use of IMAP means that your email will be stored on Apple's email servers, making it always available to you, either via the Mail application on your Mac or by using an online version of Mail from the Mac.com web site (more on that in Chapter 4).

If you use IMAP, you should keep in mind that although you're checking email on your computer, your mail is stored Apple's servers, not on your computer. The advantage to this is that your email won't take up a lot of space on your hard drive. The downside is that you need to be diligent about managing the mail stored online, otherwise, you could lose any incoming mail until you either purchase additional email storage (see later) or delete any unwanted messages.

If you decide that you'd rather use POP (Post Office Protocol) to permanently download your .Mac mail to your Mac, there is a way to trick Mail into doing this. Just follow these steps:

1. Launch the Mail application by clicking on its icon in the Dock.
2. Select Mail → Preferences from the menu bar (or use the keyboard shortcut

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Changing Your .Mac Password

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When you first set up your .Mac account, you assign a password for accessing your mail, logging on to your iDisk, etc. But what if you decide later that you want to change your .Mac account's password?

At first, you might think that you can change your .Mac password in the System Preferences application, via the .Mac preference panel, but you can't. Instead, you'll need to go to the Mac.com web site and log in to your .Mac account. Once logged in, you'll see a button that contains your .Mac member name at the far right of the .Mac site's navigation bar. Click on this button to be taken to the Account Settings page, as shown in Figure 1-15.

Figure 1-15: The Account Settings page for your .Mac account.

Next, click on the Password Settings button, and you'll be taken to the Password Settings page, shown in Figure 1-16, which you can use to change your .Mac password and/or the password hint.

Figure 1-16: The Password Settings page is used to change the password and password hint for your .Mac account.

To change your account's password, just type a new one in the Password field and then tab to the "Password (confirm)" field and re-enter that password. To make your new .Mac password take effect, click on the Submit button.

If you've entered both passwords correctly, you'll be taken back to the Mac.com main page. If one the passwords are entered incorrectly, the page refreshes and you will receive a message that says "Your passwords did not match," prompting you to re-enter the passwords again.

Your .Mac member name and password are used by the iTunes Music Store. If you change your .Mac password, you'll also need to change your password for the iTunes Music Store by clicking on the button containing your account name in iTunes .

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Setting an iCal Event to Change Your .Mac Password

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If you use iCal (http://www.apple.com/ical), you can set up an Event to go off every two or three months to remind you to change your .Mac account's password. If you do use iCal, you can set up this event as follows:

1. Launch iCal by either clicking on its icon in the Dock or by double-clicking on its icon in the Applications folder (/Applications).
2. Create a new event (File → New Event, or -N). This places a new Event on today's calendar and opens the Event Info drawer to one side of iCal's window.
3. In the event that was placed on your calendar, type in the name of the event, such as "Change .Mac password".
4. In the drawer, click on the checkbox next to "all-day," since there isn't any specific time of the day that you need to change your .Mac password.
5. On the "from" and "to" lines, change the date for the event. You don't have to, but if you want to set it up so that you change the password on a Friday, you can either drag the event from the day it's currently at to Friday, or change the date on the "from" line.
6. On the "repeat" line, click on the word None to reveal a pop-up menu; from that menu, select Custom and let go of the mouse button.
7. In the window that appears, select Monthly from the Frequency pop-up menu and change the frequency to "Every 3 month(s)".
8. Near the bottom of that window, click on the radio button next to "On the", then select "last" from the first pop-up menu beneath that, and "Friday" from the other popup menu. This will place the Change .Mac Password event on the last Friday of every third month in your calendar. Click the OK button to save these changes and close the window.
9. Switch to the "alarm" section, and then click on None to reveal another pop-up menu, which lets you select how you would like iCal to remind you of this event. There are four options for notifying you of the event: Message, Message with sound, Email, or Open file.
   Of the four options, the first two have a greater chance at getting your attention than playing an alert sound, since it's too easy to confuse an alert sound from iCal with that of any other system event.

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Renewing Your .Mac Membership

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Your .Mac membership expires one year, to the date, from when it was first activated. The activation date, of course, is when you purchased the .Mac membership and registered it online via the Mac.com web site. To find out when your activation and expiration dates are, log on to the Mac.com web site, and then click on the button in the navigation bar that contains your .Mac member name.

When your .Mac membership is up for renewal, you will receive an email message approximately 30 days before your account will expire, prompting you renew your .Mac account. If your .Mac account is set to renew automatically, your credit card won't be charged until the day that the renewal fee for your .Mac account is due. When it does renew, you will receive an email from Apple, notifying you that your credit card has been charged—and for what amount—and thanking you for renewing your .Mac membership.

You can receive a discount on your annual .Mac membership fee by referring other Mac users to sign up for a .Mac account. When they register their account, there is a space in which they can enter your .Mac member name. You will receive a $10 discount for each new .Mac member you refer to Apple. And since there is no limit to the number of people you can refer in a year, if you refer 10 people to sign up for a .Mac membership, your renewal fee for the coming year will be waived.

If you purchased your .Mac membership online, your membership will be set to automatically renew using the credit card information you used to purchase your membership. For most people, having your .Mac account renew automatically is a great convenience; it's one less thing you have to worry about. However, if you prefer to have control over renewing your .Mac membership, you can disable the auto-renew feature, as follows:

1. Go to the Mac.com web site and log in with your .Mac member name and password.
2. In the navigation bar, click on the button that contains your .Mac member name.
3. From the Account Settings page, click on the Billing & Subscription button near the upper right.
4. In the Membership Information section of the Billing & Subscription Settings page, deselect the checkbox beneath Auto Renew.

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Chapter 2: Inside Mac.com

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The Mac.com web site (http://www.mac.com) is every .Mac subscriber's home. It's through this site that you can:

• Log in/out of your .Mac account
• Manage and renew your .Mac membership
• Get help through the online Learning Center
• Download the Backup and Virex software packages and other Member's Only specials, such as games and bonus software
• Purchase additional email-only accounts or more space for your iDisk

This short chapter provides you with a quick overview of what you'll find at Apple's hub for .Mac members: the Mac.com web site.

When you first get to the Mac.com web site (Figure 2-1), you'll see lots of icons and buttons that you can click on. This section provides a quick overview of the buttons and where they'll lead you.

Figure 2-1: The Mac.com web site after you've logged in.

Along the top of the page, as part of the .Mac tab, you will see a navigation bar that contains a set of "buttons," shown in Figure 2-2. These buttons, described as follows, will always be available to you, no matter what page of the Mac.com site you're on. When you click on one of the buttons in the .Mac navigation bar, it will take on a slightly darker gray shading than the other buttons as a way of letting you know where you are.

Figure 2-2: Main .Mac site navigation buttons.

Home

Clicking on the Home button (the icon that looks like a house) takes you back to the main Mac.com page (http://www.mac.com).

Mail

Clicking on this button takes you to .Mac's web-based Mail service (which can also be accessed by going to http://www.mac.com/webmail). If you haven't logged in to your .Mac account yet, you will be taken to a page where you can enter your .Mac member name and password before you're taken to the Mail page.

Address Book

If you've used iSync to synchronize your Address Book contacts with your .Mac account, clicking on this button will take you to your online Address Book. You can use the online Address Book to add, remove, and manage your contacts over the Web. For information on how to synchronize your Mac's Address Book with your .Mac account, see Chapters Chapter 4 and Chapter 9.

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Navigating Mac.com

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When you first get to the Mac.com web site (Figure 2-1), you'll see lots of icons and buttons that you can click on. This section provides a quick overview of the buttons and where they'll lead you.

Figure 2-1: The Mac.com web site after you've logged in.

Along the top of the page, as part of the .Mac tab, you will see a navigation bar that contains a set of "buttons," shown in Figure 2-2. These buttons, described as follows, will always be available to you, no matter what page of the Mac.com site you're on. When you click on one of the buttons in the .Mac navigation bar, it will take on a slightly darker gray shading than the other buttons as a way of letting you know where you are.

Figure 2-2: Main .Mac site navigation buttons.

Home

Clicking on the Home button (the icon that looks like a house) takes you back to the main Mac.com page (http://www.mac.com).

Mail

Clicking on this button takes you to .Mac's web-based Mail service (which can also be accessed by going to http://www.mac.com/webmail). If you haven't logged in to your .Mac account yet, you will be taken to a page where you can enter your .Mac member name and password before you're taken to the Mail page.

Address Book

If you've used iSync to synchronize your Address Book contacts with your .Mac account, clicking on this button will take you to your online Address Book. You can use the online Address Book to add, remove, and manage your contacts over the Web. For information on how to synchronize your Mac's Address Book with your .Mac account, see Chapters Chapter 4 and Chapter 9.

Bookmarks

If you've used iSync to synchronize Safari's bookmarks with your .Mac account, clicking on this button opens another browser window from which you can use and manage your bookmarks. For information on how to synchronize and use the web-based Bookmarks window, see Chapter 9.

HomePage

Clicking on this button takes you to the .Mac HomePage building tools (also accessible by pointing your web browser to http://www.mac.com/homepage). From here, you can build and manage your .Mac HomePage; see Chapter 7.

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Managing Your .Mac Account

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After logging in successfully, a clickable "account" button appears that bears your .Mac member name. When you click on the account button (shown in Figure 2-4), you can access information about your .Mac account through the Account Settings page, shown in Figure 2-5. The Account Settings page includes details about the current status of your .Mac account, as well as information about the number of Mac.com email addresses you have and how much iDisk space is assigned to your account.

Figure 2-5: The Account Settings page for your .Mac account can be used to update your personal information, change your password, and to manage your accounts.

In looking at Figure 2-5, you can see that there are five buttons on this page that you can click on to take you to other pages that contain information about your account; these include the pages discussed next.

Personal Info

This page contains your name, primary Mac.com email address, and the language used for your account. There's also a checkbox on this page (which is checked by default) for placing you on the .Mac newsletter's email mailing list. If you don't wish to receive this email, uncheck this box and then click on the Submit button after you've made your change.

The .Mac newsletter is sent out weekly to your Mac.com email address. The newsletters are used to inform .Mac members of new member benefits, software updates, software discounts for .Mac members, and important information about changes or additions to the .Mac services.

Credit Card Info

This page contains the credit card information used for your .Mac account, as well as your physical mailing address. If you switch credit cards, or if your current one expires, this is the page you'll need to go to in order to update the information.

Additionally, this page contains the Auto-Renew checkbox, which is checked by default. This means that your .Mac membership (and any extra email addresses or iDisk space) will be renewed automatically when the time comes. If you do not wish for your .Mac account to be renewed automatically, make sure that you uncheck this box.

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Forget Your Password?

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If you're like me, you have many passwords you need to remember, so it can be easy to forget the ones you don't use frequently. If it's been a while since you last logged in to your .Mac account, you can click on the "Forgot your password" link shown in Figure 2-3. This begins a three-step process to getting a new password.

1. Enter your .Mac Member Name and your Birth Date, as shown in Figure 2-6.
   

   Figure 2-6: Step 1 to getting your password back: verify your birth date.
2. Answer the password hint question you set up when you created your .Mac membership; you will see a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 2-7.
   

   Figure 2-7: Answer the question for your password hint.

Instead of taking you to a page that displays the password to your .Mac account, you will be asked to assign a new password to your account, as shown in Figure 2-8.

Figure 2-8: Enter a new password for your .Mac account.

Click on the Continue button after entering the new password (in both fields) to assign the password to your .Mac account. You will be taken back to the .Mac Log In page, shown in Figure 2-3. Now use your Member Name and the new password you've created to log in (and write that new password down somewhere so you remember it).

Another option for getting your .Mac account's password, without having to change it to something else, is to find the password in Keychain Access (/Applications/Utilities). To get the password for your .Mac account, follow these steps:

1. Launch Keychain Access.
2. In the Kind column, look for an item labeled ".Mac password"; click on it.
   Rather than scrolling through the list of items in your keychain, click on the Kind column heading. This sorts the keychains by the name in the Kind column, causing the ".Mac password" item to bubble up to the top of the list.
3. Beneath the listing of keys, you will see two tabbed panes.
4. In the Attributes pane, you will see an empty text field beneath the label "Show password," which has an empty checkbox next to it.
5. Click on the checkbox next to "Show password"; the password for your .Mac account will appear in the text field below.

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The .Mac Services Sidebar

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After you log on to the .Mac site, you will see a sidebar that contains icons for the services and applications available to every .Mac member. This sidebar, shown in Figure 2-9, is very similar to the Finder's Sidebar in that clicking on any of these icons takes you to a page that contains additional information about the application or service, or it takes you to a login page, where you'll be challenged for your .Mac member name and password.

Figure 2-9: .Mac's services and applications sidebar.

The icons you'll find in the .Mac Services Sidebar include those discussed in the following list.

Mail

Formerly known as Webmail, clicking on the Mail icon will let you access your Mac.com email account using your default web browser. Mail is described in greater detail in Chapter 4.

Address Book

This takes you to a page that contains all of the contacts stored in your .Mac account's Address Book. If you have iSync installed on your system, you can sync your Mac's Address Book with your .Mac account. This means that the information stored in your computer's Address Book will be available for use online, and you can sync its data back and forth. Use of the Address Book will be discussed further in Chapter 4.

Bookmarks

If you use iSync to synchronize Safari's bookmarks with your iDisk, clicking on this link takes you to a page that gives you access to your bookmarks online. This means that wherever you are, your bookmarks are always available to you if you have an Internet connection. For more information about Bookmark syncing, see Chapter 9.

iCards

Clicking this icon takes you to the iCards page, from which you can send electronic postcards to your friends using a variety of images provided by Apple, or images you store in your iDisk's Pictures folder. iCards are discussed further in Chapter 10.

HomePage

Clicking this icon takes you to the HomePage building page, described further in Chapter 7.

iDisk

This page provides you with general information about iDisks, and nothing pertaining to your actual iDisk. This is more of a Help page for iDisk users, which contains information about what information to store (and where) on your iDisk, how to open and share your iDisk, and information for using the iDisk Utility, which can be downloaded from Apple, at

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The .Mac Learning Center

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One of the most recent additions to the .Mac services is the Learning Center, which you can access by clicking on the Learning Center icon in the Inside .Mac Sidebar, located on the right side of the Mac.com web site after you've logged in (see Figure 2-1). The Learning Center offers training and tutorials for learning more about the .Mac services, Mac OS X and the iLife '04 applications (iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, iDVD, and GarageBand). The Learning Center also offers QuickTime training movies to help you learn your way around your Mac.

The Learning Center, shown in Figure 2-12, gives you access to online tutorials and QuickTime movies to help you learn more about the .Mac services and Mac OS X and its applications.

Figure 2-12: The new .Mac Learning Center.

At the top of the first column to the left in Figure 2-12, you'll see three simple buttons. The first button (a square) lists the Learning Center's categories as follows:

• The .Mac services and applications
• Mac OS X Basics
• Mac OS X Applications
• iMovie
• iPhoto
• iDVD

When you go to the Learning Center, the first page that will load in is the Getting Started with .Mac tutorial. This tutorial gives you a quick overview of the .Mac services and applications and is a great aid for new .Mac members who want to quickly see what's available.

The second button, which looks like four smaller squares with the upper-right one slightly askew, lists the Learning Center's contents by the following topics:

• New Mac User
• The Internet
• Digital Photography
• Movies and DVDs
• Getting Organized
• Security

These Learning Center modules provide you with useful tips on such things as how to manage your .Mac Mail or use your digital camera.

The third button, with the little "i" in it, is the Information button. When you click on this, you'll get access to all of the Learning Center's training modules, listed in alphabetical order.

To use the Learning Center, select a category in the first column, and then one of the learning modules in the middle column. When you select one of the learning modules, you'll see a brief introduction to the module in the right column; just click on the Start Learning button in this column to go on to the tutorial, as shown in Figure 2-13.

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Chapter 3: Using Your iDisk

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The cornerstone of your .Mac membership is the iDisk. With a basic .Mac membership, the iDisk provides you with 100 MB of storage space on one of Apple's .Mac servers, which you can mount on your Desktop from the Finder, the command line using the Terminal application, and via AppleScript.

This chapter provides an in-depth view of your iDisk, including details on how to connect to your iDisk and what you'll find when you get there, as well as how to connect to another .Mac member's iDisk Public folder. You'll also learn about what allows your Mac to connect to an iDisk: a wonderful piece of technology, called WebDAV.

Before we dive in and start mounting your iDisk or some other .Mac member's iDisk Public folder, let's take a quick look at what an iDisk is, and what you'll find there.

The technology behind your iDisk is something known as WebDAV, which stands for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning. WebDAV is an extension to the HTTP protocol, which we all know is the protocol that's used over the Web. Any time you type in a URL into a web browser, you'll see the standard http:// prefix behind the domain name of the web site you want to browse.

WebDAV uses HTTP to allow you to access folders on a web server. Since these folders reside on a server, they are often referred to as a share, since the folder shares space on the server with other folders. Without going into a long, drawn-out technical discussion, all you really need to know are these two things:

• Your iDisk is nothing more than a folder that lives on Apple's server (located at idisk.mac.com)
• Your .Mac member name is the name of your WebDAV folder on that server

When you put the two together, you end up with a URL that looks something like this:

http://idisk.mac.com/membername
               

But don't try entering that URL into a web browser, because you'll get an error. Instead, the easiest way to mount your iDisk is with the Finder or the iDisk Utility, which we'll cover later in this chapter.

So now that we know that an iDisk is a folder that lives on a web server, let's take a look at what's on your iDisk. To start out, every iDisk has a default set of folders, as shown in Figure 3-1.

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The iDisk's Filesystem

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Before we dive in and start mounting your iDisk or some other .Mac member's iDisk Public folder, let's take a quick look at what an iDisk is, and what you'll find there.

The technology behind your iDisk is something known as WebDAV, which stands for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning. WebDAV is an extension to the HTTP protocol, which we all know is the protocol that's used over the Web. Any time you type in a URL into a web browser, you'll see the standard http:// prefix behind the domain name of the web site you want to browse.

WebDAV uses HTTP to allow you to access folders on a web server. Since these folders reside on a server, they are often referred to as a share, since the folder shares space on the server with other folders. Without going into a long, drawn-out technical discussion, all you really need to know are these two things:

• Your iDisk is nothing more than a folder that lives on Apple's server (located at idisk.mac.com)
• Your .Mac member name is the name of your WebDAV folder on that server

When you put the two together, you end up with a URL that looks something like this:

http://idisk.mac.com/membername
               

But don't try entering that URL into a web browser, because you'll get an error. Instead, the easiest way to mount your iDisk is with the Finder or the iDisk Utility, which we'll cover later in this chapter.

So now that we know that an iDisk is a folder that lives on a web server, let's take a look at what's on your iDisk. To start out, every iDisk has a default set of folders, as shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1: Your iDisk, as viewed from the Finder.

But in reality, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes with your iDisk. For example, if your iDisk is mounted, open up the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities) and issue the following command:

$ ls -lapR /Volumes/ 
                  dotMacMemberName
               

You'll see a long stream of files and folder names go by, since this command lists everything on your iDisk. To save you the pain of watching the contents of your iDisk flash before your eyes, I've watered this down a bit to show you the basic filesystem structure of your iDisk in Figure 3-2.

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Mounting the iDisk

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In order to use your iDisk, you must first be connected to the Internet, either via PPP or an Ethernet connection. If you're not connected to the Internet, you won't be able to mount the iDisk on your Mac. The reason why you need to be connected to the Net is because all iDisks use a protocol known as WebDAV for mounting shares hosted at Apple (actually, hosted off of the main IP address of 17.250.248.77).

If you have a Finder window open, the quickest way to mount your iDisk is by simply clicking on the iDisk icon, located in the upper section of the Finder window's Sidebar. When you click on the iDisk icon, the Finder collects your .Mac member name and password that you've set in the .Mac preferences panel (System Preferences → .Mac → .Mac) and sends that information off to Apple's server. If the .Mac member name and password matches the information stored on Apple's side, your iDisk mounts on your Desktop and the contents of your iDisk become viewable in the Finder window, as shown in Figure 3-3.

Figure 3-3: An iDisk's Finder window is displayed in Icon View when mounted.

If your Finder is set to show connected servers on the Desktop (Finder → Preferences → Show these items on the Desktop), the iDisk icon shown at the right of Figure 3-3 appears on your Desktop.

Another way to mount your iDisk is from the Finder's Go menu, as shown in Figure 3-4. If you select Go → iDisk, a submenu appears to the right of the Go menu, giving you options for connecting to your iDisk, to another .Mac member's iDisk, or to another .Mac member's Public folder. (iDisk Public folders and how they're used is discussed later in this chapter.)

Figure 3-4: The Finder's Go window can also be used for mounting iDisks.

If you try to connect to your iDisk and haven't entered your .Mac Member Name and Password in the .Mac preference panel, or if you select Go → iDisk → Other User's iDisk from the menu bar, the window shown in Figure 3-5 appears.

Figure 3-5: The Connect To iDisk window.

To connect to the iDisk, enter the .Mac Member name and Password and click on the Connect button. Again, the information you enter in these fields will be validated against Apple's servers. If what you enter passes muster, the iDisk mounts on the Desktop and in the Finder.

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iDisk Public Folders

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One of the great things about having an iDisk is its Public folder. The Public folder is a place where you can store files that you want to share with other people or that other people want to share with you.

This section shows you how to configure the settings for your Public folder, and also how to connect to other .Mac members' Public folders. You'll also learn a bit more about how to tell whether someone has added password-protection to their Public folder.

As mentioned earlier, all iDisk Public folders can have their permissions set to one of two options:

Read-Only

If you select this option, other users can mount your iDisk's Public folder on their computer and view and download its contents; they cannot place files in the Public folder. The Read-Only option is selected by default.

Read-Write

Selecting this option allows others to mount your iDisk's Public folder, view and download its contents, as well as upload (or place) files on your iDisk.

If you want to change your Public folder's permissions to read-write so other people can save files there, go to System Preferences → .Mac → iDisk and click on the radio button next to Read & Write in the Your Public Folder section, as shown in Figure 3-8.

Figure 3-8: To allow others to upload files to your iDisk's Public folder, simply click on the radio button next to Read & Write.

You can also assign a password to control access to your Public folder by clicking on the Set Password button near the bottom of this window. When you do, a sheet slides out at the top of the window, in which you can assign a password (as shown in Figure 3-9). The password you choose must be between 6-8 alphanumeric characters.

Figure 3-9: Assigning a password to your iDisk's Public folder.

You cannot use your .Mac member name as the password for your iDisk's Public folder. For example, I cannot use chuckdude as the password for my Public folder because that's my .Mac member name.

Also, you shouldn't use the same password for your Public folder as what you're using for your .Mac account; if you do, anyone who knows your

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Unmounting an iDisk

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Unmounting an iDisk is pretty easy. Once you've had enough of your iDisk, you can:

• Drag the iDisk icon to the Trash.
• Click on the iDisk's icon and hit -E; this is the same as selecting File → Eject from within the Finder.
• Open a Finder window, hit Shift- -C (for "Computer"), select the iDisk, and hit -E; again, this ejects the iDisk from your system.

Unlike other mounted disks, the iDisk does not have an eject icon next to it in the Finder's Sidebar when it is mounted. This is unfortunate, because when you're looking at a Finder window, there really isn't a way to know that your iDisk is mounted unless you physically click on its icon (and even then, if your iDisk isn't mounted, it soon will be if you're connected to the Internet).

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Mounting an iDisk on a Mac OS 9 System

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Not everyone has access to a Mac OS X system. Lots of people are still waiting for critical software to be carbonized to run on Mac OS X, while others are holding on to their legacy machines because they still function quite nicely. However, as time goes by, legacy Macs running Mac OS 9 are being left in the dust; meanwhile, the .Mac services are moving ahead full-steam.

Fortunately, if you're still clinging on to Mac OS 9, you can use an application called Goliath (http://www.webdav.org/goliath) to access iDisks via WebDAV. Goliath can not only be used to access your own iDisk, but to access the Public folders on other .Mac members' iDisks as well.

There is a version of Goliath for Mac OS X, but it hasn't been updated recently for Panther. If you decide to download and use the Mac OS X version on Panther, do so at your own risk.

To use Goliath to mount your own iDisk on a Mac OS 9 system, follow these steps:

1. Launch Goliath.
2. Go to File → Open iDisk Connection from the menu bar.
3. Enter your .Mac member name in the User Name field and your password in the Password field, as shown in Figure 3-16.
   

   Figure 3-16: Connecting to your iDisk using Goliath.
4. Click on the OK button to mount your iDisk. When Goliath connects to your iDisk, you won't see a disk icon on your Desktop. Instead, you'll only see a window open up, revealing the contents of your iDisk, as shown in Figure 3-17.

Figure 3-17: Goliath, connected to an iDisk.

Once connected to your iDisk, you can double-click on folders to open windows, or click on the disclosure triangles to the left of a folder name to reveal its contents. You can drag and drop files and folders into the various iDisk folders as well, just as you could before.

To disconnect from your iDisk, just close the window with -W.

To use Goliath to connect to another .Mac member's Public folder, follow these steps:

1. Select File → New Connection ( -N) from the menu bar.
2. In the window that appears, enter the following information (also shown in Figure 3-18):

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The iDisk Utility

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For managing your iDisk or gaining access to another .Mac member's Public folder, Apple has provided a small application called the iDisk Utility. The iDisk Utility can be downloaded from your iDisk (/Software/Apple Software/iDisk Utility or /Software/Members Only/dotMac Software/iDisk Utility) and is also available on the CD that came with the boxed .Mac membership sold in stores.

With Mac OS X Panther, the iDisk Utility really isn't necessary because you can use the Go → iDisk menu to mount iDisks and Public folders, and the iDisk preference pane (System Preferences → .Mac → iDisk) actually works for setting and changing the password for your iDisk's Public folder.

That said, the iDisk Utility does have some nice features, so rather than spending a lot of time talking about how to use it, we'll just show off what's best about it. If you find yourself using the iDisk Utility frequently, you should consider adding it to your Dock by dragging its icon there from the Finder.

To install the iDisk Utility, follow these steps:

1. Drag the iDisk_Utility.dmg file to your Desktop
2. Double-click on the disk image to mount it on your computer
3. Double-click on the iDisk_Utility.pkg to start the installation process; just follow along through the installation screens and enter your password when prompted to complete the install

The iDisk Utility will be installed in the Utilities folder (/Applications/Utilities) on your Mac. After it has successfully installed, unmount the disk image and drag the iDisk_Utility.dmg file to the Trash.

To launch the iDisk Utility, make your way to the Utilities folder in the Finder (or use the keyboard shortcut Shift- -U), and then double-click on the iDisk Utility. As you can see from Figure 3-20, the iDisk Utility has a fairly simple interface.

Figure 3-20: The iDisk Utility's Open Public Folder view.

Along the top of the iDisk Utility's window is a toolbar with a series of self-explanatory icons used for gaining access to or managing an iDisk. Each button changes the iDisk Utility's view, similar to how clicking on an icon in the System Preferences application will take you to one of the various panels for configuring your system. The four views of the iDisk Utility are described in the following sections.

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iDisk Synchronization

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One of the features added to Mac OS X Panther is iDisk synchronization, which allows you to keep a copy of everything that you've stored on your iDisk on your Mac. This includes your .Mac HomePage, any Photo Albums you've created with iPhoto or the HomePage tools, and anything else you've uploaded to your iDisk. The only rule that applies here is that you need to reserve as much drive space as your iDisk can handle. So, with the basic .Mac membership, you will need at least 100 MB of spare drive space to sync your iDisk.

The items in the Backup, Library, and Software folders will not be synchronized to your Mac; these items remain on your iDisk.

Reasons you should consider enabling iDisk synchronization include:

• By having a local copy, you can back up the data on your iDisk using the Backup application.
• If you tend to work offline, you can copy files to your local iDisk, and then synchronize your local copy with your real iDisk the next time you go online.
• So you can save files directly from an application to your iDisk without first having to mount it.

To enable iDisk synchronization, open the iDisk preference pane (System Preferences → .Mac → iDisk), and click on the checkbox next to "Create a local copy of your iDisk", as shown in Figure 3-27.

Figure 3-27: Click on the checkbox in the iDisk preference pane to create a local copy of your iDisk.

In looking at Figure 3-27, you'll notice that there are two options for synchronization: Automatically (the default) and Manually. If you have iDisk synchronization set to Automatically, your local iDisk will sync with your online iDisk any time you make a change to the contents of the local copy. For example, if you drag a couple image files to the Pictures folder on your local iDisk, as soon as the save is complete, your iDisks will synchronize, making the images available from your iDisk's Picture folder.

If you set your iDisk synchronization to Manually, you can add and remove files or add and remove subdirectories to the existing folders as much as you want. However, in order to synchronize the local copy with your iDisk on Apple's servers, you will need to manually click on the button next to the iDisk name in the Finder's Sidebar (see Figure 3-28), or Control-click on the iDisk icon on your Desktop and select Sync Now from the contextual menu (shown in Figure 3-29).

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Chapter 4: .Mac Mail

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Next to cell phones and instant messaging, email is probably the most popular form of communication today. Seems hard to believe, but 10 years ago, very few but the geek elite knew about email, and now its hard to meet someone who doesn't have an email address or two. Heck, even my parents have an email account (although they don't have a Mac, but I'll forgive them for that).

Every .Mac membership comes with a personalized Mac.com email address. Whether you use this as your primary or secondary email account, it's a distinctive way to let people know "Hey, I'm a Mac user."

Because email clients can vary, this chapter will not cover how to configure individual mail clients such as Mac OS X's Mail application. Instead, this chapter focuses on showing you how to use .Mac's web-based Mail service, which you can access from any standard browser, including Safari, Camino, Mozilla Firebird, and even Internet Explorer.

One of the best parts of having a Mac.com email address is that you have two options for checking your mail: you can either configure your mail client (such as Mail.app, Entourage, Mailsmith, or Eudora) to check and download your mail, or you can opt to check your mail on the Web via Mac.com's Mail service (formerly known as WebMail).

The .Mac email servers use the Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) for managing access to your email. Without getting technical, IMAP keeps your email on the server, which makes it easy to get at from anywhere, including from Windows or other Unix-based systems. All of your mail stays on the server, even after you've moved an email message to the trash. This means that you need to manage your email carefully to ensure that you don't exceed the mail storage limit of 15 MB that comes standard with every .Mac account.

The other option is that you can configure your email application (such as Mail, Entourage, Mailsmith, or Eudora) to download your email from the .Mac mail servers using the Post-Office Protocol, more commonly known as POP. When you use POP, all of the email will download to your computer when you check mail. Basically, you will be using the .Mac servers as a go-between for sending and receiving mail, rather than storing the mail on the server side.

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Two Ways to Check Your .Mac Mail

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One of the best parts of having a Mac.com email address is that you have two options for checking your mail: you can either configure your mail client (such as Mail.app, Entourage, Mailsmith, or Eudora) to check and download your mail, or you can opt to check your mail on the Web via Mac.com's Mail service (formerly known as WebMail).

The .Mac email servers use the Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) for managing access to your email. Without getting technical, IMAP keeps your email on the server, which makes it easy to get at from anywhere, including from Windows or other Unix-based systems. All of your mail stays on the server, even after you've moved an email message to the trash. This means that you need to manage your email carefully to ensure that you don't exceed the mail storage limit of 15 MB that comes standard with every .Mac account.

The other option is that you can configure your email application (such as Mail, Entourage, Mailsmith, or Eudora) to download your email from the .Mac mail servers using the Post-Office Protocol, more commonly known as POP. When you use POP, all of the email will download to your computer when you check mail. Basically, you will be using the .Mac servers as a go-between for sending and receiving mail, rather than storing the mail on the server side.

As you can see, it appears that you have only two options for checking your .Mac Mail: IMAP or POP. But how do you know what's best for you?

The advantage to using IMAP is that your mail is always available from one central location: the .Mac mail servers. Your mail is automatically backed up by Apple, and you don't have to worry about the mail taking up huge amounts of space on your hard drive.

POP on the other hand, downloads the mail to your computer and stores it on your hard drive. That means that your mail is always on your system when you need it, but it also means that you'll need to allow for drive space to store your mail, and that you will need to back up your mail on a regular basis. The one advantage POP has over IMAP is that your .Mac mail will download from Apple's servers onto your computer, which helps you keep under that 15 MB email storage limit.

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Using .Mac's Web-Based Mail

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