Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

Display and Sound

Sight and sound are the primary senses you use to experience the glory of a Mac. (Smell cartridges are, mercifully, still years away.) Mastering the screen and speaker controls, therefore, offers big payoffs.

Figure 1-4. Once the Shut Down dialog box appears, press the R key instead of Restart, S for Sleep, Esc for Cancel, or Enter for Shut Down.

Opening Sound and Displays Panels

Ordinarily, you’re supposed to adjust your screen or speaker settings by opening System Preferences and clicking the Displays or Sound icon. But if you’re just seeking a quick brightness or volume adjustment, life’s too short for that slow-lane method. Instead, you can use the dedicated keys for adjusting brightness or volume that come on every modern Mac keyboard. (The brightness keys look like suns, and the volume keys look like speakers.)

Sometimes, though, you need access to more sophisticated controls. For example, you might want to adjust the screen resolution to see how your Web page would look on a different screen, or you might want to change the built-in beep sound. For these tasks, only the System Preferences panes will do.

So here’s the tip: on a PowerBook or iBook, you can jump directly to the Displays preference pane by holding down Option and pressing one of the brightness keys. You can jump to the Sound pane by holding down Option and pressing one of the volume keys. And if you’re ...