OS X El Capitan: The Missing Manual

Launchpad

The Launchpad app presents a dark background with evenly spaced icons that represent all your programs (Figure 5-3). You can open one with a single click.

Why did Apple feel the need to create yet another way to open programs?

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: Report to Apple

What the—I was working along in Safari, and all of a sudden it just vanished! Poof! And all I got was this lousy dialog box about “reporting to Apple.” What’s going on?

Apple is trying to assimilate you.

Or, more accurately, it’s trying to enlist your help in ferreting out all the little glitches that make modern computing so much fun. If you’re willing to click the Report button and type a few comments (“I was running Word, minding my own business, and when I clicked the Print button, the whole thing just crashed”), then Apple will add your report to the thousands flowing in from everyone else.

The idea is that when its programmers get a moment, they’ll study these reports, track down the patterns (“Hmm, we’ve received 50,000 reports about that Print button in Word”), and then chase down the software company responsible—and, presumably, get a fix under way.

The report you submit is full of technical info that helps the programmers figure out what was happening at the time of the crash, but no personal information goes along for the ride. So if you feel like doing some good for your fellow Mac fans, by all means ...