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Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition
book

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

by David Pogue
September 2012
Beginner content levelBeginner
762 pages
29h 25m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

Menulets = Tray

Most Windows fans refer to the row of tiny status icons at the lower-right corner of the screen as the tray, even though Microsoft’s official term is the notification area. (Why use one syllable when eight will do?)

Macintosh fans wage a similar battle of terminology when it comes to the little menu-bar icons shown in Figure 1-5. Apple calls them Menu Extras, but Mac fans prefer to call them menulets.

In any case, these menu-bar icons are cousins of the Windows tray—each is both an indicator and a menu that provides direct access to certain settings. One menulet lets you adjust your Mac’s speaker volume, another lets you change the screen resolution, another shows you the remaining power in your laptop battery, and so on.

These little guys are the cousins of the controls found in the Windows system tray.

Figure 1-5. These little guys are the cousins of the controls found in the Windows system tray.

Making a menulet appear usually involves turning on a certain checkbox. These checkboxes lurk on the various panes of System Preferences (Chapter 15), which is the Mac equivalent of the Control Panel. (To open System Preferences, choose its name from the menu or click the gears icon on the Dock.)

Here’s a rundown of the most useful Apple menulets, complete with instructions on where to find the magic on/off checkbox for each.

  • AirPlay lets you send the Mac’s screen ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449338978Supplemental ContentErrata Page