Chapter 9: Customize Your Mac

How to…

• Set personal preferences

• Customize your environment

• Set hardware preferences

There are many ways you can change, adjust, set up and configure your Mac, customize your environment, and make your computer perform the way you want. Mac OS X uses the System Preferences application to centralize settings that affect both your computer and your personal environment. With almost two dozen preference panes, this application gives you many ways to change how you work with your Mac and control how your Mac works for you.

In this chapter, I’ll show you the preference panes you can use to customize your Mac and explain what each of them is used for. You’ll learn how to adjust the way your Mac works, personalize your environment, set up such things as networking, printing, and screen display, learn how to automatically set your Mac’s date and time, and find out how to use special features for people who have difficulties using their computer.