Macs FOR DUMmIES‰
8TH EDITION
by David Pogue
Macs FOR DUMmIES‰
8TH EDITION
by David Pogue Macs For Dummies®, 8th Edition Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 Copyright © 2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permit- ted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4447, e-mail: permcoor- [email protected]. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REP- RESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CRE- ATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CON- TAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FUR- THER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.
For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Control Number: 2004102348 ISBN: 0-7645-5656-8 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 8O/SR/QU/QU/IN About the Author David Pogue, Yale ’85, is the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times and technology correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning. With nearly 3 million books in print, he is also one of the world’s bestselling how-to authors, having written or co-written seven books in the For Dummies series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music), several computer- humor books, and even a techno-thriller, now out of print, called Hard Drive.
David is also the creator and primary author of the Missing Manual series of funny intermediate computer books (www.missingmanuals.com). The series includes books on Mac OS X, iMovie and iDVD, iPhoto, iPod and iTunes, Office X for Macintosh, Dreamweaver, and many others.
With his madly adored wife Jennifer, son Kelly, daughter Tia, and Bullwinkle the Wonderdog, he lives in Connecticut, where he does magic tricks and plays the piano. The family photos lurk on the World Wide Web at www.davidpogue.com.
Author’s Acknowledgments This book was made possible by the enthusiasm and support of Project Editor Mary Goodwin, Acquisitions Manager Bob Woerner, and everyone else in the sprawling universe of Wiley & Sons voicemail. Thanks, too, to technical editor Dennis Cohen.
Above all, my gratitude and love go to the lovely Jennifer, Kelly, and Tia, who stood by me (or crawled by me, as the case may be) during the writing of this book. Publisher’s Acknowledgments We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/. Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions, Editorial, and Production Media Development Project Coordinator: April Farling Project Editor: Mary Goodwin Layout and Graphics: Andrea Dahl, Acquisitions Manager: Bob Woerner Lauren Goddard, Stephanie D. Jumper, Technical Editor: Dennis Cohen Michael Kruzil, Lynsey Osborn, Heather Ryan, Jacque Schneider Editorial Manager: Carol Sheehan Proofreaders: Andy Hollandbeck, Betty Kish, Media Development Manager: Carl Pierce, Brian H. Walls Laura VanWinkle Indexer: Steve Rath Media Development Supervisor: Richard Graves Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director Publishing for Consumer Dummies Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director Composition Services Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services Contents at a Glance
Introduction ...... 1 Part I: For the Absolute Mac Virgin ...... 5 Chapter 1: How to Turn On Your Mac (and What to Do Next) ...... 7 Chapter 2: Windows, Icons, and Trashes ...... 25 Chapter 3: Actually Accomplishing Something ...... 45 Chapter 4: Typing, Saving, and Finding Again ...... 79 Chapter 5: A Quiet Talk about Printers, Printing, and Fonts ...... 113 Part II: The Internet Defanged ...... 125 Chapter 6: Faking Your Way onto AOL and the Internet ...... 127 Chapter 7: The Weird Wide Web ...... 153 Chapter 8: E-mail for He-males and Females ...... 171 Part III: Software Competence ...... 187 Chapter 9: iTunes, iPod, iConquered ...... 189 Chapter 10: An Eye for iPhoto ...... 207 Chapter 11: iSpielberg: Digital Movies and DVDs ...... 227 Part IV: Toward a New, Nerdier You ...... 251 Chapter 12: Back to Mac OS 9 ...... 253 Chapter 13: Mono-Mac, Multi-People ...... 263 Chapter 14: Networks for Nitwits ...... 275 Chapter 15: The Book of iBook and PowerBook ...... 289 Chapter 16: When Bad Things Happen to Good Macs ...... 299 Chapter 17: Beyond the Mac: Where to Go from Here ...... 319 Part V: The Part of Tens ...... 325 Chapter 18: Ten Cool Things You Didn’t Know Your Mac Could Do ...... 327 Chapter 19: Ten Tricks That Didn’t Quite Fit the Outline ...... 345 Chapter 20: Ten Back-of-the-Mac Jacks ...... 355 Index ...... 363
Table of Contents
Introduction...... 1 Who Needs a Mac Book? ...... 1 How to Use This Book (Other Than as a Mouse Pad) ...... 2 Macintosh conventions ...... 2 Conventions in this book ...... 2 The cult of Macintosh ...... 3
Part I: For the Absolute Mac Virgin ...... 5
Chapter 1: How to Turn On Your Mac (and What to Do Next) ...... 7 Switching On the Mac ...... 7 What Happens Next ...... 9 The Setup Assistant ...... 9 The Welcome screen ...... 12 The desktop and menu bar ...... 12 The big turn-off ...... 13 Why not to turn off the Mac ...... 14 Desktop, Dock, and Icons ...... 14 Macintosh syntax ...... 17 The complete list of window doodads ...... 18 Double-clicking in theory and practice ...... 19 One window ...... 20 Multiple windows ...... 21 Where to Get Help ...... 22 Pit stop ...... 23 Top Ten Similarities between You and Your Mac ...... 24 Chapter 2: Windows, Icons, and Trashes ...... 25 Becoming Manipulative ...... 25 Meet the hard drive ...... 25 Foldermania ...... 26 Your Home folder ...... 26 Folder factory ...... 27 Keyboard shortcuts ...... 28 The Sidebar ...... 31 Icon, List, and Column Views ...... 32 Icon view ...... 34 List view ...... 35 Column view ...... 36 How to Trash Something ...... 38 Top Ten Window and Icon Tips ...... 40 viii Macs For Dummies, 8th Edition
Chapter 3: Actually Accomplishing Something ...... 45 Your Software Collection ...... 46 Getting more software ...... 46 Where to buy it ...... 47 The Dock ...... 48 How the Dock works ...... 48 Adding your own icons ...... 49 Minimizing a window ...... 50 Four fancy Dock tricks ...... 51 The First Tutorial ...... 52 The Calculator ...... 53 Stickies ...... 53 Triangles in the Dock ...... 55 The cornerstone of human endeavor: Copy and Paste ...... 56 Quitting a program ...... 58 Hiding a program ...... 59 Exposé: Clearing the decks ...... 59 More Exposé ...... 61 System Preferences ...... 61 Date & Time ...... 63 Desktop & Screen Saver ...... 64 Displays ...... 67 Energy Saver ...... 67 Exposé ...... 68 Keyboard & Mouse ...... 69 Software Update ...... 69 Sound ...... 70 Quitting System Preferences ...... 70 The Mac Keyboard ...... 71 Top Ten Freebie Programs ...... 73 Chapter 4: Typing, Saving, and Finding Again ...... 79 Your Very First Bestseller ...... 79 Top three rules of word processing ...... 79 The excitement begins ...... 80 Editing for the linguistically blessed ...... 81 Puff, the Magic Drag-N-Drop ...... 84 Form and Format ...... 86 The return of Return ...... 86 Appealing characters ...... 87 Formatting paragraphs ...... 89 Working with Documents ...... 90 Meet your memory ...... 90 The Save command ...... 91 Navigating the Save File sheet ...... 92 Closing a file, with a sigh ...... 94 How to find out what’s going on ...... 95 Table of Contents ix
Getting It All Back Again ...... 96 Crazy relationships: Parents and kids ...... 96 File-name suffixes ...... 97 Fetch: How to retrieve a document ...... 98 Save Me Again! ...... 99 How to Back Up — and Burn CDs ...... 100 The importance of being backed up ...... 101 What to back up ...... 101 Method 1: Burn a CD or DVD ...... 101 Method 2: Back up onto another Mac ...... 104 Method 3: Buy a backup drive ...... 105 When What Was Found Is Now Lost ...... 105 The Search bar ...... 105 The Find command ...... 107 Top Ten Word-Processing Tips ...... 109 Chapter 5: A Quiet Talk about Printers, Printing, and Fonts ...... 113 Inkjet Printers ...... 113 Laser Printers ...... 114 Hooking Up the Printer ...... 115 After All That: How You Actually Print ...... 118 Using the Tab key in dialog boxes ...... 118 Other options ...... 119 Micro-managing your printouts ...... 120 Font Book: Just Your Type ...... 121 Inspecting your fonts ...... 123 Adding, removing, and hiding fonts ...... 124
Part II: The Internet Defanged ...... 125
Chapter 6: Faking Your Way onto AOL and the Internet ...... 127 Two Ways to Go Online ...... 128 Connecting via Modem ...... 129 America Online or Direct to the Internet? ...... 129 America Online (AOL), the Cyber-Grocery ...... 131 Your first online session ...... 132 Exploring by icon ...... 133 Navigating by keyword ...... 134 How to find your way back to the good stuff ...... 135 The e-mail connection ...... 135 The party line ...... 136 Talking behind their backs ...... 137 How to find — and get — free software ...... 138 Signing Up with EarthLink ...... 138 The EarthLink sign-up program ...... 138 A little ISP housekeeping ...... 139 x Macs For Dummies, 8th Edition
What’s on the Internet ...... 140 E-mail ...... 140 The Web ...... 140 Newsgroups ...... 141 How to Hang Up ...... 143 How to Open Downloaded Goodies ...... 144 Problem 1: It’s encoded ...... 145 Problem 2: Wrong format ...... 146 The Internet as Giant Backup Disk ...... 148 Copying files to your iDisk ...... 149 The Public folder ...... 151 Top Ten Best/Worst Aspects of the Net ...... 152 Chapter 7: The Weird Wide Web ...... 153 Getting to the Web ...... 153 Internet Made Idiotproof: Link-Clicking ...... 154 Where to Go, What to Do on the Web ...... 154 Ways to search for a particular topic ...... 156 Useful Web pages: The tip of the iceberg ...... 159 Safari Tip-O-Rama ...... 161 More address shortcuts ...... 161 Even less typing ...... 161 Saving a good picture ...... 162 Where’s home for you? ...... 163 Faster — please, make it faster! ...... 163 Bookmark it ...... 164 Stop the pop-ups! ...... 166 Open a new window ...... 167 Open a new tab ...... 168 Learn to love history ...... 170 Chapter 8: E-mail for He-males and Females ...... 171 Getting into E-Mail ...... 171 Sending e-mail ...... 172 Four tips for sending mail ...... 178 Four ways not to be loathed online ...... 179 Checking Your Mail ...... 181 Processing a message you’ve read ...... 182 The Anti-Spam Handbook ...... 184
Part III: Software Competence ...... 187
Chapter 9: iTunes, iPod, iConquered ...... 189 Meet iTunes ...... 189 Opening iTunes ...... 190 Window Fun ...... 191 Audio CDs ...... 193 Table of Contents xi
Copying CD songs to your hard drive ...... 193 Playlists ...... 194 Smart Playlists ...... 195 Burning music CDs ...... 196 The iTunes Music Store ...... 198 Welcome to the Music Store ...... 198 Buying music ...... 203 Buying an audiobook ...... 204 Signing out ...... 204 What to do with music you’ve bought ...... 204 The iPod ...... 205 Chapter 10: An Eye for iPhoto ...... 207 iPhoto: The Digital Shoebox ...... 207 iPhoto meets camera ...... 208 The post-import slide show ...... 209 Editing Pictures ...... 211 Rotating a picture ...... 211 Cropping a picture ...... 212 Fixing the colors ...... 213 Removing the redeye demons ...... 214 Painting out freckles, warts, and zits ...... 215 B & W and Sepia ...... 215 Adjusting brightness and contrast ...... 215 Organizing into “Albums” ...... 216 Showing Off Your Photos ...... 218 Making prints ...... 218 Having a slide show ...... 219 Sending pix by e-mail ...... 219 Ordering prints ...... 220 Professional bookmaking ...... 220 HomePage ...... 222 Desktop or Screen Saver ...... 222 .Mac Slides ...... 223 Backing Up Your Photos ...... 223 Chapter 11: iSpielberg: Digital Movies and DVDs ...... 227 Got What It Takes? ...... 227 Filming Your Life ...... 229 Step 1: Dump the Footage into iMovie ...... 230 Capturing clips ...... 231 How much footage can your Mac hold? ...... 232 Naming, playing, and trimming clips ...... 233 Step 2: Build the Movie ...... 234 Meet the Timeline viewer ...... 235 Adding a cross-fade ...... 236 Adding titles ...... 237 Color Effects ...... 238 Background music and sound FX ...... 239 xii Macs For Dummies, 8th Edition
Step 3: Find an Audience ...... 241 Sending your movie back to the camcorder ...... 241 Saving your movie as a QuickTime file ...... 242 Burning your movie onto a real DVD ...... 244
Part IV: Toward a New, Nerdier You ...... 251
Chapter 12: Back to Mac OS 9 ...... 253 A Tale of Two Systems ...... 253 Two Mac OS 9 Methods ...... 254 Classic: The Mac OS 9 Simulator ...... 255 Understanding the Classic world ...... 257 Getting out of Classic ...... 257 Restarting in Mac OS 9 ...... 258 Switching to Mac OS 9 ...... 259 Switching to Mac OS X (long way) ...... 260 Switching to Mac OS X (short way) ...... 261 Chapter 13: Mono-Mac, Multi-People ...... 263 All About Accounts ...... 263 Setting Up Accounts ...... 264 Creating an account ...... 265 Building a Rubber Room ...... 267 Logging On ...... 269 Shared Folders ...... 270 Logging Off — Or Not ...... 271 Deleting Accounts ...... 273 Chapter 14: Networks for Nitwits ...... 275 Two Ways to Build the Network ...... 276 Ethernet made eathy ...... 276 Your ride to the AirPort ...... 277 Sharing Files ...... 281 Phase 1: Setting up the computers ...... 281 Phase 2: Connecting from your Mac ...... 283 Phase 3: What you can do once you’re in ...... 286 Chapter 15: The Book of iBook and PowerBook ...... 289 iBook versus PowerBook ...... 289 Laptop Care and Feeding ...... 290 Sleep is good. We like sleep...... 290 Battery positives and negatives ...... 291 Trackpad Proficiency Drill ...... 292 The Keyboard: Not Your Father’s Typewriter ...... 294 Table of Contents xiii
Have Laptop, Might Travel ...... 296 X-ray machines and you ...... 296 Desperate for a fix ...... 296 Insta-Printer ...... 297 Top Tips for Maximizing Battery Power ...... 297 Chapter 16: When Bad Things Happen to Good Macs ...... 299 Introduction to Computer Hell ...... 299 Frozen Programs ...... 299 First resort: Force quit ...... 300 Last resort: Restart the Mac ...... 300 Things Are Too Slow ...... 301 Startup Problems ...... 301 No chime, no picture ...... 301 Picture, no ding ...... 301 Some crazy program opens itself every time you start up ...... 302 Kernel panic ...... 302 Freezes during startup ...... 303 “I don’t want to have to log in every day — it’s my own Mac!” ...303 “I can’t log in! I’m in an endless startup loop!” ...... 304 Forgotten password ...... 304 Software Situations ...... 305 Minor eccentric behavior ...... 305 System Preferences controls are dimmed ...... 308 You can’t rename a file ...... 308 Can’t empty the Trash ...... 308 Hardware Headaches ...... 309 Your mouse is jerky or sticky ...... 309 Double-clicking doesn’t work ...... 310 A CD won’t come out ...... 310 The screen is too dim ...... 310 The Wrong Program Opens ...... 310 File name extensions ...... 311 Reassigning documents to programs ...... 312 Error Messages ...... 314 “You do not have sufficient access privileges” ...... 314 “DNS Entry not found” or “Error 404” ...... 316 Fixing the Disk ...... 316 Reinstalling Mac OS X ...... 317 Chapter 17: Beyond the Mac: Where to Go from Here ...... 319 Where to Turn in Times of Trouble ...... 319 Your 15 minutes of free help ...... 319 $150 for three years ...... 320 Free help sources ...... 320 Where to Get the Inside Dirt ...... 321 Upgrading to Mac OS 10.4 — and Beyond ...... 322 Save Changes Before Closing? ...... 323 xiv Macs For Dummies, 8th Edition
Part V: The Part of Tens ...... 325
Chapter 18: Ten Cool Things You Didn’t Know Your Mac Could Do . . .327 Type Across the World ...... 327 Get a chat account ...... 327 The Buddy List ...... 329 Make Free Phone (and Video) Calls ...... 331 Talk to You ...... 333 Sing ...... 334 Listen ...... 335 Turning on speech recognition ...... 335 What the Mac can understand ...... 336 Speaking to the Mac ...... 337 Play DVDs ...... 337 Send Faxes ...... 339 Receive Faxes ...... 341 Take Pictures of the Screen ...... 342 Run Windows Programs ...... 343 Chapter 19: Ten Tricks That Didn’t Quite Fit the Outline ...... 345 Closing All Windows at Once ...... 345 Multitasking Methods #1 ...... 345 Multitasking Methods #2 ...... 346 Make an Alias of a File ...... 347 Self-Launching Programs ...... 348 The Secret Life of a Scroll Bar ...... 349 An Instant “You Are Here” Map ...... 350 Folder Burrowing in the Dock ...... 350 The Secret Program’s Dock Menu ...... 351 Redesigning the Finder Toolbar ...... 352 Different buttons, smaller buttons ...... 352 Adding your own stuff ...... 353 Chapter 20: Ten Back-of-the-Mac Jacks ...... 355 Lock ...... 356 Headphones ...... 356 Speakers ...... 356 FireWire ...... 357 Ethernet ...... 358 Phone Line ...... 358 USB ...... 358 External Monitor (Adapter) ...... 360 External Monitor (Apple Only) ...... 361 S-Video Output ...... 361
Index...... 363 Introduction
f you bought a Mac, you’re unbelievably smart (or lucky). You’ve neatly Ieliminated much of the hassle, frustration, and annoyance that normally comes with buying a computer. You have a computer that doesn’t just look a heck of a lot better than other kinds of computers — it works better, too, because both its hardware and its software were designed by a single com- pany. And not a single computer virus has yet surfaced that can affect the Mac’s operating software. (You know how your friends and your newspaper are always going on about viruses and hackers? They’re talking about Windows computers. The Mac doesn’t do Windows.)
The Mac also has everything you need built in: a modem (so you can use the Internet and e-mail), a CD burner (great for making backups), or even a DVD burner (for preserving your home movies on DVD), and a huge assortment of free programs.
Who Needs a Mac Book? If the Mac is so simple, then who needs a book about it?
Well, despite all the free goodies you get with the Mac, a manual isn’t among them. You need somewhere to turn when things go wrong, when you’d like to know what the add-on software does, or when you want to stumble onto the Internet for the first time.
By the way, of course you’re not a dummy. Two pieces of evidence tell me so: For one thing, you’re learning the Mac, and for another, you’re reading this book! But I’ve taught hundreds of people how to use their Macs, and an awful lot of them start out saying they feel like dummies when it comes to computers. Society surrounds us with fast-talking teenagers who grew up learning English from their Nintendo sets; no wonder the rest of us sometimes feel left out.
But you’re no more a dummy for not knowing the Mac than you were before you knew how to drive. Learning a Macintosh is like learning to drive: After a lesson or two, you can go anywhere your heart desires.
So when we say Dummies, we’re saying it with an affectionate wink. Still, if the cover bothers you even a little — I’ll admit it, you wouldn’t be the first — please rip it right off. The inner cover, we hope, will make you proud to have the book out on your desk. 2 Macs For Dummies, 8th Edition How to Use This Book (Other Than as a Mouse Pad) Start with the very basics in Chapter 1; turn to Chapter 16 in times of trouble; and consult the other chapters as the spirit moves you.
Macintosh conventions Macintosh conventions? Sure. They’re called Macworld Expos, and there’s one in Boston and one in San Francisco each year.
Conventions in this book Oh, that kind of convention.
So that we’ll be eligible for some of the more prestigious book-design awards, I’ve marked some topics with these icons:
Nerdy stuff that’s okay to skip but will fascinate the kind of people who read Tom Clancy novels.
The Macintosh is the greatest computer on earth, but it’s still a computer. Now and then it does unexplainable stuff, which I’ll explain.
A shortcut so you can show off.
Denotes an actual You-Try-It Experience. Hold the book open with a nearby cinder block, put your hands on the computer, and do as I say.
Points out something really cool that your Mac can do that mere mortal com- puters can only eye jealously. Introduction 3 The cult of Macintosh You may already be aware that less than five percent of computers sold in the U.S. are Macs. The rest are primarily what are known as PCs: personal com- puters whose operating-system software is Microsoft Windows.
This statistic may boggle your mind. If the computers that appear in TV shows or in the movies were any indication, you’d think that the situation was reversed. (Hollywood loves Macs.)
You’d also be shocked if you work in just about any creative business — pub- lishing, music, art, film, Web design, science, and so on — all of which are fields where the Mac dominates. The Mac’s market share is much higher in many overseas countries, too.
One place where the Mac does not dominate is in the corporate offices of America, where a single buyer may order up 500 computers at a time. Those gigantic corporate purchases are one huge factor in making the Mac’s pres- ence seem puny. (“Corporations buy PCs; people buy Macs,” I always say.)
But five percent is still enough to constitute 20 million people; still enough to keep Apple profitable and thriving (even through the tech recession of 2000–2003, when other computer companies were hurting); and most impor- tantly, still enough to attract software companies to write cool and useful software that runs on the Mac. The number of programs available for the Mac continues to rise, month after month.
None of this may seem to matter to you, though, when the inevitable con- frontation occurs. You’ll be at some party, some meeting, and somebody, sooner or later, will put you down for being a Mac fan. They’ll tell you that Apple is doomed because its market share is so small, or that none of the really good games are available for the Macintosh, or that Macs cost too much.
Whether you choose to dignify these sorts of remarks with a response is up to you. But if you need ammunition, here are a few points to remember: