InformIT: Mac OS X Unleashed

Table of Contents

Sleep

The Sleep tab of the Energy Saver pane, shown in Figure 11.36, is where you set the sleep options for your machine. Sleep is a low-power mode for the machine, and is especially useful for laptops. Using a slider, you specify how long your machine should be inactive before it sleeps. Apple recommends that you set this option to Never whenever you are burning CDs in iTunes. The Energy Saver pane further allows you to specify separate sleep timing for the display and the hard disk.

Figure 11.36 Sleep time and sleep timing options are specified in the Sleep tab of the Energy Saver pane.

On a note related to energy, in some versions of OS X, the PowerBook has a Dockling that looks like a battery and indicates the charge level of the battery. This Dockling is located in the /Applications/Dock Extras folder. In other versions, you can find this in the menu bar.

Options

The Options tab of the Energy Saver pane, shown in Figure 11.37, is where you set the wake options for your machine. You can set the machine to wake when the modem detects a ring, or to wake for network administrative access. Additionally, you can set your machine to automatically restart after a power failure.

Figure 11.37 Wake options and whether the machine should automatically restart after a power failure are specified in the Options tab of the Energy Saver pane.

Keyboard

The Keyboard pane is where you set the repeat rate of the keyboard as well as keyboard shortcut settings.

Repeat Rate

The Repeat Rate tab of the Keyboard pane, shown in Figure 11.38, controls the key repeat rate and the amount of delay until repeat. You can test the rate and delay in a test space within the pane itself. If it takes your fingers some time to release the keys as you are typing, you might want to try some longer settings here. In this day of word processing, rather than typing at the typewriter, these controls might not seem important. At the very least, we can reduce Mr. Kitty's typing speed.

Figure 11.38 The key repeat rate and the delay until repeat are set in the Repeat Rate tab of the Keyboard pane.

Full Keyboard Access

The Full Keyboard Access tab of the Keyboard pane, shown in Figure 11.39, is where you can enable full keyboard access. With full keyboard access on, you can use keyboard controls in conjunction with typical navigation methods. In this tab, you can control key keyboard focus with function keys, letters, or custom key controls.

Figure 11.39 Full keyboard access can be enabled in the Full Keyboard Access tab of the Keyboard pane.

Mouse

Controls for the mouse are set in the Mouse pane, shown in Figure 11.40. Here you can control tracking speed and the double-click speed. The pane itself has a space in which you can test the double-click speed.

Figure 11.40 Tracking speed and double-click speed are set in the Mouse pane.

Sound

The Sound pane is where you set the desired sound and volume for alerts, main system sound, and a sound output device. From each tab under the Sound pane, main volume controls are accessible as well as the control for making volume control accessible from the menu bar. You can set the main volume or mute the main sound. Access to the Sound pane is readily available in the bar at the top of System Preferences, and by default in the menu bar. Additionally, you can adjust main sound from the keyboard sound controls. Apple expects that you will want to play with your sound frequently.

Alerts

The Alerts tab of the Sound pane, shown in Figure 11.41, is where you can select an alert sound, set a preferred alert volume, and select an output device for alert sounds. To listen to a particular alert sound, simply select the sound, and it will automatically play.

Figure 11.41 Settings involving the sound for your alerts are set in the Alerts tab of the Sound pane.

Output

The Output tab of the Sound pane, shown in Figure 11.42, is where you select an output device for sound and set the system balance.

Figure 11.42 Settings involving the output device for sound are set in the Output tab of the Sound pane.

Adding a Sound to the System

After trying all the alert sounds, you might decide that you would prefer to add one of your own. Or you might already have a sound from another machine that you would like to add to the OS X machine. OS X supports AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) sounds. Any sounds that you have that can be converted to AIFF can be used on your OS X machine.

The OS X machine even comes with a package that can convert your sounds for you, iTunes. The iTunes package can import sounds and convert them to AIFF, WAV, or MP3. You can use iTunes to convert AIFC, audio CD, MP3, System 7 Sound, uLaw (AU), WAV, Qdesign, and QuickTime audio (audio-only movies).

To use iTunes to convert a sound file to an AIFF sound file, in the iTunes Preferences, click the Importing tab and select AIFF Encoder, as shown in Figure 11.43.

Figure 11.43 In the iTunes Preferences, under the Importing tab, select AIFF Encoder to convert a sound to AIFF.

Under the Advanced tab, shown in Figure 11.44, you can change where iTunes saves the file. Look at the Music Folder Location section for the information. Even if you don't have any special place in mind for where you would like to save your converted file, at least take the time to look at the Advanced tab to see where iTunes will store the file.

Figure 11.44 In the iTunes Preferences, under the Advanced tab, you can specify in the Music Folder Location where the converted sound file will be stored.

After you have set your preferences, from the Advanced menu, select Convert to AIFF to convert the sound. The converted sound file is saved to the folder specified in the Music Folder Location. In the graphical interface, however, the converted sound might not appear right away. However, you will be able to immediately see the converted file from the command line. iTunes saves the converted AIFF file with the .aif extension. Unfortunately, the Sound pane recognizes only sound files with the extension .aiff. Make sure that you rename the converted sound file to have the .aiff extension instead.

Based on your experience with fonts, you can probably guess where to place your converted sound file. As with fonts, we recommend that you make available to all users any new sounds you add. To do so, you can copy the new sound to the /System/Library/Sounds/ directory. As with fonts, you might have to be root or use sudo to accomplish this. Alternatively, you can place the file in /Library/Sounds/. Please note that there is already a /Library/Audio/Sounds/ directory; however, placing sounds in that directory has no effect. So, you will have to create a Sounds folder in the Library directory. Look at the permissions on the directory you have created. It probably belongs to group admin. Make sure that the privileges are read and write for the owner, read and write for the group admin, and read for everybody else.

You can copy the converted sound file to either /System/Library/Sounds/ or your newly created /Library/Sounds/ directory via the command line. If you prefer, you can drag-and-drop via the GUI interface as well. If the converted sound is not yet available in the GUI interface, log out and log back in. As with fonts, you can choose to make the sound available for your use only, and instead copy it to your own ~/Library/Sounds/ directory.

The new sound file becomes available in the Sound pane after you log out and log back in. Figure 11.45 shows our sample Sound pane with a new sound called train. The file is actually named train.aiff, but appears in the Sound pane as train. The new train sound was originally a WAV file, but has been converted to AIFF.

Figure 11.45 Our new sound, called train, is now available in the Sound pane. We copied it to /Library/Sounds/, logged out, and logged back in.

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