Take Control of Messages in Mountain Lion

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Take Control of v1.0

Messages in

Mountain Lion Glenn Fleishman

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Table of Contents

Read Me First

Updates and More .....................................................................4

Book Basics..............................................................................5

Key Messaging Basics ................................................................6

Introduction Messages Quick Start What’s New in Messages for iChat Users Keep Using the Buddy List ........................................................11

Take Advantage of the Messages Window ...................................13

Open a Channel

Understand Types of Accounts ...................................................15

Check and Set Up Accounts ......................................................19

Review Your Etiquette Lessons

Symbolize Your Status .............................................................34

Preserve Some Privacy in iMessage ............................................37

Use Smileys, Emoji, and Abbreviations .......................................38

Avoid Harassment....................................................................41

End a Conversation..................................................................43

Bring On Buddy Lists for Instant Messaging

Decide If You Want Just One Buddy List ......................................44

Set Up Buddy Lists ..................................................................45

Examine a Buddy ....................................................................52

Remove a Buddy .....................................................................56

Block a Buddy or Other User .....................................................57

Master the Messages Window Exchange Text and Multimedia Messages Find Someone .........................................................................62

Exchange Text Messages ..........................................................71

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Send and Receive Media and Files..............................................76

End a Chat .............................................................................81

Start a Group Chat ..................................................................81

Read Past Messages.................................................................85

Block a Person ........................................................................88

Chat via Audio and Video

Examine A/V Chat Options ........................................................89

Check Your Requirements .........................................................90

Set Up an A/V Session .............................................................92

Share Your Face with a FaceTime Chat........................................94

See or Speak with Video or Audio Chat.......................................99

Share Screens

Start a Screen-Sharing Session ...............................................104

Use Screen Sharing ...............................................................106

Stop a Screen-Sharing Session ................................................108

About This Book

Ebook Extras.........................................................................109

About the Author ...................................................................110

About the Publisher................................................................111

Copyright and Fine Print Featured Titles

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Read Me First

Welcome to Take Control of Messages in Mountain Lion, version 1.0, published in October 2012 by TidBITS Publishing Inc. This ebook was written by Glenn Fleishman and edited by Tonya Engst with technical editing by Dan Frakes. This ebook helps you navigate the ins and outs of the Messages app in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, including how to set up accounts, the proper etiquette when you talk to others, using audio and video chat, and screen sharing. If you want to share this ebook with a friend, we ask that you do so as you would with a physical book: “lend” it for a quick look, but ask your friend to buy a copy for careful reading or reference. Discounted classroom and Mac user group copies are available. Copyright © 2012, Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved.

Updates and More

You can access extras related to this ebook on the Web (use the link in Ebook Extras, near the end; it’s available only to purchasers). On the ebook’s Take Control Extras page, you can: • Download any available new version of the ebook for free, or buy any subsequent edition at a discount. • Download various formats, including PDF, EPUB, and—usually— Mobipocket. (Learn about reading this ebook on handheld devices at http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/device-advice.) • Read postings to the ebook’s blog. These may include new tips or information, as well as links to author interviews. At the top of the blog, you can also see any update plans for the ebook. If you bought this ebook from the Take Control Web site, it has been added to your account, where you can download it in other formats and access any future updates. However, if you bought this ebook elsewhere, you can add it to your account manually; see Ebook Extras.

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Book Basics

Here are a few rules of the road that will help you read this ebook:

• Links: All blue text in this ebook is hot, meaning you can click (or tap) it, just like a link on the Web. If you click a link to switch to a different part of the ebook, you can return quickly to where you were if your ebook reader offers a “back” feature. For example, if you use iBooks in iOS to read the EPUB version of this ebook, you can tap the “Back to” link at the lower left of the screen. Or, if you use Preview on the Mac to read the PDF version of this ebook, you can choose Go > Back or press Command-[. • Menus: Where I describe choosing a command from a menu in the menu bar, I use an abbreviated description that puts the name of the menu ahead of the command. For example, at the end of the previous paragraph, “Go > Back” means “choose the Back command from the Go menu.” • Contextual menus: Contextual menus appear when you Controlclick various elements on a Macintosh screen, including Dock items and files in Finder windows. To describe opening a contextual menu, I usually I tell you to Control-click an item on the screen. If your mouse offers a right-click option, or if you use a trackpad or other means of opening a contextual menu, you should feel free to use the method you prefer. • Application preference: I sometimes refer to preferences in an application that you may want to adjust. Don’t confuse an application’s preferences with the system-wide settings found in System Preferences. To access an application’s preferences, choose Application Name > Preferences. For example, in the program Messages, you would choose Messages > Preferences.

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Key Messaging Basics

This ebook focuses on the Messages program in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. You’ll get a lot more out of it if you have your head around the differences between three types of messages that Messages handles.

Instant Messaging AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber, and Yahoo Messenger, all supported services in Messages, use instant messages (IMs) for communication. As opposed to an email message, which is queued and sent through intermediate servers and may be delivered seconds or minutes later (asynchronous communication), an IM is designed for immediate delivery for real-time conversation (synchronous communication). IMs are sent via the Internet, not a mobile phone network, and usually work only within a given messaging network operated by a particular firm (such as AOL or Google) or when connected to a particular server (in the case of Jabber). Note: Some messaging networks use gateways, which interconnect different networks so that a member of one can talk to a member of another. Gateway addressing isn’t available in Messages, even though some instant-messaging services, such as Yahoo, offer it through their own clients and Web sites.

Files—such as photos, videos, or word processing documents—may be transferred. Audio or video chats can also be initiated using these instant-messaging systems in Messages. Messages lets you configure any number of accounts for each of these services.

Text Messaging The cellular phone industry offers text messaging to (nearly) any cellular number worldwide. Text messages are carried over the cellular phone network. Text-messaging is broken out as a separate item in service plans, either with limits plus overage fees or with “unlimited” service. Text messaging started as the text-only SMS (short message service), and messages were (and still are) sent as part of the control messages that allow cell phones and cell tower base stations to interact. Text 6

messaging was extended with MMS (multimedia messaging service), which added photos, audio, video, and more to what could be sent back and forth between phones. Like IMs, text messages are normally transmitted instantly, and are meant for real-time, back-and-forth communication.

iMessage The iMessage network run by Apple acts like a hybrid of text and instant messaging. These messages—called, appropriately enough, iMessages—look and work like text messages, but pass over the Internet, not the phone network. iMessages may be sent and received via the Messages app running on a Mac or iOS device. On a Mac, each user account can have one iMessage account set up for it. This iMessage account must have a specific Apple ID. You can associate multiple email addresses with a single Apple ID and receive iMessages at any of those email addresses. On the iPhone, an advantage of iMessages over text messages is that you don’t pay per message, or as part of a monthly plan, as you typically do with SMS and MMS messages. If you send or receive an iMessage on an iPhone, the message may count against your data subscription, but only for the data it transmits—unless you send a big image or video, an iMessage is barely a blip compared to, say, a single Web page. An iMessage Can Become an SMS/MMS Message When Sent from an iPhone On an iPhone, iOS will try to deliver an iMessage using the iMessage network to any phone number associated with an another iPhone so long as that destination iPhone has iMessages set to On in Settings > Messages. If it can’t be delivered as an iMessage over the Internet, the iPhone will then try to use SMS/MMS to deliver the message so long as Send as SMS is set to On in Settings > Messages. This isn’t true of Messages on an iPad or iPod touch, or of Messages in OS X, neither of which use SMS/MMS.

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Introduction

Messages is a new program in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion that takes the place of older software called iChat. Messages tries to merge text messaging, traditionally a cellular-phone feature, and instant messaging, which generally involves computer-to-computer message exchanges. Messages retains iChat’s instant-messaging features while adding a new messaging service called iMessage that was developed by Apple first for iOS. The Messages app lets you create, send, and receive iMessages with little effort, although I walk you through the subtleties and options that you might miss at first glance. While you may find that iMessage is enough to communicate with most people you know, it may turn out that some of your colleagues and friends want to communicate via instant-messaging systems like AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, which Apple used for iChat) or Google Talk. The instant-messaging features of Messages are more complicated because their components have been around longer and have been grafted together, although these features are also more powerful and they incorporate audio chat, video chat, screen sharing, and presentations. The iMessage system and instant-messaging systems (AIM, Yahoo, Messenger, and Google Talk) and servers (Jabber) are separate, but they all appear nearly the same in the Messages program. In this ebook, I help you sort out which one to use when. I also explain how to configure accounts, and help you understand the best way to exchange messages, and even files, with others. Note: For the basic background on the differences between instant messages, text messages (SMS and MMS), and iMessages, flip back a page or so to Key Messaging Basics. Note: Apple offered a beta of Messages for 10.7 Lion, but removed the download link before 10.8 Mountain Lion shipped. The company hasn’t provided a full release of Messages for Lion. I don’t cover the Messages beta for Lion as it was prone to crash and had other difficulties not necessarily found in the final (Mountain Lion) version. 8

Messages Quick Start

If you need help with a specific aspect of Messages, you can click a link below to start reading this ebook at any point. In particular, if you feel lost in the main Messages window, read Master the Messages Window. The chapters build on one another, so I recommend that you read sequentially from start to finish—except that, if you’ve never used iChat, you should skip the “What’s New…” chapter. Learn the basics: • Understand the terminology for different kinds of messaging systems; see Key Messaging Basics. • If you’ve used iChat previously, brush up on the changes between iChat and Messages; see What’s New in Messages for iChat Users. Get started with accounts: • Find out what messaging services have the options you need; see Understand Types of Accounts. • Check on what accounts are already functioning in Messages, if any, and set up your accounts; see Check and Set Up Accounts. • Learn about two-factor authentication with Google Accounts; see Create a Password for Google Two-Factor Logins. Be polite: • Know the ins and outs of messaging before you make a faux pas; see Review Your Etiquette Lessons. Make use of Messages features: • Figure out when Buddy Lists can be useful to you; see Bring On Buddy Lists for Instant Messaging. • Understand the parts of the Messages window, a kind of dashboard for the program; see Master the Messages Window. Interact with others: • Type and exchange media; see Exchange Text and Multimedia Messages. 9

• Have a face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) conversation; see Chat via Audio and Video. • Let a buddy see and control your screen for troubleshooting or to share something, or vice-versa; see Share Screens.

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What’s New in Messages for iChat Users The Messages app replaces iChat, Apple’s original program for instant messaging and audio/video chat, introduced in 2002. Messages both incorporates iChat features and extends the program to support Apple’s new iMessage system. For the benefit of the many long-time iChat users who will read this ebook, here’s a summary of how things have changed—and an important opportunity to consider your basic approach to Messages. The Messages app has all the functionality of iChat in 10.7 Lion, but Apple has switched the program to be less service-based (like AIM-toAIM or Google Talk-to-Google Talk) and more person-to-person based. You can either think like a Mountain Lion and adopt the new way of working in which a single Messages window handles nearly everything, or you can keep your iChat attitude, relying mostly on the legacy Buddy List windows that are still available. Let me explain these two world views: • Keep using buddy list: Start chats, screen-sharing sessions, and audio/video talks in a buddy list, and use the Messages window only for actual back-and-forth chat. • Take advantage of the Messages window: Start interactions in the Messages window, and use buddy lists only to manage buddies. Everything else you handle in the new way. To help you with your transition from iChat to Messages, I talk more about each option next. The features noted in this chapter are explained more fully later in the ebook.

Keep Using the Buddy List

The notion of a buddy list still exists in Messages, and it works just as it did in the 10.7 Lion (and earlier) releases of Mac OS X. You may also still choose, as in Lion, to have a separate buddy list for each instantmessaging account at each service, so you can have, for example, both 11

an AIM buddy list and a Google Talk buddy list, or two AIM buddy lists that correspond to different AIM accounts. No iMessage buddy list: iMessage recipients appear only in your Contacts app or when directly entered in the main Messages window. There’s no equivalent of a buddy list for iMessage. Tip: To consolidate buddies into one list, choose Messages > Preferences, click General, and then select Show All My Accounts in One List.

If you keep using buddy lists as your primary approach to Messages, you’ll find Messages to be essentially identical to older versions of Chat. You can add buddies, remove them, and block them, as well as double-click to start a chat, click a Phone or Video icon to begin an audio or video session, or Control-click to see all options related to that buddy. You can also organize buddies into groups, just as before. The changes you will notice and have to work around are: • All back-and-forth text and multimedia messaging happens in the new Messages window, which is more of a dashboard for interaction than the active chat window was in iChat. After you double-click a buddy in a list, the focus switches to the Messages window where that person’s name appears at left and you type in the message-entry field at the bottom. The Messages window consolidates all conversations (organized by person), holds transcripts and allows searching them, and shows active chats. • When you set a status for one instant-messaging service, such as AIM, Messages lets you opt to set that same status for all your logged-in services. (Or you can set your status individually for each account.) • iChat Theater has been renamed Theater and relocated. You first start a video-chat session with a buddy, and then click the Add button in the video-chat window to choose from the four Theater options.

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Take Advantage of the Messages Window Alternatively, you can switch to using the Messages window as your dashboard for communications, and rely on buddy lists only for managing buddies (adding, removing, blocking, and grouping), as well as for seeing your buddies’ statuses at a glance in a scrollable list. (See Master the Messages Window for callouts explaining its parts.) Here’s how to carry out iChat tasks in a Messages world—the list below describes a typical sequence of actions, so some bullet items depend on those immediately preceding: • Find a buddy: Find a person with whom to chat by clicking the Compose New Message button. The cursor is placed in the To field at the window’s top. Start typing a contact’s name. Messages is organized first by person, not by service. Thanks to this new feature, you don’t have to add a person as a buddy in order to communicate with him, or ever even use a buddy list at all. • Choose a service: In response to your typing a contact’s name, Messages shows related information from the Contacts app in a drop-down menu. The menu lists every way of communicating (phone number, email, and instant-messaging account) available, along with the login status of each (for instant messaging) or whether the account or phone number is hooked into iMessage (see Symbolize Your Status). Choose the method, and the method’s name (such as AIM or iMessage) appears in gray type in the message-entry field at the bottom of the window. The cursor is placed in that field. • Start typing: In the message-entry field, you can type messages, drag in images or files to send, and use the emoticon pop-up menu to choose a (blecch!) smiley face. • Switch services mid-stream: Messages lets you switch between available services—a phone number, email address, or IM account listed in a person’s Contacts record—at any point before sending the message. Click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of a name to see other service choices by account. • Receive messages: All incoming messages, from every service appear in the Messages window, making it easy to respond. That 13

includes iMessages, which can be received for any email account that’s registered in the Messages app (in the Accounts preferences). Messages from a particular person are grouped together, regardless of the method used to send the messages, as long as the sending accounts/methods are all in that same person’s record in the Contacts app. • Scroll back for history: In the Messages window, you can view transcripts of older open chats by clicking any person in the Conversation List at left, and then scrolling up. You can also type in the Search field above the Conversation List to find matches across all transcripts for contacts shown in the list. (To retain transcripts of chats after you close a conversation entry, open the Messages Preferences window, click Messages, and then enable Save History When Conversations Are Closed.) • Launch an audio or video chat: With an active chat, you can click the Video icon to the right of the name (it doesn’t look like a menu icon, but it is!) and choose to launch either a FaceTime session with any associated phone number or email address, or a video or audio chat using any instant-message account with that capability. • Start screen sharing: To begin a screen-sharing session, follow the directions in the above bullet item, but look at the bottom of that Video drop-down menu. Screen-sharing options should appear for all associated addresses.

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Open a Channel

Messages lets you set up as many as six different kinds of service accounts, each with its own limitations and properties. In this chapter, you can learn which account types are right for your needs. After that, you’ll find directions for setting up each type of account in Messages. Note: If you are unsure of the differences among instant messages, text messages, and iMessages read Key Messaging Basics, earlier, before starting this chapter.

Understand Types of Accounts

You will likely wind up creating accounts at multiple services because it’s unlikely that everyone with whom you communicate uses the same service. Further, there may be times when iMessage is the most appropriate messaging service, even if you routinely use other services, because iMessage can reach people on both iOS devices and computers, making it more likely that a recipient will receive the message instantly. Each type of messaging account is free. Each one also has a set of capabilities that allow certain types of interactions, as summarized in Table 1, just ahead. But first, let me run through what’s possible: • Send text messages: Communicate back and forth with typed or pasted text, whether using cellular SMS or instant messages. • Participate in a group chat: Exchange textual messages among multiple parties in a single conversation. • Exchange multimedia: Transfer images, audio, and video back and forth. • Exchange files: Send and receive files by dragging them into the Messages window or selecting them using a navigation dialog. • Participate in an audio/video chat: Talk with a remote party by microphone and/or camera. 15

• Join or create a multi-party A/V chat: Have multiple participants in an audio or video chat. • Share your screen: Allow a buddy to view or control your screen. • View a buddy’s screen: Remotely view or control a buddy’s screen. • Encrypt data: Engage in any of the above activities (if supported) while being protected from unrelated parties sniffing data in your exchange. Table 1: Services and Their Capabilities

Capability

iMessage AIM

Google Yahoo Talk/ Jabber Messenger Bonjour

Text

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Group chat

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Exchange multimedia

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Exchange files

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Audio/video chat

No*

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Multi-party A/V chat

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Buddy list

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Share your screen

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

View buddy’s screen

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Encryption

Yes

Yes†

Yes†

No

No

* Messages can launch the FaceTime Face F aceTime Time app for an audio or video chat. † Not assured end to end, but guaranteed guaranteed for client to server server if configured correctly correctly..

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Let’s clarify the missing pieces in some of these services:

• Audio/video chat: In Messages, Yahoo Messenger lacks this option entirely, whereas iMessage can switch to the FaceTime app and then you can chat through FaceTime. • Multi-party audio or video chat: Neither iMessage (even switching to FaceTime) nor Yahoo Messenger offers this option. • Buddies: IM networks let you designate the accounts of trusted people as buddies. You can optionally group these accounts in a separate buddy list window and initiate chats from that window. Some networks also let you elect to receive messages from that service only from your buddies. In contrast, iMessage doesn’t support the concept of buddies or trusted recipients. I discuss the problem with that in Preserve Some Privacy in iMessage. • Screen sharing: Neither iMessage nor Yahoo Messenger let you share your screen over their connections.

Know iMessage Apple designed iMessage for text and multimedia interchange. The service was originally available only for iOS, but it is now available in 10.8 Mountain Lion. (For more details, review iMessage, earlier.) iMessage has no live audio or video support, but the Messages app lets you launch FaceTime sessions from the Video menu. Anything sent via an iMessage account uses end-to-end encryption between the two communicating devices. This prevents snooping on a local network (over Wi-Fi in a café, for example) and at all points in between.

Understand AIM AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is the oldest continuously operated instant-messaging service, and it was the sole account type supported by iChat in its earliest days. You can use AIM with an icloud.com Apple ID, with older me.com and mac.com Apple ID addresses, or with a dedicated AIM account obtained through AOL. AIM allows instant messaging, file transfer, audio and video chat, and screen sharing. AOL offers a secure Internet connection (SSL/TLS, the same standard used for secure Web transactions) for AIM exchanges, but you can’t tell if the party on the other end also has an encrypted link. 17

Get Google Talk Google Talk, managed via the Gmail site (of all places!) is based on the Jabber protocol, discussed next. That’s why Messages shows the label “Jabber” at times when referring to Google Talk. Google Talk supports all the Messages features noted earlier in this chapter. Google offers a secure Internet connection over SSL/TLS for Google Talk for your connection, but you can’t tell if the party on the other end also has an encrypted link.

Jive with Jabber Jabber (also called XMPP) can be installed on any compatible server to allow instant messaging within an organization or among members of a group. Jabber servers can also talk to each other so that a group of servers can share member lists to allow broader conversations. Jabber has optional security controls that may or may not be enabled on individual servers, but you can’t tell in Messages whether a party on the other end relies on encryption or not.

Yelp with Yahoo Apple added support for Yahoo Messenger in Messages, but the capabilities are quite limited. You can text, exchange multimedia, and send and receive files, but that’s it. Yahoo Messenger doesn’t support encryption at all.

Belly Up to Bonjour The odd duck in this list of account types is Bonjour, which isn’t strictly a service. The Bonjour protocol advertises, or provides information about, services that a device can offer to other hardware on the same network. You don’t need an account, and there’s no central server that handles communication. Messages can use Bonjour to announce your availability for, and initiate, local-network chats. Likewise, anyone on the local network that has Bonjour turned on in Messages will appear in your Bonjour buddy list. Bonjour messaging lacks encryption, which might be a concern over a large shared network, such as a university’s, or on a small public network, like at a coffee shop, because anyone could listen in to a chat.

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Check and Set Up Accounts

Every sort of account supported in Messages requires a different setup process. I walk through each of them in this topic. Note: In this topic, my directions have you configuring accounts in the Messages preference window, but you can accomplish many of the same tasks in the Mail, Contacts & Calendars system preference pane if you prefer.

iMessage In the Messages app on a Mac, iMessages may be sent and received with any email address or phone number that’s associated with an Apple ID. Apple places three limits on this, however: • Only one iMessage account may be set up in Messages. The iMessage account entry appears in the accounts list by default. • Only a single Apple ID account may be assigned in Messages for use with iMessage. • For a phone number to be used as a sending and receiving option for Messages on the Mac, the number must be assigned (by a carrier) to an iPhone, and you must be logged in to iMessage on that phone using the same Apple ID as in Messages on the Mac. Most people who are using Mountain Lion won’t need to set up iMessage in Messages as it will have been configured automatically during iCloud setup. To see if your account is set up, choose Messages > Preferences and click the Accounts button. In the account list at the left, select the iMessage item. Look on the right to see what Apple ID it’s using. If everything looks good, you can skip the rest of this topic. Otherwise, you can: • Switch to a Different Apple ID • Sign Up for an Apple ID • Get an icloud.com Address • Sign In with an Existing Apple ID 19

I walk you through each of these options, next.

Accounts with mac.com and me.com Addresses

Apple no longer creates mac.com or me.com accounts, but if you’ve had an account with Apple since before iCloud and MobileMe, your mac.com and me.com addresses will work with AIM and they should all be associated with a single Apple ID. Your [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] addresses will each function as a separate AIM account.

Switch to a Different Apple ID

If you’ve already logged in to iCloud on your Mac (in the iCloud system preference pane), the Apple ID you entered there will already be configured for iMessage in the Messages app. But you can use another Apple ID without logging out of iCloud. Here’s how: 1. In the Messages Preference window, click the Accounts button and select the account labeled as iMessage. 2. Click Sign Out. 3. Enter the Apple ID that you want to use, enter its password, and click Sign In. Sign Up for an Apple ID

If you don’t already have an Apple ID or an email address that ends in me.com, mac.com, or icloud.com, you need to create an Apple ID to use the iMessage service. Visit https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/ and click Create an Apple ID. This process will require a non-Apple email address—one that doesn’t end in me.com, mac.com, or icloud.com. With the Apple ID in hand, you can use iMessage, although not AIM. If you want to use AIM, you should get an icloud.com email address, described next. Get an icloud.com Address

If you want an icloud.com address to use with iMessage and/or AIM, first verify that you don’t already have one assigned to your Apple ID. At the URL given just earlier, click Manage Your Apple ID, sign in, and look for any alternate email addresses assigned to the Apple ID.

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To get an icloud.com email address, first sign up for a new Apple ID as I just explained above. Then, open the iCloud preference pane, log in with your new Apple ID, and click the checkbox next to Mail. OS X prompts you to select an icloud.com address, which must be unique from all others in use. Once you’ve done that, the icloud.com address is associated with your Apple ID and may be used for iMessage and AIM. Sign In with an Existing Apple ID

To sign in to Messages with an Apple ID, follow these steps: 1. Choose Messages > Preferences and click the Accounts button. 2. Select the iMessage item in the accounts list. 3. Enter the Apple ID you want to use with iMessage and its password. Click Sign In. If the account is activated correctly, you are now signed in, and an iMessage view appears (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The iMessage view appears after Messages verifies and enables the account.

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You can configure your iMessage setup in this view: • Enable this account: Uncheck the box to disable iMessage on your computer. You can later check it again to re-enable. • Details: Click this button and re-enter your password when prompted, and then you can change details connected to the Apple ID account, including the personal name attached to it and the password. You can also change the location that Messages uses for prefixing the correct international country code when sending an iMessage to an iPhone. With the wrong country, iMessages could be misdelivered or undeliverable. • You can be reached: For someone to send you an iMessage on your Mac, that iMessage must be addressed to an email address or phone number selected under “You can be reached for messages at.” Messages populates this list with all the email addresses associated with the signed-in Apple ID and with any iPhone phone numbers also logged in with the same Apple ID. If Messages shows multiple options, you can uncheck all but one. • Add email addresses: To give your correspondents more choices of email addresses to use when addressing an iMessage to you, click Add Email, enter another email address, and press Return. The word “Validating” appears in gray, followed by “Email Sent” and then by “Waiting to verify.” Apple sends an email message to that address containing a special link. Check your email to view that message, and click the link to enable the address. Within seconds of your validating the address, Messages removes the “Email Sent” label. The address is now associated with your iMessages Apple ID. Add an address associated with a different Apple ID: If you try to add such an address, OS X pops up a dialog that explains that the address is “already in use by another Apple ID” and provides a button labeled Remove Email, which is the only choice to proceed. • Send read receipts: Think carefully about this option: if it’s selected, everyone who sends you an iMessage first sees when it’s delivered (that default can’t be changed) and then is informed when you’ve actually viewed it. You lose plausible deniability if you want to pretend you haven’t seen a message yet. 22

I’m not just being funny here: Sometimes, messages arrive when you’re busy or otherwise ill-prepared to deal with them. If you accidentally click in the window and glance at a message, with the Read Receipts option on the sender thinks you’re snubbing her. I keep this option off to preserve the asynchronous nature of text messages and the uncertainty of whether a message has been received. See Review Your Etiquette Lessons. • Start new conversations from: If you’ve enabled two or more receiving addresses or numbers, Messages displays a Start New Conversations From pop-up menu. The menu lists all those addresses and numbers (Figure 2). The address you choose here is used as the sending address for all new iMessage conversations started from this computer.

Figure 2: The Caller ID pop-up menu provides a way to set the default (and sole) sending and reply address for iMessages.

For instance, let’s say that Abby Normal has both [email protected] and [email protected] associated with the same Apple ID, both are added to Messages in Mountain Lion for iMessage, and Start New Conversations From is set to [email protected]. If Cubby sends a message to [email protected], when Abby replies, her return address is [email protected]. But if Abby starts a conversation from scratch to Cubby, her return address will alway appears as [email protected]. By the same token, you can assign different email addresses to receive email uniquely at certain devices and Macs. For example, I could set up [email protected] to receive iMessages on my iPad, and [email protected] for iMessages I want to receive only in Messages on my Mountain Lion system. I would, of course, have to inform colleagues as to which address goes where, and if they added both of these device-specific addresses to their Contacts entry for me, things would certainly get muddled. But it is one strategy for controlling which iMessages wind up on which device. 23

If you use the same email addresses to receive iMessages in iOS and Mountain Lion on all of your devices, all iMessages are received by all devices. This is also true of a phone number associated with an iPhone at which you choose to receive iMessages on a Mac, an iPad, or an iPod touch. Sorta, kinda: While I say “all iMessages are received by all devices,” that may be wishful thinking. In testing, I’ve found that the iMessage system is extremely inconsistent about which devices and computers receive incoming iMessages, regardless of how you associate addresses. What appears most consistent is that the last place from which you sent an iMessage is the most likely to receive the reply. Changes to Messages in OS X 10.8.2

If you used Messages in OS X 10.8.0 or 10.8.1, the behavior was different. The Start New Conversations From pop-up menu was labeled Caller ID, and that address was used for all replies, no matter at which address a message was received on the computer. Further, Messages neither used iPhone numbers nor showed all Apple ID addresses available. The changes in 10.8.2 were great improvements.

AIM All of Apple’s mac.com, me.com, and icloud.com accounts double as AIM accounts. Apple registers them behind the scenes with AIM for you. (You can find out how to get an icloud.com email address earlier in this chapter, in Get an icloud.com Address.) Tip: You can also sign up directly with AIM at https://new.aol.com/ productsweb for an @aim.com address that’s usable with messaging.

Here’s how to add an AIM account: 1. Choose Messages > Preferences and click the Accounts button. 2. Click the plus

button below the accounts list.

3. The Account Type is set to AIM by default. Enter your AIM, @me.com, @mac.com, or @icloud.com username as a full email address, and then enter that account’s password. (For me.com, 24

mac.com, and icloud.com usernames, your password is the same one you would use to access your email or iCloud account.) 4. Click Done. You may repeat the steps above for additional AIM accounts. Still in the Accounts preference pane, if you select an enabled AIM account, you can access three views that control account parameters: Account Information, Privacy, and Server Settings. Account Information

With the Enable This Account box checked, you can’t change some settings in the Account Information or Server Settings views. Uncheck the box to make changes or to take the account offline without using the global Offline status option. The Allow Multiple Logins for This Account checkbox lets you keep sessions open with this AIM account on more than one computer or mobile device. This drives some people crazy, as parts of conversations appear in multiple places; others prefer the flexibility. If you use multiple AIM accounts, edit the Description field to provide yourself with an unambiguous label. The label will help you differentiate one account from another in the accounts list. To keep a list of people with whom you’ve recently interacted via AIM, leave Add New Buddies I Chat with to “Recent Buddies” checked. The Configure AIM Mobile Forwarding button takes you to AOL’s Web site where you may set up AIM so incoming messages are sent to a cell phone via SMS. According to the AOL site, the messages get forwarded when you are offline and away from your computer. Privacy

AIM has the luxurious and long-standing option to control how other people on the system may interact with you. These options are sorely missing from other services, notably iMessage. Here’s the rundown: • The checkbox labeled Block Others from Seeing My Status as Idle prevents anyone from knowing if you’ve stepped away from your Mac for a few minutes. • Select Allow AOL’s Server to Relay Video Chats to improve connection quality—compared to direct computer-to-computer 25

video chats—in some cases. It’s in the Privacy view because you may feel that routing your video through AOL’s systems has an unacceptable potential for violation of privacy. • The Privacy Level settings provide granular controls, ranging from allowing everyone to try to contact you to allowing no one: ‣ Allow Anyone passes along any attempt to contact you. ‣ Allow People in My Buddy List limits inbound requests to just buddies. (I explain buddies in the next chapter, Bring On Buddy Lists for Instant Messaging.) ‣ Allow Specific People relies on a whitelist, or approved list, of accounts that you manage by clicking Edit List. ‣ Block Everyone bars any incoming message attempts. ‣ Block Specific People lets you set up a blacklist, or a list of forbidden accounts, which you manage by clicking Edit List. Tip: AIM also lets you block individual attempts to contact you, which flips the Privacy Level to Block Specific People if it’s not set to that already. Use Edit List to remove people if you block them by accident, too. For more detailed instructions, see Block with AIM.

Server Settings

It’s unlikely you would need to modify settings in this view, as Messages configures these details automatically. The Use SSL setting ensures that the connection from your Mac to AOL’s servers is secure. Some large organizations rely on proxy servers to route network traffic to some destinations. If your Mac is within one of those organizations, you may need to enable Connect Using Proxy and modify values there based on information provided by your network administrator.

Google Talk A Google Talk account can be used with Messages, or within Google Mail or Google+ within a Web browser, or through other software. Any Google account may be used with Google Talk; if you don’t have a Google account, visit https://google.com/ to set one up.

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Add your Google Talk account to Messages through these steps: 1. Choose Messages > Preferences and click the Accounts button. 2. Click the plus

button below the accounts list.

3. Choose Google Talk from the Account Type pop-up menu. Enter your Google account name and password. Two-factor logins: If you are using Google’s two-factor

authentication, read the sidebar on that topic just ahead.

4. Click Done.

You may repeat the steps above for additional Google Talk accounts.

Note: Confusingly, once you set up a Google Talk account, it shows up as a Jabber account in the accounts list, even though the Account Information view displays “Account type: Google Talk”.

An enabled account has three views where you can control account parameters: Account Information, Chat Settings, and Server Settings. Account Information

As with other account types, unchecking Enable This Account disables the account separately from the global status option for logging in or setting all accounts to Offline. If you use multiple Google accounts, edit the Description field to create an unambiguous entry to help you tell your accounts apart. Chat Settings

If you plan to use Google Talk chat rooms, set a Nickname that will appear in those chats, as well as the amount of history you want to see. The Priority and Location settings have to do with managing multiple logins from different computers, programs, and devices. Priority is highest at 1 and lowest at 127. Set a high-priority number and even after a long period of being idle (no action on the Mac in question), the Mac will still receive incoming messages intended for the account. A lower priority means only a very short period of idleness (less than a minute) would trigger notifications at that device. A negative number prevents any incoming messages. (See also, Review Your Etiquette Lessons.) 27

The Location/Use My Computer Name options identify your computer to Google by name if you’re trying to sort out your priority settings. Server Settings

While you should never need to touch these settings, you can make changes if advised—for example, by an IT person in your office. That said, the Use SSL checkbox should always be enabled to ensure that no snooping is possible between your computer and Google’s servers. The Warn before Sending Password Insecurely checkbox should also always be selected, because you don’t typically want to send your Google Talk password in the clear (without encryption).

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Create a Password for Google Two-Factor Logins

Google offers optional login protection for all its accounts called twofactor authentication. With two-factor authentication enabled, your Google account password must be combined with a second element (the second factor) to verify that you’re the legitimate account holder. For Web-based logins and some of Google’s other services, you can get the second factor by having Google send you an SMS message with a code, or you can use Google’s smartphone app to produce such a code without a text message. You can even use a list of onetime use codes that Google generates for you. But for Google Talk and other services that don’t allow a second factor to be entered, as in Messages, Google offers a way to generate a unique password from its Web site. Every computer on which you use Google Talk with Messages will require you to repeat these steps, but only when setting up the account. If you have two-factor logins enabled, follow these steps to get a password for Google Talk in Messages: 1. Go to https://google.com/ and click Sign In. 2. Enter your Email address and Password, and click Sign In. Enter your second-factor code if prompted. 3. Click your avatar in the upper-right, and then click Account. 4. Click Security in the left-hand list of settings. 5. Next to Authorizing Applications and Sites, click Edit. (You may be prompted again for your account password. Enter it to proceed.) 6. Below Application-specific Passwords, in the field below Step 1 of 2, enter a name for the password you need, such as GTalk Mac mini. Click Generate Password. 7. A yellow box appears with a 16-character password in it. Copy and paste it into the Messages Password field for Google Talk, then return to the Web page and click Done. If, for some reason, your computer is ever stolen and you’re worried about someone having access to your Google Talk account, you can return to this Web page and disable that particular use by clicking the Revoke button next to the label for the password you created.

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Jabber Jabber or XMPP accounts are set up on individual servers, such as those run within companies and on college campuses, and you need to obtain login information from the folks operating those servers. Follow these steps to add a Jabber account: 1. Choose Messages > Preferences and click the Accounts button. 2. Click the plus

button below the accounts list.

3. Choose Jabber from the Account Type pop-up menu. Enter your account name (which must be in the form of an email address) and password. 4. Next: ‣ If the remote Jabber server is set up to offer configuration on request based on the domain in the email address, you don’t need to enter any additional configuration information. ‣ If not, click the Server Options expansion triangle. Then, using information provided by the server’s operator, enter the server and port, and select (or deselect) the Use SSL and Use Kerberos boxes. Certificate notice: On networks that use security certificates that aren’t signed by outside authorities, Messages will warn you about the validity of that document. Follow the advice of your server operator on how to proceed. (Typically, you would click Show Certificate and then select an Always Trust box.) 5. Click Done. You may repeat the steps above for additional Jabber accounts. The three views that appear at the right with your new account selected in the accounts list—Account Information, Chat Settings, and Server Settings—work identically as described earlier in this chapter for Google Talk accounts.

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Chat with Facebook using Jabber

Facebook Chat has support for Jabber. To use Facebook with Messages, enter these settings for Step 3 above: ✦ Account Name: Use your Facebook account name (found in Account Settings as Username) in this form: [email protected]

(For some, your account might be a single word, like cretonia; for me, it’s my first name, a dot, and last name as glenn.fleishman.) ✦ Password: Your Facebook password ✦ Server: chat.facebook.com The following two values should be filled in automatically. If not, use these settings: ✦ Port: 5222 ✦ Use SSL: unchecked (see the note below) Click Done, and you’re connected. Facebook Chat can be unreliable at times with Messages because Facebook uses a gateway to enable chat in this manner. I would use Messages with Facebook to chat with people who are using the Facebook Web site, and use other methods for instant messaging. Note: Even if Use SSL is unchecked, a Jabber server can initiate a secure connection. If that’s the case, after Messages logs in, in the Server Settings view, the phrase TLS Enabled appears to the right of the unchecked Use SSL box. This is what happens with Facebook Chat, for instance. (TLS is the modern update to SSL—for the last decade—and the two are usually referred to together as SSL/TLS. It’s not clear why these are separately handled here.)

Yahoo Yahoo Messenger is a model of simplicity when compared to some of the above services. Add an account through the following steps: 1. Choose Messages > Preferences and click the Accounts button. 2. Click the plus

button below the accounts list.

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3. Choose the Yahoo account type, and enter your username and password. 4. Click Done. You may repeat the steps above for additional Yahoo accounts. The single Yahoo settings view lets you check or uncheck Enable This Account. If you temporarily disable the account, you can edit the description—if you have more than one Yahoo account, you might want to give each one a unique description in order to tell them apart.

Bonjour Bonjour appears by default in the accounts list and cannot be removed. There are only three settings available: • Enable Bonjour Instant Messaging turns local messaging on or off. • Publish My Email and Instant Message Addresses provides that information to anyone on the local network who is in a chat with you or who selects your name from his Bonjour buddy list. If you’d like to keep that information inaccessible to others on the local network (for example, if you’re in a coffee shop or at a conference), uncheck the box. • Blocks Others from Seeing My Status as Idle prevents Messages from showing how long you’ve been away from your computer if you remain logged in and walk away.

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Review Your Etiquette Lessons Text and instant messaging aren’t new, and implicit rules of etiquette have emerged over the decades about how to interact through these communications methods with people whom you know. But recent changes have made it easier to interact with people you barely know, as well as to send a message at an inopportune time without realizing that it will disturb the recipient. This chapter examines what you can do to send signals about your availability, how you can check whether someone else wants to hear from you, the ins and outs of using emoticons, and how to end a conversation politely—but firmly. While AIM and Yahoo Messenger continue to offer more or less the same kinds of instant-messaging services that they always have, Apple and Google have made changes to how you can find and interact with other people over their messaging services: • Google Talk and Google+: When you interact with someone in Google+, Google has made it a one-click—and irreversible— operation to add that person to your list of potential chat participants. This can clog your list with people you barely know and may not want to have synchronous (that is, live and interactive) conversations with, even if they were fine for asynchronous (delayed) interactions, such as forum posting or email. Worse, all the people added to your Google Talk list now can see you as well. • iMessage always: Apple, meanwhile, has added iMessage support to the Mac. While I applaud that in principle, and I use it all the time, iMessage on OS X expands text messaging from phones and iOS devices to tens of millions of people on the desktop. Because iOS, most notably on the iPhone, doesn’t provide any way to block incoming messages without disabling iMessage entirely, any person with iMessage access on any computer can message you at any time.

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Symbolize Your Status

For services other than iMessage, Messages will set a status for each logged-in account, but you can also choose or create custom status information. Your buddies can see your status in their buddy lists. Your status can be as simple as “online” or “away” or “idle” (that last one is set automatically by your software), or as detailed as “under deadline, don’t disturb!”

Set Your Status Messages includes several pre-set status messages (see Bring On Buddy Lists for Instant Messaging for more on where these appear): • Offline: The account isn’t logged in. (You can toggle logged-in status when a Buddy List is frontmost by pressing Command-L.) • Invisible: Available in services other than Google Talk, invisible hides the fact that you are logged in even from your buddies. It’s a way to be online without anyone knowing. It’s handy when you need to reach people and want to be essentially unreachable yourself. (Perhaps that’s a selfish attitude.) • Green (available): A green status means that you’re available for chats, although you can refine that with a custom status message— that people often don’t read. • Current iTunes Song: If you want to share what you’re listening to, choose this option, which changes as your songs change. That may be giving too much information to others, of course. • Yellow (idle): Set automatically by Messages (and other chat software) unless you disable the option, idle shows how many minutes have passed since you last touched your computer’s keyboard or mouse. You can suppress this display for AIM and Bonjour accounts (via each account’s entry in the Accounts pane of the Messages preference window). • Red (away): This implies that you’re not at your computer, although “away” has transitioned to mean “not available” or “do not disturb,” as well.

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You can set status messages in two areas of the Messages interface: • Messages window: In the status section at the lower left of the Messages window, click a tiny triangle to open a status pop-up menu. (iMessage doesn’t have a status option, so if you’ve set up only an iMessage account, you won’t have a status area.) • Buddy List window: In a Buddy List, choose a status from the status pop-up menu at the top of the Buddy List window, or, in some cases, you can choose one from beside the name of an individual account in a consolidated Buddies window. Note: I cover Buddy Lists in the next chapter, Bring On Buddy Lists for Instant Messaging.

You can choose any available status or pick a special option: • Same status for all accounts: Checked by default, this option sets the same status for all accounts and services whenever you make a change. In Figure 3, you can see how this plays out at the lower-left of the Messages window.

Figure 3: The Messages window shows consolidated status for two logged-in messaging services, AIM & Bonjour. Yahoo Messenger is having difficulties connecting (hence the Disconnected note), and a Google Talk account is set to Offline.

The Offline exception: Even if you turn on Same Status for All Accounts, Offline may be chosen for each account uniquely, as it’s the logged-in state at that service. If you treat all services the same, having the same status for each one makes sense. But if you want to appear to be more reachable in some places than others, you have that option. Select Use Same Status when it’s checked, and the checkmark disappears. Choose a status for any account and it’s uniquely set (Figure 4).

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Figure 4: The Messages window shows each account’s status separately.

In a unified buddy list, if you have not chosen Use Same Status for All Accounts, then you can also set each account’s status individually from the pop-up menu at the top of its listing. • Edit Status Menu: You can choose Edit Status Menu to prune status messages you’ve set, and add new ones (Figure 5).

Figure 5: The Edit Status dialog manages status messages.

Confessing My Status

I’ll make the confession that my status is set to red/away with the label “Working” nearly all the time that I’m online. I do this for two reasons: ✦ I don’t use chat except for business reasons the majority of the time. During the working day when I’m in front of the computer, I don’t want to be disturbed except for work or emergencies. ✦ Whenever I’ve set my status to available (green), people get in touch with me rather idly, seeing as I’m available. Productivity plummets, even when I rather like the people who get in touch. 36

Check for Availability I try to honor the status message of each of my buddies. Because I don’t chat for personal reasons during the work day, I tend to avoid bothering people who are busy (some of my friends will refute my contention, of course). If someone’s status is green and the corresponding status message is also benign, I am more likely to try to start a conversation with them to discuss something that doesn’t require the immediacy of a phone call, but requires more priority than an email message. But when a buddy is set to red, I limit contact to only important matters that require immediate resolution. For emergencies, I switch to iMessage, text messaging, or a phone call.

Preserve Some Privacy in iMessage

iMessage has the unique (to my knowledge) ability to let you “fish” for whether someone is a member of a service and then send a message without the recipient having the ability to block it. That’s because Apple wanted to make it easy to use iMessage. Any phone number assigned to an iPhone, as well as any email address associated with an Apple ID in iOS or in the Mac Messages app, can be “found” if it’s an active iMessage account. I describe how in Try to Find an Account with iMessage. If you pick such a phone number or email address and send a message, so long as the recipient’s iPhone or other iOS device is turned on and connected to a network, or a Mac with an associated email address has the Messages app open, she has no way to prevent that message from coming in. That means that you have the capability to message someone instantly via iMessage even if your relationship up to this point wouldn’t extend to you sending text messages—perhaps, you had only exchanged email or used instant messaging. Messages brings this weakness of iMessage to light because the symmetrical nature of text messaging is broken with Messages. In iOS, and especially on an iPhone, when you use iMessage back and 37

forth with other iOS users, you’re in the same mode: you both have a mobile device. With Messages in Mountain Lion, however, you can send a flood of messages to someone’s iPhone, where they will likely appear as onscreen notifications, rather than in a window off to the side as they show up on a Mac. Your recipient may be bothered by continuous messaging, and with you at a keyboard, it may be easy for you to overwhelm his ability to read and respond. It’s worth remembering, too, that it is now remarkably easy to cross the lines of a colleague or acquaintance, or potentially freak someone out who gave you his email address and otherwise wants to be left alone, by sending a message to his iPhone. It’s easy to do this by accident if you start typing a name in the To field and the first selected service and contact item is iMessage. My takeaway for iMessage is that you shouldn’t send an iMessage to someone who you would not just as readily call or knock on her front door. Text messaging can seem intimate (whether friendship or otherwise), and it’s best to know the limits of your relationship before you overstep what makes another party comfortable. Likewise, you may have to talk to people you barely know to ask them to stop using iMessage to communicate with you. That could be hard, but even harder is to tell people you know, and who send you messages, that you would prefer they not use text messaging.

Use Smileys, Emoji, and Abbreviations

The use of smileys, abbreviations, and Emoji icons surely has a divide of age that is insuperable. Folks in their 30s grew up using instant messaging where smileys in text, and later as icons, were typical. Those in their 20s, who came of age when text-messaging limits were vastly increased—or unlimited—employed a wider array of symbols, but also had to keep messages brief to fit in the 160-character SMS limit. Us older folks (I’m in my 40s) find smileys—even in text, such as :)— to be too cute by half, and generally avoid them as we huffily believe they cheapen discourse. (Of course, we might have been using them in the 1980s in email and IRC, but don’t tell anyone that ;) !) 38

Enter Smileys Smileys, also known as emoticons, let you express with tiny, horrible, silly icons the kinds of emotions that can get lost in typed, textual communication. Some people love them; some find them awful. The Messages app makes them more convenient for those in the former group, and it can render them less horrible for those in the latter. Messages lets you type text emoticons into the message-entry field, and converts those it knows into a corresponding graphic. For instance, type :-> for “sarcastic” and after pressing Return, Messages converts it to appear as . (This behavior can be confusing, of course, when you want to type something at the end of a parenthetical phrase, such as B), and Messages displays it as an emoticon—in this case a smiley wearing shades.) Smileys can instead be inserted directly as an icon selection by clicking the smiley icon in the right side of the message-entry field in the Messages window. You can also pick a smiley by name and icon, with the cursor in that field, by choosing Edit > Insert Smiley and then choosing an item in the list. If you don’t want to see the icons, you may disable this automatic conversion on your end, so that you instead see the actual characters that are typed, although you have to set the option individually for every contact! With a conversation selected in the Conversation List, choose View > Messages > Hide Smileys. You can also Control-click (right-click) in the main part of the message window (where messages appear) and choose Hide Smileys.

Emote with Emojis You can also use emoji. Emoji are special single-character icons that are available in many text-messaging services. With your cursor in the Messages window’s message-entry field, press Command-Option-T to open the system-wide Characters palette, which floats over all other windows. In the list at left, click the Emoji item. Then select a category, such as Objects (Figure 6). Double-click any item to insert it in the message-entry field. If you must. No Emoji? If you don’t see Emoji in the list, click the gear icon, and choose Customize List. Make sure that there’s a check next to Emoji, and then click Done. 39

Warning! People who aren’t using 10.7 Lion or later, or iOS, will very likely not see an Emoji character. They may see a placeholder square, question mark, or other indicator of an unknown character.

Figure 6: Emoji symbols appear in the Characters list.

OMG ABBR Abbreviations are a trickier category than Emoji. For example, if you send a message like “IIRC, and IANAL, that’s not advisable” to most people above age 40, and they’ll wonder what act from the Kama Sutra you’re suggesting. Anyone below 40 will likely read that as “If I recall correctly, and I am not a lawyer, that’s not advisable.” While you can throw in a LOL (Laughed Out Loud, to indicate you get a joke) or YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary, to indicate a nonpredictable response curve), if it doesn’t come naturally, don’t do it. Likewise, if you’re throwing around abbreviations with great abandon, understand that many recipients not in your social milieu won’t understand what the heck you’re saying.

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Avoid Harassment

Messaging services can give rise to harassment, just as any form of personal interaction may. The quasi-anonymity of messaging services may provoke some people into being more unintentionally hostile or purposely antagonistic than would occur in a face-to-face conversation. It also allows people far away to cause consternation just as effectively as if they were right in front of you. There’s a difference between persistent irritants and harassers. You probably stay in touch with some people who you find irritating, and they may bother you through messaging services. A former colleague once heard (long before Facebook) from a highschool flame years after they’d last spoken. At first, AIM messages were welcome, but after a short period of time, not so much, especially multiple times a day. Blocking the person (possible in AIM and Google Talk, but not in iMessage or Yahoo Messenger) might have been too harsh. Calling the police certainly too premature. Such people set poor limits for themselves, and expose the problems that can occur with being too available online. Here are some strategies you can use to cope with unwanted messages and harassment, listed by service: Any instant-messaging service: • Remove from Buddy List: For messaging services, removing a person from your buddy list generally makes it harder for that person to start conversations with you. It may also send a signal that you don’t want to stay in touch through instant messaging. (I discuss buddy lists in the next chapter, ahead a few pages.) AIM and Bonjour: • Suppress Idle status: You may not want people to know when you’re logged in and away from your computer for a period of time. Bonjour and AIM let you suppress the Idle status for buddies or anyone. Choose Messages > Preferences, select an account, and change the setting in the Accounts view. AIM, Bonjour, and Yahoo: • Use Invisible status: In AIM, Bonjour, and Yahoo, you can set your status to Invisible, which prevents anyone (including buddies) 41

from seeing that you are online. It doesn’t prevent people from starting conversations with you, but you play possum. (For details, read Set Your Status, earlier in this chapter) AIM and Google Talk: • Block buddies: AIM and Google Talk let you block particular users (read Block with AIM and Block with Google Talk). This is a more aggressive step, as the blockee knows he has been blocked. This can sometimes make difficult people more difficult. People determined to harass you can make new accounts and try to contact you from there unless (also only in AIM and Google Talk) you prevent anyone not in a buddy list from initiating contact. iMessage: • Delink email addresses: If you’re receiving iMessages at a particular email address, you may want to remove that address from the Messages app (in iOS and OS X). If the address isn’t the main email address for an Apple ID, you may wish to unlink it from the account altogether. • Change phone number: Because iMessage can’t block sending messages, you might consider changing your phone number and being chary about who gets the new number. Sadly, Apple, AOL, Google, and Yahoo have no consistent or easy way to report harassment via Messages. Some require use of their own apps; others don’t have a mechanism in place, notably Apple with iMessage. That’s partly by design, to prevent harassment by falsely reporting abuse. But it leaves vulnerable users vulnerable. If you (or anyone you know) are being harassed via any of these methods, and the harassment affects quality of life or raises concerns about bodily harm, that behavior could be criminal and subject to police investigation, a restraining order, and proffered charges. Call your local police, and ask for a cybercrime investigator; most departments now have them. If the harassment is happening across states or nations (or you’re not sure) and you live in the United States, contact the FBI (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ reporting.html). Most countries now have national cybercrime divisions, too.

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If you (or your child or friend) is being harassed by a schoolmate, check if the school has an online harassment policy and consider taking your concerns to a school official.

End a Conversation

Hey, it’s been great discussing this topic with you, but I’m sure you’re busy, and are ready to move on to the next chapter. That’s nice, but you know, I should start the next chapter, and if you don’t mind, I need to finish this one, and move on. It’s been great talking to you. I see. I see. Good. Well, really, a pleasure, but I’m under a tight deadline, and have to start this next project. I’m glad to hear that. I have another call scheduled right now, but it’s been terrific talking to you. Let’s do this again when we both have time. Huh. My laptop battery is down to just a couple of a percent. I think it’s about to shut d—

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Bring On Buddy Lists for Instant Messaging For instant-messaging accounts, you can set up Buddy Lists of people with whom you converse frequently. A Buddy List lets you control the status you offer to other people on the same network, and it lets you quickly view your buddies’ statuses and start conversations with those buddies. You can have a separate buddylist window for each account at each service—if you’re connected to Google Talk and AIM, for instance—or consolidate them in a single list. You don’t need to manage Buddy Lists at all, if you choose not to. But some IM services (and some ways of configuring those services in chat programs) limit contact methods or impose other hurdles for people who are not in each other’s buddy lists. It’s possible to never put a contact into a buddy list, as well as to keep the buddy list windows closed, and instead select IM accounts in the main Messages window for messaging sessions. If you go that route, you can bypass this entire chapter.

Decide If You Want Just One Buddy List

The first decision to make when setting up Buddy Lists is whether you want one list called Buddies or a separate list for each account at each service. Don’t get too wrapped up in this decision; it’s easy to change your mind later. Directions for working with a Buddy List differ depending your decision here, so it makes sense to sort that out first. The advantage of a consolidated list is that it offers a single place to find everyone with whom you have a chat relationship, and fewer windows if you have accounts at multiple services (or multiple accounts at one or more services). The disadvantage is that if, like me, you have many buddies at different services, your scrolling list is too long. Another problem is that if you’re a buddy with the same person on multiple services, you may have to look around a bit to figure out which account you want to message for that person. 44

To put all your buddies in one list, choose Messages > Preferences and, in the General view, check Show All My Accounts in One List. Note: You can also group your buddies, and I explain that later in this chapter, in Make a Group.

Set Up Buddy Lists

Choose an account name from the Window menu or choose Window > Buddies (for a consolidated list) to open a buddy list (Figure 7) that you want to configure.

Figure 7: The top portion of a Buddy List has several options and controls.

With the window open, notice what you can do in the area at the top: • Name: If you are not showing all your accounts in one list, you can click the name at the top of a Buddy List to choose what accountrelated name to show there. • Status: Click your status, which is likely something like “Busy” or “Available,” and a menu lets you choose a default status messages or set your own. More on status sentiments: See Set Your Status, previous chapter, for full details on how and why to set a status message. • A/V status: A green Phone icon at the right indicates that you can chat over an audio channel. A Video icon at right indicates that audio chats, just video, or audio and video chats are possible. Tip: Choose Video > Video Chat Enabled to toggle video capability, and Video > Audio Chat Enabled to toggle audio. (The menu name is Audio if there’s no video camera built in or attached.)

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• Avatar: The little photo that appears at far right is used with services that display these icons (called avatars) in Buddy Lists and elsewhere. The image you pick is used on all services, and can’t be set separately for each service. Click the icon to pick from recently used images, from Apple’s built-in defaults, or to use a camera to capture your image. Tip: You can also change your avatar by choosing Messages > Change My Picture.

The main portion of the list shows your buddies. I’ll explain how to read buddy entries below in Examine a Buddy, along with the set of four icons at the bottom middle of the Buddy List that correspond to text chat, audio chat, video chat, and screen sharing. People whom you can message via Bonjour appear automatically in the Bonjour buddy list or in a consolidated buddy list. If you want to add more buddies or create groups, you can click the Add button, at the bottom left of the buddy list; I explain the details next. Warning! You may get random requests from people who request that you add them as a buddy (Figure 8). Just click Decline if you don’t absolutely know the person.

Figure 8: I don’t even know this person. Decline!

Add a Buddy You don’t have to add buddies to use instant messaging, but I suggest that you add people whom you message regularly, because adding them makes it easier to conduct conversations with them. Buddies also get extra privileges to talk to you and see your current status in AIM, Google Talk, and Jabber servers. (With AIM, it depends how you’ve configured Privacy Settings in the account setup; see Block with AIM.)

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Note: Buddy Lists are distinct from instant-message entries in Contacts. Each account at a service maintains its own internal list of buddies, which is displayed in a Buddy List in Messages. Note: Bonjour chat participants can’t be added as buddies.

Let me explain how to add a buddy through a list and how to add a buddy through the Messages window. Add via a Buddy List: 1. Bring the account Buddy List frontmost, or the Buddies list if you have a consolidated list. 2. Choose Buddies > Add Buddy (Shift-Command-A) or click the Add button at the bottom left of the Buddy list window and choose Add Buddy. 3. For a consolidated list, choose the service from the Add To pop-up menu (Figure 9). For other lists, the service is predetermined, based on the list’s account.

Figure 9: Adding a buddy with the consolidated Buddies list frontmost.

4. Type the buddy’s account name (Figure 10). (Or, click the downward pointing arrow to reveal the Contacts pane and select your desired contact. With a consolidated list, all accounts are shown for a given contact; with a separate list, only accounts appropriate for that messaging system appear.)

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Warning! As you start typing, Messages will try to pre-fill the field with a name already in a buddy list or in Contacts. If this causes trouble when you press @—because Messages advances to the end of the current pre-filled entry—try again but this time before pressing @, press Delete, then @ and the rest of the address.

Figure 10: Add a buddy (shown here when lists are separated by account).

5. Optionally pick a group. 6. Optionally enter the personal name of the buddy. Warning! As you start to type in a first name, if it matches a contact, Messages fills in the Last Name field as well. If you then press Tab, Messages sometimes (but not always) erases what you entered in the Account Name field. 7. Click Add. Add via the Messages window: 1. Start a conversation by clicking the Compose New Message button. 2. In the To field, type the buddy’s account name in full (including an @ sign and domain for accounts that require that). 3. Press Tab to move the cursor to the message-entry field at bottom. Messages highlights the account you entered in red (Figure 11).

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Figure 11: Enter an account name in the To field, and Messages offers all possible services as options to connect with that account.

4. Click the downward-pointing arrow at the right of the account name, and choose the service in which you want to add the buddy. 5. The address is now outlined in blue. Click it again, and an Add Buddy command is now available (Figure 12). Choose Add Buddy.

Figure 12: After selecting an account type, you can now choose Add Buddy at the bottom.

Your buddy should now appear in the Buddy List.

To delete a buddy, skip ahead to Remove a Buddy, later in this chapter.

Once you add many buddies, your list may become unmanageable,

which is where groups come in, as I tell you about next.

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Make a Group Organizing buddies into groups can be helpful when you have quite a lot of them. However, groups are like Desktop folders: a buddy may be a member of only one group at a time. Groups can be identical across multiple Buddy Lists or, if you’re using a consolidated Buddies list, a group may contain buddies from different accounts and services. Some groups may already exist, such as Buddies in Google Talk and Facebook Friends with Facebook’s Jabber service. You can also choose how to show offline buddies. With View > Show Offline Buddies checked, an offline buddy is shown either in groups to which she belongs or in Recent Buddies if she isn’t in any group. You can opt instead to consolidate all offline buddies by checking View > Use Offline Group, which drops them into a group at the bottom of the list called simply Offline. You can create an empty buddy group via these steps: 1. Bring any buddy list or the consolidated Buddies list frontmost. 2. Click the Add Group.

button at the bottom left, and then choose Add

3. Type the group name, and click Add. The group now appears in the frontmost list. Buddies can be added to a group after it’s created by dragging a buddy or buddies in the list onto the group’s name. Not seeing groups? The View > Use Groups item must be checked to break buddies into groups in the list. Note: If you consolidate your accounts in the Buddies list, or opt to use separate lists, the groups follow. When consolidating, identically named groups become one group in the consolidated Buddies list; when splitting a consolidated list into separate lists, any group in the Buddies list becomes a separate group in each account’s list.

Messages can creates groups from selected buddies, too. Follow these steps: 1. Bring any buddy list or the consolidated Buddies list frontmost. 50

2. Select a buddy in the list. (This can include offline buddies if View > Use Offline Group is unchecked.) Command-click to select multiple buddies or to remove buddies from the current selection. 3. Either Control-click (right-click) any of the selected buddies or click the Buddies menu, and then choose Create New Group with People. The group now appears in the frontmost list with those buddies in it; if those buddies were previously in other groups, they are moved to the new group. You can also Control-click (right-click) the group’s name in the list in order to: • Rename the group: This lets you change the name, an obvious option. • Delete the group: The group is not only deleted, but all the buddies in the group are removed from your buddy list! This is not an obvious outcome, so if you want to keep these people as buddies, be sure to move them out of the group before deleting it—you can drag them into a different group in your Buddy List window. Warning! Deleting a group removes not just the buddies you see who are online, but any offline buddies, as well. • Add Buddy: This brings up the standard options described in Add a Buddy to drop in a user by typing an account name or searching for a contact. • Send Instant Message to Members: Choose this item, and a separate conversation is opened in the Messages window for every member in the group. • Invite Members to Chat: Choose this command to start a group chat. (Messages tells you this isn’t possible if the buddies aren’t all in one service.) Once you’ve organized your buddies, you might want to find out more about them, as described next.

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Examine a Buddy

When you check out a buddy in the Messages Info window, you can view a combination of some of the details that you’ve entered on an associated Contacts card and any added by the service provider for the account. You can also see what types of chats your buddy can join, and can even trigger behaviors based on a buddy’s interaction with a message service (like logging in or out) and on their conversation with you (like sending a message). To access this in-depth presentation, select one or more buddies in a list, or select a contact name in the To field in the Messages window. Now choose Buddies > Show Info (Command-Shift-I). The Info window has three views: Profile, Alerts, and Address Card. I cover each in turn.

Profile View Buddies have different capabilities that depend both on the service (as described in Open a Channel and Table 1), and on the features of the buddy’s computer or even broadband connection (Figure 13).

Figure 13: An AIM account (top) has many more capabilities than an iMessage account (bottom) as far as Messages is concerned.

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The Capabilities list can help you understand what’s possible when you want to connect with another party. For instance, if you want to use Theater (see Get Theatrical with Theater), you can’t with iMessage (or Google Talk for that matter), but can via an AIM connection. Tip: You can find out your own capabilities by choosing Video > Connection Doctor. From the Show pop-up menu, choose Capabilities. All Macs that can run Mountain Lion should have green checkmarks next to every option, except for those related to video if there’s no camera available. (In that case, the menu option is Audio > Connection Doctor.)

Alerts View The Alerts view lets you associate a buddy’s action, such as logging out, with a behavior, like playing a sound. This list of actions is the same as the global setting for each action (choose Messages > Preferences and then click Alerts). For most buddies, a customized alert is overkill, as you almost certainly don’t care about every move they make (every breath they take). However, for certain comrades—like a spouse, child, or close colleague—some extra notification can be handy. From the Event pop-up menu, pick any kind of trigger (Figure 14). For instance, if you want to know whenever someone logs in or out— choose Buddy Becomes Available or Buddy Becomes Unavailable.

Figure 14: Choose a trigger to perform an associated action. 53

From the checkboxes and menus below the Events menu, pick what behavior to carry out for that trigger (Figure 15). You might want to bounce the Messages icon in the Dock continuously (check Repeat to keep it going), or even Speak an Announcement where text-to-speech tells you what happens and the username associated with it. (The speech volume is set in the Messages Alerts preferences.)

Figure 15: Check one or more actions to occur after a trigger.

The Perform Alerts One Time Only option deselects everything you’ve chosen after the first time a trigger occurs for this user/event combination or when you quit Messages. It’s essentially an expiration setting.

Address Card View In this view (Figure 16), a card appears where you can monkey around with some of your buddy’s contact data. If the first and last names on the card match a card in the Contacts application on your Mac, then some of the data that you see or type here will be shared with Contacts. Or, if a Choose Contacts button is available, you can match the Messages card with a Contacts card.

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Figure 16: The Address Card can reveal information stored in

Contacts.

Every field is editable, including the picture: • Picture: To use a custom avatar for a buddy in Messages, or to retain the current avatar even if your buddy changes it later, check the Always Use This Picture box. You can create an image in another program, select the picture, and paste to replace the buddy icon. • First Name, Last Name, and Nickname: These fields directly reflect the buddy’s Contacts card and may be modified here or in the Contacts application. • Email, Phone, and IM fields: These versatile fields combine viewing information, adding to contacts, and creating connections: ‣ You may enter new items in each field, or click an item and press Delete to remove. Changes are nearly instantly reflected in the Contacts app. ‣ Each existing item, shown in a pale-blue lozenge, has a familiar pop-up menu, just as every contact in the Messages window’s To field provides (Figure 17). Click that to choose a way to start a connection. 55

Figure 17: The menu for messaging methods in the Info card let you initiate connections.

‣ If a contact method isn’t already in your Buddy List for an account associated with that service, open the contact-lozenge pop-up menu and choose Add Buddy. Existing buddies may also be removed.

Remove a Buddy

But what if you’ve had enough of a buddy, or no longer work with him? You can remove buddies easily, which removes their special privileges for communicating with you. How? Read on: • For AIM and Yahoo Messenger, select the buddy in the appropriate list, and choose Buddies > Remove Username. You can also choose Edit > Delete. Click Remove when prompted. • For Google Talk and Jabber servers, you can: ‣ Select the buddy in the list, and choose Edit > Delete. The removal warning shows a strange, long name for the user. Click Remove. ‣ Log in to Google Talk (via https://mail.google.com/) or the Jabber server’s Web interface, and remove the user from the list there. You can also block buddies in some services, which prevents them from contacting you in any way, described next.

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Block a Buddy or Other User

Each service has its own process for blocking users—or not being able to block them at all, as is the case with iMessage. A blocked user cannot see your status, is removed from your list of buddies, and can’t send messages to you. You also can’t send messages to her.

Block with AIM AOL lets you maintain a block list in Messages, but it doesn’t store that information centrally or synchronize it among accounts. You can block an AIM user in several ways: • Right-click the user in a Buddy List and choose Block Username. • Select the user in a Buddy List and choose Buddies > Block Username. • Right-click a conversation entry in the Messages window with AIM as the active messaging service, and choose Block Username. • When an incoming message says someone wants to start a conversation with you, click the Block User button. • Use Preferences to add the user, which I’ll discuss in greater detail next. When you choose to block a user, Messages offers a dialog that explains how blocking will affect you and the other person, and then lets you click Cancel or Block. To type in addresses of people to block, remove blocked addresses, or see who is in your blacklist, choose Messages > Preferences, click Accounts, and then select the account in question. Click the Privacy button, and then the Edit List button next to Block Specific People. The Block Specific People dialog lets you double-click a username to edit it, select a user and click the minus button to remove him button to add a user to the from the blocked list, or click the plus blocked list. Click Cancel to discard changes or Done to apply them. Tip: You can retain the list of blocked people even if you change your Privacy Level to another setting, such as Allow Anyone.

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Block with Google Talk While you cannot block buddies via the Buddy List, Google provides an interface on its Web site, which is instantly picked up by Messages when you are logged in. To block a buddy: 1. Go to Gmail (https://mail.google.com/). 2. After buddies appear at the lower left of your window (using Gmail’s standard display), scroll to find the buddy you want to block and hover over the name. 3. In the entry card that pops up, click the downward-pointing arrow at the lower right and choose Block from the menu (Figure 18).

Figure 18: Block a buddy directly from Google’s Web site. Not Rich, of course. I’d never block Rich.

The buddy is immediately removed from the Web site list and, if you’re logged in, from the list of available buddies in Messages. To restore a blocked buddy, follow these steps: 1. From the Gmail Web site, enter the buddy’s name in the Search field at the top of the list of buddies. 2. Wait for a list of people to populate below the field. Hover over the correct buddy name. 3. In the pop-out menu at right, click Block User (which is checked). The block is removed.

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Remove Yahoo Messenger Buddies Yahoo Messenger has no mechanism to block troublesome buddies, but you can remove them from your Buddy List.

Decline Bonjour Chats Bonjour shows active users on the local network, and you can’t block seeing those users or receiving invitations. You can decline incoming invitations, however.

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Master the Messages Window The Messages window is your dashboard in the Messages program, and this chapter provides a graphical overview, along with referrals to the parts of the ebook that have the specific details about each labeled interface element. After launching Messages and going through any initial setup dialogs that it might present, a window like the one shown in Figure 19 appears. If not, choose Window > Messages (Command-zero).

Figure 19: The Messages window and its labeled parts.

➊ The Search field lets you look through your active and previous conversations; see Read Past Messages. The Compose New Message See Find Someone.

button starts a new conversation.

➋ The Conversation List shows all conversations that you’ve left open, which can include ones that are in progress or ones in the past that you haven’t closed. The Conversation List is discussed throughout the upcoming chapters, notably in Exchange Text and Multimedia Messages, and especially in Arrange Conversations in that section. 60

➌ The status section appears if you have defined and enabled any messaging services other than iMessage. The status (available or away) and associated message can be set here or in Buddy Lists. See Symbolize Your Status and Set Up Buddy Lists. ➍ The To field is where you type the name of a contact with whom you want to start a conversation (after first clicking the Compose New Message button). Once a conversation starts, it’s also where the contact appears as a blue lozenge with a pop-up menu to its right for switching among any messaging accounts that you have listed for the contact. See Find Someone. The Video drop-down menu allows you to start FaceTime, audio, and video chats; see Chat via Audio and Video. It also lets you begin a screen-sharing session. See Share Screens. A plus button appears (not shown) when you are typing an entry in the To field; see Find Someone. ➎ Messages inserts a divider whenever a long conversation resumes, after a long delay in a conversation, or whenever the account is switched from one message service to another, such as from AIM to iMessage. You can insert a divider with a timestamp by choosing Edit > Mark Transcript (Command-Shift-K). ➏ By default, Messages puts your messages on the right side of the window and messages from the other party or parties on the left. It also color codes them by side (you and other people) and by service. For you, iMessages appear in blue and other services appear in green, just as in iOS, unless you change the default colors. ➐ The message-entry field is where you type text that you want to send to another person. In addition, you can drag photos, videos, or other files into the Messages window; they will appear in this field, letting you send them to the other person or people. If nothing’s been entered in the field, the field’s gray label text notes the service you’re using to converse. If you have multiple enabled accounts for the same service, the account is added in parentheses. ➑ Smileys may be selected from this pop-up menu. See Use Smileys, Emoji, and Abbreviations.

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Exchange Text and Multimedia Messages One of the main reasons to use Messages is to type in little bits of text and send them to other people and receive the same. The Messages app also lets you mix in images, video, PDFs, and files of all kinds. This chapter covers the full range of tasks. I start by explaining several ways you can find the right account for a person in “Find Someone,” just ahead. We then move to the details of composing and receiving text-only messages in Exchange Text Messages. You may want to send a picture, moving images, or files to another party, which Send and Receive Media and Files covers. When you’re done with a chat, can you finish it? Not exactly, I explain in End a Chat. Messages also lets you Start a Group Chat with multiple people, although the details vary by service. Finally, you may want to Read Past Messages in a conversation by scrolling back or searching through archived chats.

Find Someone

To send a message, you must first tell Messages to whom to send it, and at which messaging service. Messages organizes this process by name, rather than by email address, phone number, or instantmessaging service account. This makes it convenient to start messaging someone, because you can easily access all the contact methods that you’ve already put into a card in the Contacts app. In this topic, I first point out some new ways of adding data to Contacts that you might not be aware of. I then explain how to start a message in several different ways: • Type a few characters: If you don’t have a reason to use a different method, I suggest that you start with this technique, because it is straightforward and because I give drawn out directions for it. Flip ahead a page or so to Start Typing a Name. 62

• Click: You can navigate to a contact within a popover that shows you groups, contacts, and buddies, if you prefer. See Use Contacts. • Start from a Buddy List: I give a bunch of options in Use a Buddy List. • Type an email address or username: Use this method if the contact information needed to start a message isn’t already in the Contacts application. I talk about this technique in Enter from Scratch and Try to Find an Account with iMessage. Build Your Contacts

For the directions to work in Start Typing a Name and Use Contacts, found ahead, you must already have contact information entered in OS X’s Contacts application. This used to be a tedious matter, but it’s become easier over the years as Apple has provided more ways to create new contacts or add information to existing ones. For instance, in the Mail app, you can click the downward-pointing triangle to the right of any email address in an incoming message and choose Add to Contacts to create a new entry with that address (and a name if one’s present). More useful is how Messages handles this. If you type a name in from scratch, you can then click the downward-pointing arrow to the name’s right and choose Add to Existing Contact to extend an entry you have (Figure 20). In a Contacts entry, any email address or phone number is considered a potential iMessage destination by Messages. But you can also explicitly add other network entries. With a record open, click Edit, and then choose Card > Add Field > Instant Message. Type in the name and choose the network, and that information will be recognized the next time you use that contact in Messages.

Figure 20: Typed-in entries may be added to existing contacts, or a new contact may be created using the entry as a stub. 63

Start Typing a Name Most of the time, when you don’t have an existing conversation with someone in the Conversation List, you start a message by typing the first few characters in your recipient’s name: 1. Near the top center of the Messages window, click the Compose New Message button. 2. Start typing a name into the To field to the right of the button. A drop-down menu shows matches from the Contacts application. For instance, in Figure 21, Adam Finkelstein has a host of methods by which to reach him. I could use Jabber (Facebook chat in this case), Google Talk, AIM, or several different iMessage-associated email addresses and iPhone phone numbers.

Figure 21: As you type in the To field, matching contacts appear.

3. Choose the person and method where you want to begin the conversation. You can tell on which services a user is active by the icons next to the service types: ‣ iMessage: Any iMessage-associated email address or phone number has a blue iMessage icon next to it (Figure 22). The icon doesn’t indicate whether or not the person is online or available. (Oddly, an iMessage text label appears next to all phone numbers and email addresses, whether or not they are associated with iMessage.) 64

Figure 22: The status for each service appears next to its type.

‣ Other services: A status icon, like a green dot, shows both whether a person is logged in to the listed service (such as AIM), and what his status is at that moment (Figure 22, above). If the method you’ve picked turns out to be invalid, such as a phone number that’s not connected to iMessage, the name appears in a red lozenge (Figure 23). If you try to send a message, when you press Enter, Messages puts up an alert that the message couldn’t be sent (Figure 24).

Figure 23: An invalid messaging address or phone number for a recipient appears in red.

Figure 24: Messages alerts you when a destination isn’t valid and you try to send a message.

If the method is valid, you’ll see the name associated with your recipient in a blue lozenge. If you’re communicating with a service other than iMessage, the person’s status color for that service is shown as well (Figure 25).

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Figure 25: With an instant-messaging service selected, a user’s name also includes the current status icon.

With nothing in the message-entry field, the name of the selected service is listed (such as Google Talk or iMessage). Now that you’ve addressed your message, you can Exchange Text Messages, discussed later in this chapter. Tip: You can send a single message to more than one recipient, so long as you connect with each one with the same messaging service.

You can change services during an active conversation by hovering over the name, then clicking the downward-pointing arrow; clicking the name itself does nothing. A list of alternate message services for that person appears, along with the same status indicators you see when you’re starting a conversation (Figure 26).

Figure 26: You can switch among messaging services when in the middle of a conversation.

Once you switch, a divider with the new method and time appears (Figure 27).

Figure 27: The conversation separates out your discussions with the same person by inserting a dividing line above the first message you send or receive from that service with the name of the service, the email or other identifier, and the current time and date. 66

Note: Your recipient isn’t necessarily logged in to all her services in the same place. If you switch from iMessage to AIM to Google Talk, that might take her from an iPhone to a desktop Mac to a laptop Mac. Make sure the other person knows you’re hopping around.

Use Contacts Messages offers another way to select a recipient after you click the Compose New Message button. Instead of typing in the To field, click the plus button to bring up the Contacts/Buddies popover (Figure 28). As you type in the search field at the top, the list of matched contacts narrows.

Figure 28: The Contacts/Buddies popover shows your full Contacts list or a consolidated list of all instant-messaging comrades.

The Contacts view has a couple of advantages over typing in part of a name, even for searches, because you select the person first, and then click the messaging method in a contact card (Figure 29). This can be easier than navigating in the drop-down menu.

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Figure 29: The Contacts view shows all the messaging methods for a selected contact.

Clicking any contact method puts that person’s name in the To field and selects that method for a chat. The Buddies view of the popover also allows searching, but it groups people by service, even if you have the preference set (in the General Messages preference pane) to Show All My Accounts in One List. Click a buddy’s name, and it’s inserted into the To field.

Use a Buddy List If you read the earlier chapter, Bring On Buddy Lists for Instant Messaging, you know how to populate and open a buddy list. To start a conversation with a buddy, first find the buddy in the appropriate list and then do one of the following: • Double-click the buddy’s name. • Select the buddy, and press Command-Shift-N. • Select the buddy, and choose Buddies > Start New Chat. • Control-click (right-click) the buddy’s name, and choose Invite to Chat. • Select the buddy, and click the Start a Text Chat bottom of the list.

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button at the

Messages puts the recipient’s name in the To field and sets the service to the one corresponding to the account. You can use the menu to the right of the name to change messaging services.

Enter from Scratch If you don’t have a record in Contacts with the information you need, you can always type in an email address or other contact information: 1. Click the Compose New Message

button.

2. Type in a complete account name. This may be an email address for iMessage, AIM, or Google Talk, or a plain account name for AIM and Yahoo Messenger. 3. Press Tab. 4. The account name is now a red lozenge with white lettering. Click the downward-pointing arrow to the name’s right, and Messages suggests appropriate services (Figure 30).

Figure 30: Messages tries to place a typed-in entry by suggesting possible services.

5. Choose the correct service. Red circled exclamation point : If you type the account name incorrectly and try to send a message, Messages explains that it didn’t work, but offers to let you try again (Figure 31).

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Figure 31: An incorrect recipient produces a notice that a message couldn’t be sent.

Try to Find an Account with iMessage Messages contains a double-edged sword when it comes to privacy and iMessage: whenever you choose, view, or enter a phone number or email address, the Messages app checks Apple’s iMessage database to see whether the item is connected to iMessage—either as an address associated with an Apple ID or a phone number for an iPhone. You can check whether a number or address may receive an iMessage through these methods: • Click the Compose New Message button, type a phone number or email address in the To field, press Tab, move the pointer over the recipient’s name in the To field, and then click the downwardpointing arrow to the right of the number or address. A blue iMessage icon appears, sometimes after a few seconds, next to registered items. False positives: Apple confusingly includes the text “iMessage” next to all addresses and phone numbers, even ones that aren’t associated with iMessage. • For any current conversation, click the downward-pointing arrow next to the recipient’s name (or address or number if the person isn’t in your contacts), and see which phone numbers and email addresses have a blue iMessage icon next to them. • When using the Contacts/Buddies popover, select a contact; any eligible phone number or registered email has a blue iMessage icon next to it. I talk more about the social aspect of this in Review Your Etiquette Lessons. 70

Arrange Conversations

The Conversation List, on the left side of the main Messages window, may appear to display conversations in arbitrary order if you don’t understand how it works. You can clear out inactive ones by clicking the close button next to each. But that doesn’t help you with organizing conversations that you want to keep in the list. Look in the View > Sort Conversations submenu, and you will see that by default Apple sorts conversations By Time: the most-recent conversation in which you entered or received a message (or performed some other noted interaction) appears at the top, with the rest below in reverse-chronological order. This can be confusing, because your contacts jump up and down in the list as you interact. If you’d rather keep contacts in an order you set, choose View > Sort Conversations > Manually. Now you can arrange list items in any order by dragging their blocks in the Conversation List, and that order remains fixed. (Unfortunately, this order isn’t synced among your computers.) You can also pop conversations out of the main Messages window to view them in their own windows. Double-click an entry in the Conversation List, or Control-click (right-click) an entry and choose Open Chat in Separate Window.

Exchange Text Messages

Text-only messages are straightforward, as you’ve likely experienced. Let’s look at the interrelated but separate issues of sending and receiving, and then at working with messages you’ve received.

Compose Text Messages With a recipient or recipients in the To field, click in the message-entry field and start typing a message. You can also copy text or graphics (or a mix) from any source and paste them in. If the source from which you’re copying uses Rich Text Format (RTF) for text formatting (like bold and italic), the recipient likely will not see the bold, italic, and other text formatting, as Messages strips that out.

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When typing a message, valid characters are any that you can type with the keyboard or insert from the Characters palette (which you access by choosing Edit > Special Characters) (Figure 32). Click the gear icon and choose Customize List to pick additional character sets, such as Unicode.

Figure 32: Use the Characters palette to insert hard-to-type or impossible-to-type characters and symbols.

Messages also has a tool to help you send URLs as active links. With your cursor in the message entry field, choose Edit > Add Link (Command-K). The URL goes in the larger field at the bottom of the dialog that appears. To use the URL as the link text, click OK; to use different text as the link text, enter it in the top field and then click OK.

Send a Text Message When your message is complete, press Return or Enter to send it. The conversation scrolls up and shows the text you entered as the newest (i.e., the closest-to-the-bottom) message sent. Retry: If there’s a problem delivering the message, an exclamation point badge appears. Click it and you can choose to try sending the message again. With iMessages only, you see up to three additional pieces of information: • Once a message is received on any device associated with the account to which you sent the message, Messages shows “Delivered” under the message (Figure 33). 72

Figure 33: iMessages appear as “Delivered” on receipt.

• If you read Sign In with an Existing Apple ID, earlier, you know that Messages lets you choose whether to send “read receipts” when you read messages (this is true both in iOS and OS X). A receipt tells the sender that you’ve viewed a message by opening the Messages app in iOS or by bringing the Messages program frontmost in Mountain Lion—the label “Read” appears (in the sender’s copy of Messages) under a sent message, along with the time it was viewed (Figure 34).

Figure 34: If a recipient allows it, you know when a message has been viewed.

• Once you’ve sent at least one iMessage to a recipient, when he starts typing a reply (whether in iOS or OS X), Messages shows a balloon containing an ellipsis to show that a response is underway (Figure 35). That ellipsis balloon remains as long as any unsent text is in the message-entry field in the replying party’s Messages app or program.

Figure 35: What is he about to say?! Something; that’s indicated.

Receive a Text Message When an incoming message arrives for an account to which you’re logged in through Messages, the message appears in a conversation: • If there’s an active conversation with that contact: The message is placed at the end of the conversation. • Otherwise, if you previously exchanged messages and have history enabled: The previous conversation is restored, 73

and the message is placed at the end. (To enable history, open the Messages preference pane and select Save History when Conversations Are Closed.) • Otherwise: A new conversation entry is created. In all three cases, a blue dot appears to the left of the entry (Figure 36) to indicate a unread message.

Figure 36: The blue dot indicates an unread message.

When you switch to that conversation entry, you may be prompted to accept the session, depending on the service and other factors: • iMessage: iMessage doesn’t provide you with an approval process before communication starts. All online accounts associated with iMessage receive messages. Multiple devices receiving iMessages: If you have Messages open and frontmost on a Mac and receive an incoming iMessage to an address that is also associated with one or more iOS devices, the iMessage does not show up on the lock screen as a notification in iOS. If Messages is in the background on the Mac, iOS does honor notification settings in iOS. This is nifty: it pays attention to where you’re paying attention. • Other services, sender is in Buddy List: The incoming message is automatically accepted. • Other services, sender not in Buddy List: The message is shown, but instead of a message-entry field at the bottom of the window, Messages displays Accept and Decline buttons. AIM accounts will also see a Block button. Click Accept and the message-entry field appears; decline, and the other party is notified and can’t continue to message you. See Block with AIM for details on that choice.

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Warning! In my testing, once I accepted any message from someone, even if I removed that account from my buddy list, blocked (and then unblocked) the account, or deleted the conversation, I was never prompted again to block, accept, or decline that contact. Notifications of Incoming Messages

By default, Mountain Lion’s Notifications feature causes a pop-up balloon (a banner) to appear in the upper-right corner of your screen when Messages receives an incoming message and Messages isn’t the frontmost app. The banner includes the first portion of the message’s text, and it disappears after a few seconds. icon on the right edge of the menu bar Clicking the Notifications shows the full Notification Center and the last five messages received (Figure 37). You can use the Notifications system preference pane to set whether you want notifications from the Messages app, whether they persist (called alerts), how many items to show in the Notification Center, and other customizations.

Figure 37: A message appears in the Notification Center list.

Interact with a Text Message If you want send a message that you’ve entered or received to another person or to another account for the same person, click the message balloon. The balloon changes to the highlight color specified in the General system preference pane’s Highlight pop-up menu. Right-click the balloon, and a set of options appear (Figure 38). Choose Forward, and Messages creates a new Conversation with the forwarded text in the message-entry field, placing the cursor in the To field. Copy copies the message’s text. Delete (which has a confirmation step) removes the message only from your conversation transcript, not from that of the recipient or recipients.

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Figure 38: A message may be forwarded, copied, or deleted. Tip: Messages lets you select multiple messages at once, contiguously and non-contiguously. See Read Past Messages for more about using selections to delete parts of a transcript or to export text.

To copy part of the text in a message, double-click the message and highlight all or part of the text to select it, and then choose Edit > Copy (Command-C) to put it in the Clipboard.

Send and Receive Media and Files

With all services except Yahoo Messenger, you can transfer images, video, and arbitrary files by dragging them onto a conversation, or by choosing Buddies > Send File. Google Talk variation: Google Talk apparently restricts whether you can send files depending on the particular client or Web site that a logged-in user is using. However, I tested this with many of my Google Talk buddies and could find no pattern as to which could receive files and which could not. Let’s look at sending and receiving files from the perspective of each party, starting with the sender.

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Pick Files to Send You can either drag files into the Messages window or use a fileselection dialog. Drag-and-drop transfers let you select multiple files and folders in the Finder, while the file-selection option allows just a single selection of a file or folder: • Dragging: From the Finder, drag one or more files or folders to the Messages window. A green badge appears when you’re on a target, as in Figure 39. A target could be: ‣ The main messages view ‣ The message-entry field ‣ A conversation with an iMessage user or logged-in instantmessaging user in the Conversations List

Figure 39: Drag a file into the conversation.

• File selection: 1. Select a conversation, and choose Buddies > Send File. 2. Choose a single file or folder from the file-selection dialog. 3. Click Send. After you drag and drop, or click Send in the file-selection dialog, the item(s) appear in the message-entry field for that conversation, with the cursor positioned following the item(s). Offline users can’t receive: Typically, recipients who are offline aren’t eligible to receive files, and Messages will alert you to that fact when you attempt to drag files into a conversation; the Send File command will also be dimmed. Images and videos appear as previews (Figure 40). Other files appear as an icon and name in a colored lozenge.

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Figure 40: Images (and videos) appear as previews in the message entry field.

You may select and delete individual items.

Send Selected Files Press Return or Enter to send the items, just as you would a text message. While the upload is in progress on the sender’s computer, the downward-pointing arrow displays an “i” in a circle (Figure 41).

Figure 41: An “i” indicates that the transfer is in progress.

You can click the icon to open the File Transfers window (or choose Windows > File Transfers). The window shows the download progress, along with those already sent, received, or declined (Figure 42). You may cancel outbound file transfers or reveal the files in the Finder.

Figure 42: File transfers appear in a window with the option to cancel as either the sender or recipient. 78

Note: File transfers are computer-to-computer, with the messaging service facilitating making a connection. In some cases, a file-transfer connection between two users won’t be possible even though they can message back and forth. See Chat via Audio and Video for troubleshooting help, as a similar process is used to set up audio and video chats.

Once the files have been copied, the arrow turns into a magnifying glass that you can click to reveal the file or folder in the Finder (Figure 43).

Figure 43: The magnifying glass reveals sent and received files in the Finder. Note: You can also use a Buddy List to initiate a file transfer by selecting a buddy and choosing Buddies > Send File. In this case, after selecting a file or folder, Messages reveals the File Transfers dialog, and immediately attempts to send the file.

Receive Files The recipient’s perspective on incoming files is far simpler: • Images and PDFs: These file types start being received without any action from you, as the recipient. A space appears in proportion to the incoming picture, and a circular status icon fills as the image transfers (Figure 44).

Figure 44: A progress circle fills as the image loads.

When the image has fully loaded, it appears (Figure 45). You can see the image at full size via Quick Look by double-clicking the image, or by selecting it and pressing the Space bar. The image may be saved by dragging it from the conversation to the Finder.

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Figure 45: A photo received in Messages.

• All other files: A message appears for each sent file or folder, with a downward-pointing arrow next to the filename (Figure 46). Click the arrow to download the file into the ~/Downloads folder in the main level of your user’s Home folder. Progress can be seen in the File Transfers window, where you can also cancel an incoming file or one that’s downloading (Figure 42, earlier).

Figure 46: Other files appear as a message with an icon and a downward-pointing arrow.

• Videos: Messages presents videos for download just like nonimage files, but you may double-click a video, or select it and press the Space bar, to preview it in Quick Look. You can also save the movie by dragging it to the Finder. Tip: You can change the folder into which files are downloaded by choosing Messages > Preferences and clicking the General button. Select a new folder from the Save Received Files To pop-up menu.

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Note: iOS users may view images and video within the Messages app. Other natively supported file formats, such as PDF, Pages, Word, and RTF, can be previewed in the iOS Message app or opened in other apps. Formats that aren’t supported in iOS for preview can’t be downloaded to iOS.

End a Chat

The Messages app doesn’t have a precise notion of ending things. In Apple’s thinking, because Messages is focused on individuals (or least individual Contacts entries), the conversation doesn’t start and end so much as flow. As a result, there’s only one way to “end” a chat, and even that doesn’t involve closing a connection. Hover over any entry in the Conversation List, and a close button appears. Click it, and the conversation disappears from the list. However, to the person with whom you’re chatting, the conversation remains open. You can also start a new conversation with the same person, and, depending on your choices for saving past messages, a window opens up showing right where you last left off. (See Read Past Messages for more about retaining conversation threads.)

Start a Group Chat

AIM, Google, and Jabber servers (including Facebook Chat) allow the creation of multi-person chat rooms where each person sees all the messages from everyone else. Group chat rooms can be used once or be persistent.

Create a Chat Root from Scratch You have two ways to create a multi-person chat without a chat-room name: • In the Messages window, click the Compose New Message button. In the To field, type or add contacts from the same messaging service (I describe how to work with the To field earlier, in Start Typing a Name and Use Contacts). 81

Incompatible accounts: If after entering the first person, you enter an address from a different service, Messages highlights the non-conforming address in red. Open the contact lozenge’s pop-up menu and choose a compatible account, or delete it. • Select two or more buddies from an account’s Buddy List, and then perform one of the following actions: ‣ Choose Buddies > Start New Chat. ‣ Double-click any of the selected buddies. ‣ Right-click any of the selected buddies, and choose Invite to Chat. In all these cases, you wind up with a conversation in the Messages window that shows multiple parties as overlapped avatars in the Conversations List. Type a message into the Message field and press Enter or Return, and a request is sent (along with the message) to other the other parties to join the chat room. What a recipient sees varies by the message client she uses, but in Messages, a new conversation appears in the list. After it’s selected, she can opt to block the sender (in AIM only), accept the conversation, or decline the conversation (Figure 47).

Figure 47: A group chat appears with overlapped icons in the

Conversation List, and offers options on proceeding.

You can keep typing messages even if no one joins the chat room. As each participant responds, Messages updates the status with “User has 82

joined this chat” or “User has declined the invitation to join this chat.” Messages also reports when someone has left the chat room or gone offline. Note: Users that haven’t joined, or that have declined, appear with a dark outline around their name in the To list.

After a chat starts, you can add participants only through the plus button, which changes from the Contacts/Buddy popover to a list of buddies currently logged in to the chat room’s message service. Select any of these, and Messages lets you send a custom invitation to the new person (Figure 48).

Figure 48: After clicking the plus invitation message for a buddy.

button, you can type an

There’s no way to remove buddies from an active group chat; you must close the chat and start a new one.

Create a Persistent Chat Room Messages lets you set up persistent or reusable chat rooms, too: 1. Choose File > Go to Chat Room. button to add it to 2. Enter a room name, and then click the plus the list. For Google Talk and Jabber servers, provide it in the form of an email address (such as @gmail.com). You can provide this name to other people, and they (or you) may join the chat room at any time using the name: 1. Choose File > Go to Chat Room. 2. Enter the name in the Room Name field. 3. Click Go.

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To re-open a chat room that you stored in the list:

1. Choose File > Go to Chat Room. 2. Select the room in the list. 3. Click Go. When you re-open a chat room, Messages creates a new entry in the Conversation List to which you can add participants, but only via the plus button at the upper right with that conversation active. For each user, you see a pop-up invitation as in Figure 48 (earlier). Chat rooms are secure only by obscurity: anyone knowing the name may join without a password.

Chat within a Room After a chat has begun, the contact-lozenge pop-up menu for each party in the chat changes from one that shows all their messaging methods to one that reveals chat-room-specific options (Figure 49).

Figure 49: New options appears in the menu after a party joins a chat room.

Chat room options include: • Send Private Message opens a new (private) conversation with that person. • New Email should use the account name as the email destination, but in my testing it picks the first email address in the person’s Contacts card, if one exists. • Audio/Video lets you start a FaceTime session with an account listed in the submenu or with built-in Messages audio and video methods (see Chat via Audio and Video). 84

• Show Contact Card appears if the person is in your Contacts list. • Ignore Username in This Chat omits messages sent from that person to the group chat. To exit a chat room, click the close button in the Conversation List. The room remains available to anyone else in it. When all participants leave except you, the room is shown as Empty Chat. Participants who have left can be re-invited to the chat.

Read Past Messages

Messages treats conversations as transcripts. You can either let them persist over time, or you can have them disappear when you close a conversation entry (see End a Chat).

Retain Conversations In Messages > Preferences, click the Messages button. The Save History When Conversations Are Closed checkbox controls whether the transcript of each conversation is retained or deleted when the conversation is closed. If the option is enabled, all conversations are recorded, organized by contact (not account). Within a conversation, the transcript is broken out as daily entries but presented as a seamless scrollable window. If you scroll back beyond the current day, Messages loads previous transcripts automatically. Quitting doesn’t delete history: When you quit Messages, it doesn’t delete the current state of conversations—it retains them regardless of your setting. Note: Veteran users of iChat should note that the difference between iChat transcripts and Messages conversations is nil. iChat exposed where transcripts are stored, and Messages does not. Messages also changed some terminology and the content of warning messages.

Search Transcripts You can type in the Search field in the main Messages window to search across the text of all current conversations in the Conversation 85

List. It also matches any text of stored transcripts if you’ve set Messages to retain conversations, described just above. The matched text for a given contact does not need to be visible in the Messages window before you search, but the contact must be in the list. Add a Contact to the List for Searching

Messages won’t let you just click the Compose New Message button, select a contact, and search past messages for that person. You have to start a new conversation, too, sending at least one message to any account associated with that contact. It’s like priming the pump. After the first message is sent (even if it’s not delivered), the previous transcripts flows in above it in the window. You can also check the File > Recent submenu which shows the last ten contacts with whom you’ve had conversations. Select one of those entries, and that person appears in the Conversation List with the most recent conversation in the Messages window, and past transcripts may now be searched.

Matches within conversations appear in the list, with the first match (if there are multiple) shown as a preview in the message pane and, when you click that entry, scrolled and highlighted in the transcript (Figure 50).

Figure 50: A search brings up a highlighted match in a past conversation. Note: Transcripts aren’t synced between your computers. An AIM conversation you had on one machine using Messages cannot be searched within Messages on another computer. iMessages may sync up between two computers using the same iMessage account, but not all the messages appear. 86

When you search through your transcripts, you can employ the usual OS X options (these are found, oddly, in the Edit > Find submenu, instead of in a Search submenu), including Find Next (Command-G) and Find Previous (Command-Shift-G). You may also select text in a conversation and use that as the search term (choose Edit > Find > Use Selection for Find, or press Command-E).

Delete All or Part of a Transcript You can get rid of a conversation by choosing Edit > Clear Transcript. But heed this Warning! Warning! Clear Transcript, which is irreversible, deletes every transcript ever recorded for that particular contact! Ever! Instead, you might want to delete part of a transcript. As noted earlier, when you click an individual message in a conversation, it highlights, and you can then Control-click (right-click) to access a menu that includes Delete. You can also select multiple messages: 1. Click a message so that it highlights. 2. Shift-click additional messages to generate a contiguous selection (Figure 51), or Command-click to add messages (contiguous or non-contiguous), or to deselect messages that were already selected.

Figure 51: Multiple messages are highlighted and then may be deleted.

3. Control-click (right-click) any selected message, and choose Delete. 4. Confirm the irreversible Delete option. The transcript is purged of those entries. 87

Save a Conversation Conversations can’t be exported as text, but they may be printed, and printing a conversation to PDF retains formatting and searchability. You can also use the multiple-message-selection technique described for deleting (just previously), but in Step 3 choose Copy; this copied text preserves the back-and-forth names of participants and some minor formatting (Figure 52).

Figure 52: Copied text from messages preserves badinage.

Finding the Transcripts

The transcript files are stored in ~/Library/Messages/Archive— specifically, in folders organized by date, such as 2012-08-20. Inside each dated folder are one or more files named using the person with whom you were conversing, such as Jason Snell on 2012-08-20 at 14.15.ichat. You may see multiple files for a single day, noted with a timestamp. (The file suffix remains .ichat!) Double-click a file to open the transcript in Messages for viewing. Quick Look also works with transcripts: select one and press the Space bar to view and scroll through it. The file format is XML, so, with the right parser, you could extract the data and do something useful with it. (To open your the hidden ~/Library folder in your main user folder, in the Finder, press Option and choose Go > Library.)

Block a Person

Only AOL and Google Talk allow you to block someone attempting to contact you. I describe how to block users on those services in Block with AIM and Block with Google Talk. 88

Chat via Audio and Video

Messages supports two kinds of multimedia chat: FaceTime and a generically labeled alternative that’s been around since the Messages program was named iChat. Some people you talk with may have multiple options for audio and video chat. This chapter examines which services are available to you, and which might suit your needs. Note: Rather than give Audio and Video obscure labels like “legacy iChat Audio” or “SIP-compatible Video,” I’m using the terms Audio and Video as Apple does.

Examine A/V Chat Options

Messages lists FaceTime, Audio, and Video as discrete options in the Video drop-down menu. Despite its use of widely accepted industry standards, FaceTime’s conversations work only with the FaceTime app from Apple for iOS and Mac OS X. Audio and Video rely on similar standards, but these standards are packaged in a way that allows them to work across Bonjour, AIM, and Google Talk. The practical differences in Messages between FaceTime and Audio/ Video are summarized in Table 2.

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Table 2: Comparing Comparing FaceTime, Audio Audio,, and Video Feature

FaceTime

Audio

Video

Check if other party is online

No

Yes Ye s

Block incoming requests

No

Yes Ye s

Yes*

No

Works with iOS Number of other participants

1

9

3

Audio only

No

Can choose Audio Audio or Video

Platforms

iOS, Mac

Mac, Windows, mobile†

*FaceTime available available only on iOS devices with a front front-facing -facing camera. camera. †Requires non-Apple software. software.

Note: When you start a FaceTime chat in Messages in OS X, it launches or switches to the separate FaceTime program.

Check Your Requirements

Any Mac that can run Mountain Lion has the capability to use either standard Audio/Video chat or FaceTime. All the iMac and laptop models that can run Mountain Lion include a built-in iSight or FaceTime camera. Apple also includes a FaceTime camera in its Apple Thunderbolt Display, and all Thunderbolt-capable Macs can run Mountain Lion as well. Buying an External Camera

If you don’t have a built-in camera, I suggest that you consider a Logitech camera. Logitech offers a large array of options that vary by resolution, low-light quality, and so forth. Amazon offers a comparison chart for many Logitech cameras (oddly missing from Logitech’s site) on its page for the expensive C910 model: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Webcam-C910-1080pVideo/dp/B003M2YT96/. (I purchased the cheaper, portable C905, which has a nifty little stand for positioning it, as well as a clip.)

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You have a wide range of options for audio—you can use a built-in or a third-party video camera while still picking a separate audio source for higher quality or convenience. I rely on a Sennheiser dual-ear USB headset for audio chats (via Messages, Skype, and other programs). Sennheiser makes a pile of models, which change frequently and come in many price ranges (http://www.sennheiserusa.com/). If you want to go this route, I recommend reading reviews to find a good model for your uses. For a freestanding mic, I bit the bullet and purchased a Blue Yeti, an awfully pretty mic that also works extremely well. I record a lot of podcasts and even remote radio interviews (where I record the audio locally), and the Yeti produces beautiful sound (http:// www.bluemic.com/yeti/, about $100). Bandwidth is a trickier requirement. A Messages Audio or Video chat requires up to 300 Kbps for a two-person chat, and even more bandwidth and lower latency (a more responsive network) to handle multiple people in conversation at once. FaceTime is highly adaptive to the network’s currently available bandwidth and can work at low quality on a very low-speed network. Burning FaceTime Bits over Cellular or Satellite

If you use your Mac tethered to a cellular 3G/4G iPhone, iPad, or router for which you have capped or metered usage, or if you use satellite Internet service which has low usage limits, watch out, because FaceTime and Audio/Video chats can consume a large amount of bandwidth relative to the allotment you receive. This is also worth worrying about in iOS 6, which allows FaceTime over mobile broadband for the iPhone 4S and 5 and the thirdgeneration iPad. (Not all carriers turn this feature on; AT&T allows it only with its shared-data service plans.) You could also be burning up a recipient’s data plan if you call them and they have FaceTime over cellular enabled (in Settings > General > Cellular, in the Use Cellular Data For section).

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Set Up an A/V Session

To get ready for an audio or video chat (which usually includes audio), you should: • Position your microphone—whether a standalone model or part of a headset—in a good spot relative to where you’ll be sitting or standing. • Reduce noise around you by closing doors, turning off fans, and muting phones and other devices. • If you work from home, like me, ensure that there are no children running or screaming nearby. • For video chats, make sure there’s sufficient lighting on your face without washing you out or making you look like Vincent Price. • For cameras that can be positioned, be sure you don’t have the camera so low that it’s looking up your nose. Ideally, the camera should be at approximately the same height as your nose. Messages and FaceTime both let you pick input sources and preview audio and video.

Set Up for Audio/Video Choose Messages > Preferences and click the Audio/Video icon. From the Camera menu, choose the correct video input (if you have multiple cameras attached). The preview area shows a live view of the currently selected camera. From the Microphone and Sound Output pop-up menus, choose the microphone you want to use for audio and the output you want to use to monitor that audio, respectively (Figure 53). Just below the preview area is a lozenge-like meter displaying the microphone’s input level.

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Figure 53: Messages lets you choose sources and test them.

Say “sibilance” a number of times, positioning the mic relative to your mouth until your loudest sounds are consistently peaking about threequarters of the way across from the left. Tip: You can bring up just the audio and video preview, separate from the Preferences window, by choosing Video > Video Preview.

Set Up FaceTime The FaceTime app—a separate program from Messages—shows you a video preview (with audio muted) the moment it launches. If you have more than one video or audio source available, the Video menu lets you pick the desired options—the menu shows no options if there’s just a single choice available (Figure 54).

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Figure 54: FaceTime’s Video menu allows input selection.

Share Your Face with a FaceTime Chat

FaceTime has rather simple controls. You place calls by choosing a contact and then a contact method (phone number or email address) associated with another Mac OS X user or an iOS device. When a call comes in, you click Accept or Decline. Easy as pie. You can also initiate a call from within Messages. Let’s walk briefly through setup before making a call.

Set FaceTime Preferences The steps for setting your preferences for how you can be reached in FaceTime are different, depending on whether or not you’re already signed in. If you aren’t signed in, the FaceTime window shows a video preview and a sign-in form: 1. Sign in with the Apple ID that you want to use with FaceTime. 2. When you are prompted to pick how people can reach you in FaceTime, you’ll see a list of all phone numbers and email addresses currently associated with your signed-in Apple ID. You can click any item to toggle it off. Click Next. After a wait during which FaceTime puts up a message that says “Verifying,” you’re signed in and ready to place a call. If you want 94

to change which phone numbers or email addresses reach you in FaceTime, follow the next set of steps. If you’re signed in already: 1. Choose FaceTime > Preferences. 2. Click items in the “You can be reached by FaceTime at” list to toggle them on or off as receiving addresses on your Mac. 3. To add an email address that’s not in the list, click Add Another Email, and type the address. No duplication across Apple IDs: An email address may be associated with only a single Apple ID account. If the address isn’t already associated with the signed-in Apple ID, Apple sends verification email to that address. Once you’ve clicked the URL in the email message and logged in to the Apple ID you’re using with FaceTime, Apple confirms the address and FaceTime updates within a few seconds. Note: This also adds the address to the Apple ID account for all other services that use that Apple ID.

You can’t add a phone number. The phone number (or more than one) appears only when you’re logged into FaceTime on your Mac using the same Apple ID that you’ve used to log in to FaceTime on an iPhone. If you have two or more email addresses or phone numbers selected, a Caller ID pop-up menu appears from which you can choose the address or number that call recipients see when you start a FaceTime chat. This is just like the Start New Conversations From pop-up menu in Messages for sending iMessages.

Start a FaceTime Chat in Messages Messages lets you start a FaceTime call in its main window. 1. Create a new conversation, or select an existing conversation from the list at left. 2. Click the Video

icon to open a drop-down menu.

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3. From the menu, choose an account that has a FaceTime label. Apple oddly puts FaceTime next to all email addresses and phone numbers regardless of whether they are registered with a FaceTimeassociated Apple ID. FaceTime launches and attempts to make a call with that method.

Start a FaceTime Chat in FaceTime FaceTime relies on entries in Contacts to start a connection. Scroll or search the Contacts list in FaceTime, or click the Add button to add a new contact. With a contact selected, you can click any phone number or email address to try to initiate a chat. The Mac FaceTime app doesn’t show whether a particular contact works with FaceTime; the iOS FaceTime method does, so Apple skimped a little here. (Even Messages shows which accounts for a contact have iMessage enabled.) When you click a contact phone number or email address, assuming it’s a valid method, FaceTime chimes a pleasant ringer and then shows the text Connecting at top of the FaceTime window. If the other party clicks Accept, the session starts, and your local video is inset into the larger picture (Figure 55).

Figure 55: Glenn talks to Glenn. Apparently, he has no friends.

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Receive a FaceTime Call An incoming call launches the FaceTime app if it’s not already running, and offers you Accept and Decline buttons. Click Decline and your caller is told you’re not available. Click Accept, and a chat starts.

Handle a FaceTime Call During a chat, no matter whether you initiated or received the initial request, you can: • Click the Mute

button to disable your mic.

• Click the Full Screen

button to fill your monitor with FaceTime.

• End a FaceTime chat by clicking End. FaceTime crops the video display to fit an iOS device’s proportions regardless of what device you’re talking to, but you can switch from the default vertical (portrait) orientation to horizontal (landscape) during a call. Note: When you call the taller iPhone 5 with FaceTime on a Mac, for instance, the iPhone 5’s full dimensions are used. But connect over FaceTime between two Macs and the pre-iPhone 5 proportions for the iPod touch and iPhone since 2007 are used instead!

To change the orientation, hover over the inset (mirrored) version of your local video in the FaceTime window and then click the rotation arrow that appears (Figure 56). Or, choose Video > Use Landscape (Command-R) (which changes to Video > Use Portrait afterward).

Figure 56: The local-video inset offers a rotation arrow that lets you switch orientation.

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Changing orientation plays out this way: • Mac/Mac: Both parties start in portrait orientation. If either party clicks the inset view’s rotation arrow, both parties change to the new orientation. • Mac/iOS: If the iOS user changes orientation, the Mac user follows suit; but the Mac user changing orientation leaves the iOS user viewing whatever orientation he was previously seeing. Orientation lock: Pressing Command-R or choosing Video > Use Landscape (or Use Portrait) locks your Mac’s FaceTime orientation even if the remote party then changes orientation on her screen.

Troubleshoot a FaceTime Chat FaceTime seems extraordinarily picky about what connections will work. I have received “FaceTime failed” messages more often than not for people I know are available, and I’ve been told that someone is busy when they have, in fact, tapped Accept (or so they tell me). If a FaceTime chat fails, try one of these fixes: • Try a different address assigned to the same FaceTime recipient. • Toggle your network adapter off and back on (for example, from the Wi-Fi system menu, by choosing Turn Wi-Fi Off, and then Turn Wi-Fi On). • Move your Mac to a different network. FaceTime works poorly on networks that have a “double NAT” configuration. A common example of this is when a broadband modem connects to Wi-Fi router, and both devices use private networking (NAT or Network Address Translation) to share a single address to the outside world. There’s no easy solution for this, as it requires reconfiguring the network. (I have a double NAT because otherwise I’d have to pay $15 per month to have a fixed publicly routable IP address!)

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See or Speak with Video or Audio Chat

The older style of Audio and Video chat works directly within Messages, and it is available for AIM, Google Talk, and Bonjour accounts. You can chat with just one buddy or with multiple buddies.

Pick a Buddy for an Audio or Video Chat You can start an audio or video chat in Messages in one of three ways. Via the Video

icon in a conversation:

1. Create a new conversation, or select an existing conversation from the list at left. 2. Click the Video

icon to open a drop-down menu.

3. From the menu, choose an account that has a Video or Audio label. Only online accounts with video or audio capability should appear. Via an entry in the Conversation List: With the account with which you want to start an audio or video chat selected (AIM, Google Talk, or Bonjour appears in gray in the messageentry field)—perform one of these actions: • Control-click (right-click) the conversation entry, and choose Invite to Video Chat or Invite to Audio Chat. • Choose Buddies > Invite to Video Chat, or Invite to Audio Chat. Via a buddy list: For an AIM, Google Talk, or Bonjour buddy, use one of these approaches: • Click the Video a video chat.

icon next to the buddy’s name in the list to start

• If a buddy has a Phone to start an audio chat.

icon next to her name, you may click that

• Select a Buddy, and then choose Buddies > Invite to Video Chat, or Invite to Audio Chat. • Control-click (right-click) a Buddy, and choose Invite to Video Chat or Invite to Audio Chat. 99

Note: If one side of a video chat has only audio capability, the other party can pick Invite to a One-Way Video Chat through all the above menu options. This shows the video to the audio-only person.

Pick Buddies for a Multi-Person Chat Messages also lets you start multi-person audio or video chats. Everyone must have at least audio capability to start an audio or video chat; however, everyone doesn’t have to have video to be part of a video chat. A video chat has a limit of you plus three others, while an audio chat’s limit is you plus nine others. With a mixed audio-video chat, you can’t exceed three other video participants, but you can add audio buddies up to a combined total of ten users, including yourself. There are two ways to start a multi-person chat: • In the Messages window, in a group chat (see Start a Group Chat), you can: ‣ Right-click an entry in the Conversation List, and pick Invite to Audio Chat or Invite to Video Chat. ‣ Choose Buddies > Invite to Audio Chat, or Invite to Video Chat. • Via an AIM, Google Talk, or Bonjour Buddy List, or any of those account types in a consolidated Buddies list, select multiple buddies with Command (to add or remove a single entry from the selection) or Shift (to extend a selection), and do one of the following: ‣ Click the Video

icon to start a video chat.

‣ Click the Phone icon to start an audio chat, if all the buddies are limited to audio capability (or if you’ve disabled video from the Video menu by deselecting Video Chat Enabled). ‣ Control-click (right-click) any selected buddy and choose Invite to Video Chat, or Invite to Audio Chat. Whichever method you choose, above, a session begins. For a video chat, Messages displays a preview screen (labeled “Preview”) and a message “Waiting for response from” (Figure 57). With audio, just a small dialog appears. 100

Figure 57: A video preview appears while you wait for a recipient to accept (or decline) your invitation.

Accept a Chat When someone starts a chat as described above, if you were invited to the chat, you’ll see a message inviting you to the chat. For video, if clicked on, a local preview opens with a message that says “Video chat invitation from” and the other person’s name; for audio, a small dialog appears. Both options shows the same buttons: Text Reply, Decline, or Accept. Text Reply starts a text chat in lieu of video or audio. Click Accept and the chat begins (Figure 58).

Figure 58: An active audio chat shows the volume of the other party.

For multi-party chats, the video window changes to show each remote party arrayed with fancy reflections (Figure 59). An audio chat expands to show each participant with a separate audio level.

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Figure 59: A multi-party video chat shows everyone as if on a tilted reflective table.

Handle a Chat In a video chat, either participant may: • Mute the mic: Click the Mute

button, or choose Video > Mute.

• Expand to full screen: Click the Full-screen video chat fill the local screen.

button to make a

• Stop sending video: Choose Video > Pause Video to halt sending video (but not receiving it). • Record a movie: Choose Video > Record to create a movie of a video chat. (Messages requests permission from the other chat participant.) In an audio chat, either participant may: • Mute the mic: Click the Mute button, or choose Video > Mute (it reads Audio > Mute if there’s no camera attached or turned on). • Record the conversation: Choose Video > Record or Audio > Record to create an audio file of the chat. (Messages requests permission from the other side of the chat.) In a multi-party audio or video chat, you can add participants: • In the Messages window in a group chat, click the Add invite more people to talk.

button to

• Drag one or more buddies from a buddy list into the active audio or video window. If the remote parties accept, they’re added to the chat. 102

Get Theatrical with Theater Messages also includes a feature called Theater that lets you carry out remote presentations by showing your video feed as well as images, Keynote decks, videos, PDFs, and other files to the other participants in your chat. button during a video chat to see these options. Click the plus I’ve used Theater to present talks to distant user groups. For more on Theater, see my ebook Take Control of Screen Sharing in Lion.

End a Chat You end an audio or video chat by either clicking the red close button at the upper left of the window or choosing File > Close Window (Command-W).

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Share Screens

With the Screen Sharing feature in Messages, you can see the display (or displays) of a remote computer, as well as work on that computer using your local keyboard, mouse, trackpad, or touchpad. Being able to show someone your screen or see hers can be useful for demonstrations or personal troubleshooting. Messages creates a session between two buddies that allows one to control the other’s computer. Control works only in one direction, based on who requests or offers to share a screen. Warning! Screen sharing isn’t something you should engage in casually. If you allow a buddy access to your screen, the buddy has full control until you disconnect. The screen-sharing feature in Messages works between two accounts on the same service: AIM, Google Talk, or Bonjour. It doesn’t require the password of the other party. Messages allows either party to initiate or request screen sharing. Thus you can ask a buddy to share her screen, or offer to share your screen with a buddy. Note: For more about other methods of screen sharing, including on the same network, via Back to My Mac, though Skype, or with iOS apps, see my ebook Take Control of Screen Sharing in Lion.

Start a Screen-Sharing Session

You have many choices for initiating screen sharing in Messages, none of which is necessarily superior to any other. In every case, you will see both “Share My Screen with Account” and “Ask to Share Account’s Screen” as menu options. You can start screen sharing from either the Messages window or a buddy list.

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In the Messages window: • Select a conversation or start one, and then click the Message window’s Video icon, and select the sharing option you wish at the bottom. Several email addresses and accounts may be listed. • Control-click (right-click) a person in the Conversation List, and choose the appropriate menu item. • Select a person in the Conversation List, and choose the appropriate menu item from the Buddies menu. In a Buddy List: • Control-click (right-click) a buddy’s name, and choose the desired menu item. • Select the buddy’s name, click the Screen-sharing bottom of the list, and then select the desired item.

button at the

• Select the buddy, and then choose a screen-sharing option from the Buddies menu. Offered when not available: Messages can list an account as a possibility for screen sharing when that capability doesn’t exist. In that case, when you choose a menu item through any of the above options, Messages ignores the command, but removes the account as a screen-sharing option from the pop-up menu. If you start a screen-sharing request from the Messages window but you aren’t a buddy of the person on the other end, Messages warns that person (Figure 60).

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Figure 60: Messages wisely warns you about unknown screensharing requests.

Otherwise, Messages provides an abbreviated message (Figure 61) to your buddy.

Figure 61: A request appears from a known buddy.

If the other person is already engaged in screen sharing, Messages says the person is “busy in another conference,” and halts there. If the party being requested to share accepts, the screen-sharing session begins.

Use Screen Sharing

When a screen-sharing session starts, the screen being viewed fills the observer’s display. Whatever pointing device the controlling system has (a mouse, trackpad, Magic Trackpad, and so forth) works, along with its keyboard, as if they were directly attached to the remote machine. A small inset “My Computer” panel on the observing system shows the local display (Figure 62 shows that panel). Clicking that inset panel reverses things: the controlled screen gets shrunk into a small 106

inset (Figure 63), and the local display returns to its full-size—and usable—state. Click that inset again, and it reverses again. (The person sharing her screen doesn’t see any of this screen-swapping activity.)

Figure 62: On the remote system, the inset says “Switch to My Computer.” Click to swap to the local display.

Figure 63: The controlled system now appears as inset on the local computer. Click to swap back again.

When a computer is being controlled and observed, the Screen-sharing icon flashes in that computer’s menu bar. The Messages version of screen sharing, compared to the full-fledged remote access provided by the Screen Sharing app, has rather minimal controls. The remote controller can only move the cursor and send keypresses (typing and keyboard commands) to the machine being observed. There is no file transfer, screen capture, or clipboard copying as there is when using the Screen Sharing app. Messages-based screen sharing also maddeningly doesn’t allow the controller to pick the screen onto which the remote screen is shown; if 107

you have multiple displays connected to your Mac, the remote screen always appears on the display with the system menu bar. And if the remote system has multiple monitors, all the displays are shrunk into a single, non-zoomable view on the controlling computer.

Stop a Screen-Sharing Session

To halt a screen-sharing session on either computer (the one controlling or the one being controlled), choose Buddies > End Screen Sharing. You can also use any of the following: On the controlling system: • Click the in the upper-left corner of the inset panel, whether viewing the local or remote system. • Quit Messages. On the controlled system: • From the Messages

system menu, choose End Screen Sharing.

• Quit Messages. Note: The Messages system menu doesn’t appear if you’ve unchecked Show Status in Menu bar, found in the General pane in Messages > Preferences. But if you enable it after starting a screensharing session, the End Screen Sharing option doesn’t appear!

Warning! You don’t halt a screen-sharing session by logging out of the account that created the connection. The session remains active until it is closed.

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About This Book

Thank you for purchasing this Take Control ebook. We hope you find it both useful and enjoyable to read. We welcome your comments at [email protected].

Ebook Extras

You can access extras related to this ebook on the Web. Once you’re on the ebook’s Take Control Extras page, you can: • Download any available new version of the ebook for free, or buy a subsequent edition at a discount. • Download various formats, including PDF, EPUB, and—usually— Mobipocket. (Learn about reading this ebook on handheld devices at http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/device-advice.) • Read postings to the ebook’s blog. These may include new information and tips, as well as links to author interviews. At the top of the blog, you can also see any update plans for the ebook. If you bought this ebook from the Take Control Web site, it has been automatically added to your account, where you can download it in other formats and access any future updates. However, if you bought this ebook elsewhere, you can add it to your account manually: • If you already have a Take Control account, log in to your account, and then click the “access extras…” link above. • If you don’t have a Take Control account, first make one by following the directions that appear when you click the “access extras…” link above. Then, once you are logged in to your new account, add your ebook by clicking the “access extras…” link a second time. Note: If you try the directions above and find that the device you’re reading on is incompatible with the Take Control Web site, contact us at [email protected].

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About the Author

Glenn Fleishman has written about technology in all its many forms for a couple dozen years, starting with Aldus Magazine all the way through to his current gigs at the Economist (where he writes for the online Babbage blog and in print for the Technology Quarterly section), Macworld (senior contributor), and the Seattle Times (columnist). He’s also an editor at TidBITS where he manages back-end content systems and writes articles about wireless networking, instant messages, and far more. He contributes to Ars Technica and BoingBoing, and appears regularly on local and national public radio news programs. Glenn was trained as a typesetter, and he lives in Seattle with his wife and two sons. He appears regularly on the geeky podcast The Incomparable, where he talks about books, movies, Doctor Who, and other topics.

Author’s Acknowledgments Thanks as always to the indomitable Tonya Engst for her work in shaping this book, and Adam Engst for helping crack the code for how to explain Messages to both veteran iChat users and those new to iMessage and instant messaging. Dan Frakes was tireless in finding and fixing the small details that make a technical book work or not. I thank my family—Lynn, Ben, and Rex—as always, as both the inspiration for my work and the reward to spend time with after hours of effort well spent.

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About the Publisher

Publishers Adam and Tonya Engst have been creating Apple-related content since they started the online newsletter TidBITS, in 1990. In TidBITS, you can find the latest Apple news, plus read reviews, opinions, and more (http://tidbits.com/). Adam and Tonya are known in the Apple world as writers, editors, and speakers. They are also parents to Tristan, who thinks ebooks about clipper ships and castles would be cool. Production credits: • Take Control logo: Jeff Tolbert • Cover design: Jon Hersh • Editors: Tonya Engst, Dan Frakes • Proofreader: Michael E. Cohen • Production Assistants: Michael E. Cohen, Oliver Habicht • Editor in Chief: Tonya Engst • Publisher: Adam Engst

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Copyright and Fine Print

Take Control of Messages in Mountain Lion ISBN: 978-1-61542-414-6

Copyright © 2012, Glenn Fleishman. All rights reserved.

TidBITS Publishing Inc.

50 Hickory Road

Ithaca, NY 14850 USA

http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/

Take Control electronic books help readers regain a measure of control in an oftentimes out-of-control universe. Take Control ebooks also streamline the publication process so that information about quickly changing technical topics can be published while it’s still relevant and accurate. This electronic book doesn’t use copy protection because copy protection makes life harder for everyone. So we ask a favor of our readers. If you want to share your copy of this ebook with a friend, please do so as you would a physical book, meaning that if your friend uses it regularly, he or she should buy a copy. Your support makes it possible for future Take Control ebooks to hit the Internet long before you’d find the same information in a printed book. Plus, if you buy the ebook, you’re entitled to any free updates that become available. You have our permission to make a single print copy of this ebook for personal use. Please reference this page if a print service refuses to print the ebook for copyright reasons. Although the author and TidBITS Publishing Inc. have made a reasonable effort to ensure the accuracy of the information herein, they assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. The information in this ebook is distributed “As Is,” without warranty of any kind. Neither TidBITS Publishing Inc. nor the author shall be liable to any person or entity for any special, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including without limitation lost revenues or lost profits, that may result (or that are alleged to result) from the use of these materials. In other words, use this information at your own risk. Many of the designations used to distinguish products and services are claimed as trademarks or service marks. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features that appear in this title are assumed to be the property of their respective owners. All product names and services are used in an editorial fashion only, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is meant to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this title. This title is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Because of the nature of this title, it uses terms that are the trademarks or that are the registered trademarks of Apple Inc.; to view a complete list of the trademarks and of the registered trademarks of Apple Inc., you can visit http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/appletmlist.html. 112

Featured Titles

Click any book title below or visit our Web catalog to add more ebooks to your Take Control collection! Take Control of BBEdit (Glenn Fleishman): Learn how to take full advantage of BBEdit's text-processing power! Take Control of Apple Mail in Mountain Lion (Joe Kissell) Learn the basics and go under the hood with Apple’s Mail application in OS X 10.8. Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac (Joe Kissell): Find a commonsense approach to avoiding problems and ensuring that your Mac runs at peak performance. Take Control of Making Music with GarageBand ’11 (Jeff Tolbert): Combine your creativity with GarageBand’s editing and mixing techniques to compose tunes that please the ear! Take Control of iCloud (Joe Kissell): Understand the many features, get set up properly, and enjoy iCloud! Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network (Glenn Fleishman): Make your AirPort network fly—get help with buying the best gear, set up, security, and more. Take Control of Safari 6 (Sharon Zardetto): Make the most of Apple's Safari, a Mac Web browser with many hidden and under-appreciated talents! Take Control of Screen Sharing in Lion (Glenn Fleishman): Figure out which type of screen sharing to use when and how to get the most out of screen sharing. Take Control of Using Mountain Lion (Matt Neuburg): Chockablock with core concepts and insider tips on customizing and navigating in 10.8 Mountain Lion. Take Control of TextExpander (Michael E. Cohen): Whether you want to type faster or you already use TextExpander but want to harness its power more fully, let Michael lead you to typing nirvana.

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