Chapter 12
In This Chapter
Adding a printer or a scanner to your system
Using Photo Booth
Connecting with friends and family using FaceTime
Watching digital TV on your iMac
This chapter is all about getting interesting things into — and out of — your iMac. Some of the devices I mention are common (almost mundane these days) and pretty easy to take care of, such as scanners and printers. Then I might surprise you with something new to you, like your iMac’s built-in FaceTime HD video camera.
I also show you how to turn your iMac into a photo booth. Heck, I even describe how you can pull that fancy satellite or cable TV signal into your iMac.
It’s perfectly okay to tell everyone else that you’re watching the financial channel. But watching a little football never hurt anyone… .
All hail the USB port! It’s the primary connection point for all sorts of goodies. In this section, I concentrate on adding a local USB printer and the basics of adding a network printer to your system. (Find more on connecting a wireless Bluetooth printer in Bonus Chapter 1 at www.dummies.com/extras/imac.)
Connecting a USB printer to your iMac is duck soup. Don’t you wish all things in life were this easy? You might very well be able to skip most of the steps in this section entirely, depending on whether your printer came with an installation disc. (Virtually all do, of course, but you might have bought yours used, say, from eBay.)
The physical connections for your printer are pretty simple:
Additional printer installation steps depend on whether you have the manufacturer’s installation software for your printer.
If your printer comes with its manufacturer’s installation disc (and you have either an internal or external optical drive), follow these steps when everything is connected and powered on:
If you download the printer’s installation software as a disk image file (ending with the extension .dmg), simply double-click that file. OS X will display it on your Desktop, just as if it were a DVD or an external hard drive. Now you can follow along with the rest of the steps in this procedure.
The disc contents usually appear in a Finder window. If they don’t, double-click the installation disc icon on the Desktop to open the window.
Files get copied to your hard drive.
You might have to restart your iMac.
You’re ready to print!
Don’t forget to visit your printer manufacturer’s website to check for any driver updates for your particular model.
Didn’t get an installation CD? Try installing the printer without software, or download the software from the manufacturer’s website.
If you didn’t get an installation CD with your printer (or you can’t locate the installation software to download), you might be lucky enough that your printer’s driver was included in your installation of OS X. First, press +P within an application to display the Print dialog, where you can check whether the printer you connected is already recognized.
If it’s not displayed, here’s how to check for that pesky driver after you connect the printer and switch it on:
If your printer appears here, dance a celebratory jig. You can close System Preferences and choose that printer from the Print dialog in your applications. (You can even set it as the default from the System Preferences Printers & Scanners pane. Just click the Default Printer pop-up menu to select your new printer.)
If you don’t have installation software and your iMac doesn’t automatically match your USB printer with a driver, it’s time to check the Internet to locate a Mavericks-compatible driver for your printer.
Check the manufacturer’s website for your printer’s software and any additional information for operating your printer under OS X Mavericks. Look for
Your wired or wireless Ethernet network provides a quick and easy way to share any printer that’s already connected to your iMac. Follow these steps to share your printers across the network with others:
In most cases, a printer that you share appears automatically in the Print dialog on other computers connected to your network. Therefore, if you want to access a printer being shared by another Mac across your network, open the Print dialog within your application and click the Printer pop-up menu to select it.
If the remote printer isn’t listed automatically, you can dig a little further. To add a printer that another Mac on your network is sharing to your list of printers, follow these steps:
Mavericks displays all the available local shared printers.
Depending on the built-in support within Mavericks for the printer you’re accessing or sharing, you may have to install the driver on your Mac or the other Macs on your network as well.
USB and FireWire scanners practically install themselves. As long as the model is listed as OS X–compatible and supports the TWAIN device standard (as just about all scanners do), things really are plug-and-play. (Not sure whether a scanner is OS X–compatible? Check the system requirements on the scanner’s box or on the manufacturer’s website.)
If you have the scanner manufacturer’s installation disc, go ahead and use it. However, most scanners don’t require specialized drivers, so even that orphan model that you picked up from Uncle Milton last year should work (if it’s recognized by OS X). It doesn’t hurt to check the manufacturer’s website to see whether any of the software has been updated since the disc was produced.
Ready to go? Make sure that your scanner is powered on and connected to your iMac (and that you load a page or photograph to scan). If your scanner’s installation disc provided you with a proprietary scanning application, I recommend that you use that application to test your scanner. In fact, it’s Mark’s Maxim time!
Sure, OS X has the Printers & Scanners pane within System Preferences for printers and the Image Capture application for scanners and digital cameras, but these are bare-bones tools compared with the print manager and image acquisition software that comes bundled with your hardware. I turn to the built-in hardware handling stuff that comes with Mavericks only when I don’t have anything better.
Hey, I’m not saying that anything’s wrong with Image Capture, which is in your Applications folder, in case you need to use it. However, don’t expect Image Capture to support any specialized features offered by your scanner (like one-button e-mail or web publishing). You have to use the application especially designed for your manufacturer and model to take advantage of any extras that it offers. For alternatives, many image-editing applications (like Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements) might offer more scanning features than Image Capture.
Many Apple switchers and first-time owners quickly notice the tiny square lens and LED light at the top of the iMac’s svelte frame. What gives?
Mystery solved, good reader: That’s the lens of your iMac’s built-in FaceTime HD camera, which allows you to capture video or snap a quick, fun series of photos via the Photo Booth application that comes with Mavericks.
What’s that you say? You’ve never used a computer video camera? Well then, good reader, you’ve come to the right place!
The FaceTime HD camera’s indicator light glows green whenever you’re taking a snapshot or recording video … which, when you think about it, is A Good Thing (especially if you prefer chatting at home in Leisure Mode).
To snap an image in Photo Booth, follow these steps:
Photo Booth features a very different appearance in full-screen mode, complete with a fancy wooden stage and curtain! To try things out in full-screen mode, choose View⇒Enter Full Screen.
The three buttons at the lower-left side of the Photo Booth window allow you to switch among taking one photo, four photos in a row (arranged as a group, like an arcade photo booth), or a movie clip.
Photo Booth displays a screen of thumbnail preview images so that you can see how each effect changes the photo (see Figure 12-1). To move through the thumbnail screens, click the Previous and Next arrow buttons that appear around the Effects button.
You can produce some of the simple effects you might be familiar with from Photoshop, such as a black-and-white image or a fancy colored-pencil filter, but you can also play with some mind-blowing distortion effects and even very convincing “faux” thermal and X-ray cameras!
Of course, you can always launch your favorite image editor afterward to use a filter or effect on a photo — for example, the effects available in iPhoto — but Photo Booth can apply these effects automatically as soon as you take the picture.
When you choose an effect, Photo Booth automatically closes the Effects display.
To return the display to normal, click the Normal thumbnail, which appears in the center. (Um, that would be Paul Lynde’s spot, for those of you old enough to remember Hollywood Squares.)
The image (or video clip) appears in the filmstrip at the bottom of the window. Photo Booth keeps a copy of all the images and clips you take in the filmstrip so that you can use them later. After you click a photo or film clip in the filmstrip, the familiar Share button appears, inviting you take any one of a series of actions, including
With Apple’s FaceTime technology, you can video chat with owners of iOS devices and Macs — and if they can run FaceTime, they’re guaranteed to have the right video hardware!
As of the time of this writing, FaceTime-compatible devices include
Mac owners running Snow Leopard 10.6.6 or later can also buy the FaceTime application from the App Store.
To launch FaceTime, click the jaunty-looking video camera icon on the Dock. The first time you use the application, you have to enter your Apple ID and your e-mail address. The folks you chat with on the other end use that same e-mail address to call you via FaceTime. (iPhone 4-series and 5-series owners can be called using their telephone numbers.)
After you sign in, FaceTime displays your Contacts list by default. To initiate a call with any contact, click the name in the list. FaceTime displays the e-mail and telephone numbers for the contact (once again, taken from your Contacts database). Click the e-mail or telephone number that FaceTime should use, and the connection process begins. To return to the Contacts list and choose another person, click the All Contacts button at the top of the window.
Apple isn’t satisfied with providing a mere contacts list, however! You can use a number of other methods for selecting someone to call:
When the call is accepted, you see a large video window with a smaller “picture-in-picture” display. The video from the other person fills the large window, and the video that you’re sending to that person appears in the small display, as shown in Figure 12-2. Click the End icon to end the FaceTime call.
Your iMac’s beautiful LED screen would seem to be the perfect artist’s canvas for watching cable or satellite TV broadcasts, but there’s no coaxial (cable or satellite) input on the back of your computer (and no TV tuner nestled within). Therefore, unless you invest in some additional hardware, you’re restricted to downloading movies.
Such an obvious need is going to be filled quickly, and a number of different hardware manufacturers have produced external devices that can merge your iMac and your TV signal. Most are USB peripherals, and many have all the features of today’s TiVo and digital video recorders.
My favorite example is the EyeTV HD, from Elgato (www.elgato.com), which uses a USB connection. Check out what this superstar includes for your investment of $200:
I really love the ability to fast-forward through commercials, and I can take anything that I record on my iMac and use it in iMovie. The addition of TV under your control sorta finalizes the whole digital hub thing, now doesn’t it?