Book Image

The macOS User Administration Guide

By : Herta Nava
Book Image

The macOS User Administration Guide

By: Herta Nava

Overview of this book

Apple is pushing the capabilities of its technologies to help users achieve high performance, including improvements in its OS running across all Mac systems, macOS, and new technologies such as M1 Silicon chips. This book walks you through macOS from a system administration and support point of view, exploring its latest features. The book starts by explaining macOS architecture, installation, and startup processes to enable you to get started with the OS. You'll learn how to manage users and discover techniques for user security and privacy. Moving on, you'll get to grips with the macOS file system and learn to manage disks, volumes, and partitions for effective file management. Most of the examples covered in this book are from an administrator's perspective; however, when relevant, a standard user's perspective is also presented. You'll find illustrations for Mac systems running macOS 11 (Big Sur), and when necessary, for macOS 10.15 (macOS Catalina). Finally, you'll explore advanced topics such as networking and using command-line tools for administration tasks. By the end of this macOS book, you'll be well-versed with macOS features, administration tasks, and best practices. You'll also be able to apply the concepts to increase your chances of success in obtaining Apple certifications such as Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP).
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
18
About Packt

Understanding sharing services

Sharing services extend the functionalities of your Mac so that you can collaborate with other users through sharing. macOS lets you share files, folders, and other services, such as your screen or a peripheral (such as a printer) connected to your Mac, with users on your network.

In this section, we will see how file sharing works in macOS, including a very popular sharing feature among Mac users: AirDrop. We will cover the following topics related to the sharing services on macOS:

  • What are file-sharing services?
  • Using file sharing in macOS
  • What is AirDrop?

Let's start by exploring file-sharing services.

What are file-sharing services?

File-sharing is where you publicly or privately share data or space in a network, and this is typically done through several levels of access permissions. It allows users to access files according to the privileges they've been granted: read, view, write, copy, print, and so on. File-sharing can also mean users...